UNC’s Mitch Trubisky out to prove what many already assume

Barring something unforeseen – an injury or especially poor practice performances or something else that would be equally as surprising – Mitch Trubisky will be the starting quarterback at North Carolina next season.

Trubisky knows this. His teammates know this. Larry Fedora, preparing for his fifth season as the Tar Heels’ head coach, knows this.

And yet nobody at UNC – neither Fedora nor any of his players nor Trubisky, especially – speaks as if the quarterback position has been decided. The Tar Heels on Saturday will play their annual Blue vs. White spring scrimmage and, if Fedora is to be believed, the starting quarterback position is open.

“He’s trying to win a starting job,” Fedora said recently of Trubisky, the only quarterback on the team with any amount of substantial college game experience. “You guys are the only ones that have anointed him. And so he’s competing on a daily basis, trying to win that job.”

Fedora knows how it sounds. He understands and expects the predictable response from media members and UNC fans and others who follow his program. Yes, Fedora knows that some might not believe him when he says the quarterback competition is truly open.

That’s not necessarily the point, though. The point, Fedora said, is to create an atmosphere of competition, one in which there are no guarantees – not even for Trubisky, a rising redshirt junior who was the first major quarterback prospect Fedora recruited when he arrived at UNC in 2012.

During his years at Mentor High in Ohio, Trubisky became one of the most coveted college prospects in the country. He earned his state’s “Mr. Football” award and arrived at UNC as one of the most decorated players in the Tar Heels’ 2013 recruiting class.

Trubisky didn’t play in his first season on campus. He spent most of the past two seasons as the backup to Marquise Williams, though Trubisky and Williams split time at quarterback early in the 2014 season.

And so now it seems, at last, that Trubisky’s time has arrived. The coronation, though, will have to wait. Fedora won’t acknowledge that Trubisky is the team’s starting quarterback, even while Trubisky leads the first-team offense during the spring game on Saturday. And the quarterback competition, if it can be called such a thing, will likely last well into preseason practice.

“I want every guy on our football team to earn what they got,” Fedora said, explaining his rationale for creating competition at a position that looks, on the outside, to have been long decided. “Nobody gave him anything. I don’t want to give anybody anything.

“And so I want (Trubisky) to come out and earn the job. Plus, because when you do that, that also earns the respect of your teammates. And that’s really important. More important than him feeling like he’s earned it, it’s more important that everybody around feels like he’s earned it.”

Trubisky’s ascent to the leader of the offense began, in some ways, as soon as last season ended. Williams’ final college game came in UNC’s 49-38 defeat against Baylor in the Russell Athletic Bowl on Dec. 29.

From then on, Trubisky assumed a leadership role on the offense. He has worked with the first team throughout spring practice and Fedora did manage to say that Trubisky during the past several weeks has “stepped up quite a bit” as a leader.

Still, that’s the closest Fedora will come to making it sound like Trubisky has won the job. After a recent practice, Trubisky smiled at the thought of the alleged uncertainty surrounding the quarterback position.

He knows the job is his to lose. And yet he also knows why Fedora is handling it this way.

“It motivates me,” Trubisky said. “... Definitely I think I come out here with a chip on my shoulder to prove especially to (Fedora) that I am the guy.”

There’s no denying that Trubisky is by far UNC’s most experienced quarterback. He enters his third season having played in 21 games.

Trubisky in the past two seasons combined has thrown for 1,014 yards and 11 touchdowns, and has completed 65.6 percent of his attempts. Caleb Henderson, a rising sophomore, is UNC’s next-most experienced quarterback. He has played in two college games and attempted one pass.

To Fedora, though, Trubisky is hardly polished. Much of spring practice has been about refining the little things that might not matter as much now as they could on an early November Saturday, with UNC seeking, perhaps, its second consecutive Coastal Division championship.

Some of those little things, Trubisky said, have included footwork and focusing his eyes on the correct area of the field. Fedora has reminded him to be more vocal, too, and to exude a proper energy – the kind that spreads to his teammates.

“It’s never enough with coach Fedora,” Trubisky said. “I don’t think it ever will be and I think that’s the great thing about him. He’s always going to want more out of me, and I think it’s just going to make me a better player in the long run.”

For nearly three years, Trubisky has been waiting for this opportunity. He has been waiting for the offense to be his and to be the Tar Heels’ unquestioned starting quarterback.

In some ways what he has been waiting for has arrived. And yet Elijah Hood, the rising junior running back, might have put it best: “When you’re in Larry Fedora’s office, you’ve got to prove yourself every year.”

And so Trubisky will try to continue to prove himself, both in the spring game on Saturday and beyond, and eventually earn a job that many assume he already has.

This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 12:41 PM with the headline "UNC’s Mitch Trubisky out to prove what many already assume."