Heel Tough Blog: 2026 Position Previews- QB

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With official visits done for the summer, it is time to turn our attention back to the 2026 team. We’ll do so by giving you our in-depth position previews for this season where we do a deep dive on each position room as we wait for fall camp to start. We begin with one of the more interesting position groups again this season: the quarterbacks.

When the Tar Heels first started looking at quarterbacks in the transfer portal, there was hope that the team would bring one of the top options in the portal after the struggles that the team had at the position last year. While that wasn’t the case, the reviews from spring practice tell us that this room is vastly improved over last season.

Heading into the fall, it appears that the race for who starts the season opener is down to two after Taron Dickens failed to enroll with the university and reentered the transfer portal. Wisconsin graduate transfer Billy Edwards Jr. is the most veteran option in the room and would probably be the starter if the season began today. Edwards played sparingly with the Badgers due to a grade 3 PCL strain in his left knee, but he was the starter for Maryland back in 2024. In 11 games for the Terrapins as a junior, he threw for 2,881 yards and posted a 15-9 touchdown-to-interception ratio while running for 148 yards and five touchdowns on 81 carries. He may not be a game changer like what we had become accustomed to in Chapel Hill prior to the last few years, but it feels like he will be able to surpass what the position produced last year if he is the guy, especially under the direction of new offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino.

The biggest challenger that emerged in spring practice to Edwards is redshirt sophomore Miles O’Neill. In limited reps in his first two seasons at the college level with Texas A&M, O’Neill has thrown for 171 yards and posted a 2-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio while running for just nine yards on seven carries. The former Petrino recruit at Texas A&M reportedly showcased some nice arm strength back in the spring and the hope is that the accuracy will be there, too, throughout the summer and into the fall. Proving that he can be trusted in the short and intermediate portions of the game will be important because he has the ability to stretch the field in a manner that Edwards simply can’t. This could be another battle that goes right up until game week or carry over into the season based on what O’Neill shows in camp.

Behind this battle are two talented young options that will be battling to try to get their name in the mix after not doing so back in the spring. The name to watch of the two has to be true freshman Travis Burgess, a former high-end 4✮ star prospect that will be further away from the ACL injury that cost him the majority of senior season at the high school level. In his high school career, he threw for 3,367 yards and posted a 32-8 touchdown-to-interception through the air and ran for 884 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground. There is a reason that he was named an Elite 11 quarterback last offseason and he’ll get a chance to showcase that now after a spring that was just focused on getting him back on the field.

As for redshirt freshman Au’Tori Newkirk, he appears to have taken another step back in the spring, but didn’t do enough to enter the race for the starting job. Last year, he was able to beat out Bryce Baker on the depth chart and he’ll be looking to do the same this year with Burgess in the battle for that third spot on the depth chart.

The room is rounded out with two deeper depth guys in the form of redshirt sophomores DJ Mazzone and Andres Miyares Jr.

Projected Depth Chart:

QB

# 9 Billy Edwards Jr., Gr.

# 8 Miles O’Neill, So.

# 3 Travis Burgess, Fr.

#10 Au’Tori Newkirk, RFr.

#18 Andres Miyares Jr., So.

#15 DJ Mazzone, So.