The Best Trio In The Nation?

Heads will be spinning.

Imagine being a defensive coordinator tasked with the responsibility of designing a scheme to keep North Carolina’s offense in check this season. As Mr. T on the 1980s hit show The A-Team often said, “I pity the fool.”

Or in this case, fools.

Well, they aren’t exactly foolish, it’s just that UNC’s myriad offensive weapons will make some look that way this coming season, if there’s a season.

The Tar Heels will roll out one of the top quarterbacks in the nation in Sam Howell, who is coming off a statistical season surpassed really only by prolific Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow, 1,000-yard running back Michael Carter and his sidekick, Javonte Williams, who finished with 933 yards, and a receiving corps that racked up some serious numbers, including blazers who each hit the 1,000-yard mark.

The offensive line will also be a strength and Carolina will have some healthy scholarship bodies behind Howell, so expect the offense to open up even more for a team that scored 152 points over its final three games of last season.

It’s the receivers, though, that have generated the kind of buzz that have fans super excited and some onlookers a tad surprised. By now, most football people are well aware of Howell and the impressive track he’s on, but as Pro Football Focus offered one remarkable statistic after another via Twitter the last few months, the Tar Heels’ returning trio of receivers – Dyami Brown, Dazz Newsome and Beau Corrales – have become almost as talked about as Howell.

And rightfully so. But perspective is important.

“I’ve told them, they’ll put stuff out on Twitter, they’ll put studs out on Instagram themselves sometimes and then you’ll see something where they’re top five there or Dazz was number two or one or something, but that’s all in the past,” UNC wide receivers coach Lonnie Galloway said. “Now we’ve got to rewrite it. After this season, we’ll see what happens.”

Let some of the numbers tell the story:

*The trio combined for 163 receptions for 2,627 yards and 28 touchdowns last season.

*UNC returns the highest percentage of receptions (95.5 percent) of any Power 5 team in the nation.

*17 ACC receivers had 40 receptions and 500 yards and three of them were Tar Heels.

*Brown led the nation last season with 37 receptions on play-action passes, Newsome was second with 35.

*Newsome (72 receptions, 1,018 yards, 10 TDs) was tied for second in the nation for most touchdowns by a slot receiver and had more receptions than any returning slot receiver in the nation.

*Brown (72 receptions, 1,034 yards, 12 TDs) was one of just four receivers last season with 1,000 yards, 10 touchdowns and averaged 20-plus yards per catch.

There are more, many more.

Throw in Corrales’ complementary 40 receptions for 575 yards and six scores, most of which were highlight-reel stuff, and you have perhaps the top returning trio of receivers in the nation.

“Just being around these guys, the way we’ve always worked around each other and knowing the stuff that we’ve gone through just to get to this moment where people are actually starting to talk about us, it feels good and gives you some confidence,” Corrales said.

No disagreement from Brown.

“I’d say we do have the best receiver corps but we all work for it,” he said. “Every day we put in extra hours, morning, night, any time we want to get in some work we’ll get in some work.”

Newsome has no trouble boasting.

“I definitely think we’re the best receiving corps,” he said. “Why? Because we’ve got Beau and he’s going to get the jump balls… And then we’ve got Dyami and he can do it all and he’s got a little shiftiness, too… And then we’ve got me in the slot. I can do it all, too… And then we’ve got the backups.”

The quality of UNC’s depth this season will exceed what Galloway had to work with a year ago, which might be one reason the trio was so productive. They rarely came off the field. That and the Tar Heels played games down to the wire almost every week, thus explaining why Newsome led the ACC with 363 receiving yards and 19 first downs in the fourth quarters of games last fall.

The increased depth might mean less overall production, but also greater efficiency.

“The benefit when you just look at the receiver room and you realize you’ve started to realize the depth that you want to have at that position, it allows for us – I would much rather have six, seven, eight receivers that can play for us right now,” offensive coordinator Phil Longo said.

Yet, these guys will stick rack up some numbers, and perhaps they will make up for getting fewer reps with actually catching a higher percentage of passes thrown their way.

As impressive as the numbers were, they could have been better. UNC happened to lead the ACC in the alarming category of most dropped passes, registering 32, according to PFF. The trio? Brown had nine drops, Newsome eight and Corrales seven. That’s 24 in total.

Based on their statistical averages during the season, that comes to 387 receiving yards that didn’t happen.

"Just attention to detail, seeing the ball in, seeing yourself,” Galloway said, in reference to the players improving their catch ratios. “I tell them, 'Quick tuck it.' We'll do a drill that we call, 'Words with Blanks,' with the football seeing themselves put it away, and then just extra stuff after practice whether or not that's jugs - 100 jugs - or tennis balls, those type of things.

“After a while, if you drop them, you'll see them run off the field because somebody else is coming in. We have some spectacular catches and we had some ones where you're like, 'Okay, how did you drop it?' They're going to happen. You just don't want them to happen at a great rate during games.”

And therein lies the difference between being ballyhooed in July and decorated in December.

The trio has burners that can take the tops off of defenses in Brown and Newsome, the near-perfect slot guy in Newsome, a possession guy in Corrales who can man up in the end zone and make catches that would make any rebounding-mad hoops coach happy but is also plenty capable of catching, turning and racing up the field.

Now combine that with Carolina’s incredibly talented and productive backfield and a quarterback who will start the season on the Heisman watch list, and you have an offense that will have opposing defensive coaches on a swivel trying to pick their poison.