CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) \u2014 North Carolina will start South Alabama transfer Gio Lopez at quarterback against TCU on Monday in Bill Belichick’s college coaching debut.<\/p>\n
Belichick announced that Lopez would start during a news conference Wednesday. The Tar Heels secured Lopez’s commitment after spring drills and he joined formal team workouts in preseason camp as the expected front-runner for the job.<\/p>\n
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Belichick \u2014 who led the NFL’s New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles as a head coach \u2014 said Lopez had \u201cmade a ton of progress\u201d and would get the majority of practice reps leading up to a college version of Monday Night Football against the Horned Frogs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel very comfortable with him and what he’s doing,\u201d Belichick said. “But he’ll get better as we go forward because we just will \u2014 we have a lot of practices in front of us, and a lot of games in front of us, and we’ll all learn a lot from those.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he’s ready. But I think he’ll be like everybody: more ready as we go forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez, a 6-foot redshirt sophomore, threw for 2,559 yards and 18 touchdowns while also running for 463 yards and seven scores last year at South Alabama.<\/p>\n
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UNC’s quarterback room included veteran Max Johnson, who was battling back from a serious leg injury suffered as the opening-game starter last year; along with freshmen Bryce Baker and Au’Tori Newkirk.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) \u2014 North Carolina will start South Alabama transfer Gio Lopez at quarterback against TCU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[74531,7025,399,74529,74532,74533,74528,398,396,397,1815,17349,74530,99,36312,19124],"class_list":["post-114450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-ap-college-football","tag-bill-belichick","tag-football","tag-gio-lopez","tag-horned-frogs","tag-max-johnson","tag-n-c","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-quarterback","tag-south-alabama","tag-sports","tag-tar-heels","tag-tcu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}