CHAPEL HILL — From his office as a member of the Atlanta Falcons coaching staff, it’s with much appreciation and admiration, and also nostalgia and hope, that T.J. Yates looks on his fallen North Carolina passing record and the passing of the mantle to Sam Howell.
Yates, the former Tar Heels standout and NFL quarterback, held the top spot on the North Carolina football program’s career passing yards chart for 11 years, until Howell, the team’s current stud quarterback, supplanted him as the new all-time leader last week.
Nothing begrudging about dropping to second place in school history for Yates, who finds Howell to be not only exceedingly deserving, but perhaps the type of star whose light can become both a beacon and engine for advancing the Tar Heels’ status.
“I had a good time doing it and playing ball,” Yates told the Burlington Times-News, “and I’m just happy to have held the record at some point. It was a fun time. I knew it was going to be broken eventually, and I’m happy to see the evolution of UNC football, especially the quarterbacks that have come after me and continue to keep getting better-caliber guys in there. We’re getting more recruits in there, and hopefully with Sam we can start a line of first-round quarterbacks getting taken (in the NFL Draft).
“Because the way that Sam has been playing has really been unbelievable, and it’s not just all about records. What Sam’s doing is definitely going to evolve the program, move the program forward in the long run, I think.”
North Carolina (4-4) plays host to No. 10 Wake Forest (8-0) on Saturday afternoon, a non-conference matchup between the Atlantic Coast Conference teams, with the junior Howell coming off a 300-yard passing performance for the 14th time in his college career. The latest one climbed him to No. 1 in Tar Heels history.
He needed 299 passing yards last week at Notre Dame to reach Yates’ first-place mark, and he threw for 341 yards against the Fighting Irish. A 12-yard completion to Josh Downs in the game’s final minute delivered the record to Howell.
He has piled up 9,419 career passing yards in 33 college games across these three seasons, the starter for coach Mack Brown’s teams since 2019. Yates played in 45 college games and totaled 9,377 career passing yards from 2007-10 after a redshirt year under John Bunting in 2006, the coach’s final season before Butch Davis took the North Carolina job.
“As far as the records go, I was fortunate to be able to play four years in a row,” Yates said. “I got hurt a little bit my sophomore year, but still lucky enough, healthy enough to be able to play four years. That obviously had a lot to do with the amount of accumulated yards. Sam’s doing it in three years, so that’s says plenty about him and how he’s played, and basically the evolution of offense in college football.”
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PATH TO THE PROS, CROSSING PATHS
Yates capped his stay in Chapel Hill with a substantial senior sendoff, a 3,418-yard passing season, the most ever by a Tar Heels quarterback at the time. It was an effort fueled by monster games against Florida State (439 yards), LSU (412 yards) and North Carolina State (411 yards), with Yates distributing to playmakers such as receiver Dwight Jones and running back Johnny White.
Now 34, Yates, whose family moved to Marietta, Ga., when he was in grade school, works in NFL coaching as a passing game specialist with the hometown Falcons. He said he pulled up some old game film from his college days a couple of years ago, and the dated nature of certain things on the videos practically left him double-taking on repeat.
There was one third-down play with Yates under center, as opposed to the shotgun formations so prevalent today on the college level. And the Tar Heels were deploying two running backs and a tight end — 21 personnel, in the technical language of football formations — rather than the spread schemes that have become dominant.
“And I’m like, ‘What are we doing? How are we fooling them?’ ” Yates said, enjoying the memory. “And then we’d complete a pass. It would be wild the stuff we were running and actually doing.
“John Shoop was my coordinator and quarterback coach the whole time I was playing in college, and he basically taught me everything I knew about football. At the time, we were running a true NFL pro-style West Coast offense with the fullback and everything. It was definitely different than the type of offenses you see nowadays in college. But I do think being in the type of offense that I was in, obviously was the only chance I had to make it at the next level. And probably the reason why I’m a coach now.”
Yates spent seven seasons playing in the NFL, a stretch from 2011-17 that included stints with the Houston Texans, Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills and Falcons. He was a fifth-round draft choice of the Texans in 2011, and led the franchise to its first playoff victory at the end of his rookie season.
In 2014, he backed up Matt Ryan, who’s still the starter for the Falcons. And when Atlanta visited the Carolina Panthers in November that season, a 14-year-old kid growing up in the Charlotte area named Sam Howell had an errand-runner job that introduced him to Yates, though few if any greetings were exchanged.
Before NFL teams used digital images and Microsoft Surface tablets to analyze in-game photos of the opposition, overhead pictures of each play would be printed, placed in sleeves and then put in binders. All of which allowed coaches or quarterbacks to flip through the photos on the sidelines, for studying purposes between possessions.
Howell’s duties that day seven years ago involved gathering the play printouts under a tent on the field and making deliveries to the backup quarterback of the Falcons — Yates.
“I was a guy that was getting them off the printer, putting them in a binder, and I handed them to T.J. Yates, like after every drive,” Howell said.
“That’s crazy that he was one of the guys handing us the binders,” Yates said, upon learning of their chance encounter.
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Howell’s NFL material
Yates said he hasn’t pored over Howell’s skills from an NFL scouting perspective. But what Yates has seen on television, from Howell’s reliably strong arm to his enhanced running ability and perpetually cool demeanor, fits with the new breed of quarterbacks entering the league.
Howell’s 2,192 passing yards, 598 rushing yards and 25 total touchdowns through eight games this season already rank him among the exclusive company of some elite college quarterbacks. Only Johnny Manziel (2012), Lamar Jackson (2016, 2017) and Jalen Hurts (2019) have put up numbers like those across the board during the last decade.
Brown openly has mentioned since the spring that the Tar Heels expect Howell to depart for the NFL Draft after this season, and Yates said he envisions Howell becoming a first-round pick in 2022.
“Some of the stuff that coaches can’t teach are the things that he can do,” Yates said, “and that’s what makes him so attractive for the next level, and obviously what makes him so good and makes the offense roll there at Carolina. He’s got the intangibles. He’s got the tangibles as well. He’s got all the measurables and then all the stuff he can do off-schedule.
“Nowadays, you have to have an element of running the ball as a quarterback, and I don’t think that was something he was touted for early on, but he’s gotten better and better as his career has gone on there. So it’s a combination of everything. He’s a high-level quarterback that I think will be a first-day pick next year, and I’m excited for him. And I’m happy that he’s breaking my old record.”
Yates paused a moment, his words bringing him again to consider the passing of the North Carolina passing mantle to Howell.
“It was about time,” he said, with a chuckle. “He probably should’ve done it in two years.”
UNC career passing leaders
1. Sam Howell — 9,419 yards (2019-present)
2. T.J. Yates — 9,377 yards (2007-10)
3. Darian Durant — 8,755 yards (2001-04)
4. Bryn Renner — 8,221 yards (2010-13)
5. Marquise Williams — 7,965 yards (2012-15)
Adam Smith is a sports reporter for the Burlington Times-News and USA TODAY Network. You can reach him by email at asmith@thetimesnews.com or @adam_smithTN on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Times-News: ‘It was about time’: T.J. Yates reacts, reflects as Sam Howell breaks UNC all-time record
