UNC’s Gio Lopez Takes Flash Cards to Field for Training Camp

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — For the first time in his college career, transfer quarterback Gio Lopez has the use of his own personal iPad always at his fingertips, another upgrade to which he’s getting accustomed as a new member of the North Carolina football program.

Across the last two seasons at South Alabama, Lopez had to head over to the team’s football building on campus in order to pull up video clips and dig into film study. But now, a few months into his time with the Tar Heels, those classroom teaching sessions have moved within reach at any time and place on the iPad.

The thing is, though — as Lopez explained recently, with his smile bright and face beaming — he just can’t quit a certain less-advanced method that requires zero technology. Call him old-fashioned, but when sharpening his quarterbacking acumen, Lopez prefers poring over the stacks of index cards he has compiled in his handwriting. Each card contains the name of a particular play on one side, and the X-and-O design of that play is drawn on the other side.

“I’m just a big flash card guy,” he said last week at the ACC Kickoff preseason event. “I look through the iPad and all that, but I’m a big note card guy. Writing the name on the front, flipping it to the back, just kind of testing myself as much as I can. So yeah, just doing that on my own, every day going through the cards.”

If UNC is to achieve success during the approaching season, the lefty dual-threat Lopez could be the holder of those very cards for the Tar Heels. He became one of the most productive quarterbacks on the Group of Five level at South Alabama, and enters training camp as Carolina’s presumed starter for coach Bill Belichick’s debut season.

UNC is set to conduct its first preseason practice session on Saturday morning (Aug. 2), as the work under Belichick begins anew and the countdown continues to the 2025 season opener on Sept. 1 against TCU, a spotlighted Labor Day matchup in prime time.

Lopez has yet to participate in an actual UNC football practice. He joined the Tar Heels in May, a month after entering the transfer portal during the spring cycle, and committing to Carolina three days later. Sources have said he agreed with general manager Michael Lombardi, Belichick and Co. on a two-year, $4 million deal to come aboard at UNC.

“When it comes to Coach Belichick, I mean, he’s like the football bible,” Lopez said last week, while calling Belichick the greatest coach of all-time in the sport. “So anything you hear from him, you’re just like, ‘OK, awesome. I would love to learn from you.’ ”

Now, getting Lopez up to speed at the controls of the offense forms a high priority, if not perhaps the most pressing issue for the Tar Heels during the course of training camp. The new season kicks off in 32 days, and there’s only so much time between now and then for ramping up the son of Barney Lopez, a drag racer on the grassroots level back home in Alabama.

But Gio Lopez said the sum of the learning curve he’s navigating, from the flash cards on his own to player-led practice drills this summer, doesn’t feel like an all-out cram session with the season opener looming in the distance. He said he already has grown confident in his understanding of UNC’s system under new offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens.

“Honestly, playbook-wise, when it comes to all of the concepts, the run game and the (pass) protections, I know all of it,” Lopez said last week. “So I’ve pretty much learned everything. But it’s one thing to learn something, and it’s another thing to master it.

“So for me, just the understanding of when I show this flash card and I flip it over, and I know what’s on the back of it, that’s cool. But can I go out on the field and not have a flash card in front of me? Can I go and execute it like that? So when we’ve had player-led practices, it’s been super important for me to be able to visualize all of that. And I’ve been feeling really good about it so far.”

Lopez (6-foot, 220 pounds) appeared in 16 games for South Alabama across the last two seasons, and has three seasons of college eligibility remaining. He played in 11 of 13 games last season in 2024 as a redshirt freshman, and produced 274.7 yards of total offense, ranking No. 22 nationally in that category on the FBS level. He helped lead the Jaguars to an overall record of 7-6, including a 5-3 league mark in the Sun Belt Conference, capped by a defeat of Western Michigan in the Salute to Veterans Bowl (formerly the Camellia Bowl).

He finished fourth in the Sun Belt in passing (2,559 yards or 232.6 yards per game) last season, fourth in touchdown passes (18), fourth in completion percentage (206-for-312 or 66 percent), and third in fewest interceptions (five). He also ran for 465 yards and seven touchdowns, while averaging 5.7 yards per carry.

“I can make plays off-schedule,” Lopez said last week. “When plays break down, I can make a negative play not a negative play. Off-script stuff. Just make sure the play doesn’t go backwards, and the chains keep moving forward. That’s what I’d say is a good positive for my game.”

Growing up in Madison, Ala., he said he delighted in watching old highlights of swashbuckling NFL quarterbacks from the 1980s and 1990s, such as Randall Cunningham, John Elway, Brett Favre. At Carolina, Lopez said Belichick has been quick with the instructions “look, I’ve coached a lot of quarterbacks. I’m not expecting you to be Tom Brady. I’m expecting you to be Gio Lopez.”

Brady, of course, is among the lineup of NFL quarterbacks Lopez is studying alongside Kitchens, when he’s not hunkered down alone with his note cards. Carson Palmer piloting the Arizona Cardinals’ offense and Baker Mayfield quarterbacking the Cleveland Browns, clips from Kitchens’ time on those coaching staffs, also are included in the teaching tape for Lopez, along with video of Cam Newton, Jacoby Brissett and Matt Cassel at the reins of the New England Patriots.

“It’s more of an NFL-like offense,” Lopez said last week of what the Tar Heels are running. “It’s different when you’re at South Alabama. You’re watching tape and you’re bringing up South Alabama tape. And then when you turn on tape with Kitchens, it’s the Patriots, or when he was the head coach with the Browns. You’re like, ‘wow, I’m watching NFL guys, where I want to be, I’m watching them execute this play.’ So it’s been awesome learning from him. Especially him playing at Alabama (in college), he’s had experience at the position.”