Ben L. Smith High of Greensboro was saddled with a 22-game losing streak in the spring of 2008 when new coach Rodney Brewington sent out an all-points bulletin to the school faculty to be on the alert for athletic-looking youngsters who weren’t already on the football team.

“We told the front office and counselors that if anyone remotely looking like a football player walks in the door, you call me immediately,” Brewington says. “I’ll never forget I got a phone call that here comes this tall, athletic-looking kid and his mom. It was Eric Ebron.”

Ebron and his mother were moving from New Jersey, and Eric wanted to play football the following fall, his sophomore year. Problem was, there was a transcript miscue from officials at his previous school and he was ruled ineligible for the 2008 season, when Smith added 10 more losses and entered the 2009 season with 32 straight losses, the longest losing streak at the time in the state of North Carolina.

In the interim, Brewington had to figure out where to play the 6-foot-4, 230-pound youngster when he became eligible.

“We tried him at quarterback,” Brewington says. “He could throw it 70 yards but couldn’t throw it seven. He had a strong arm but no touch. We tried him at defensive end. He had potential there, for sure.”

But it was a 7-on-7 game against Winston-Salem Parkland High that provided Ebron with his proverbial coming-out party. The boy without a position asked his coach if he could play receiver, and Brewington told him sure.

“He went out for a pass and the first one, he catches it one-handed on pure athletic ability. He ‘Mossed it,’ as they say. He gets some oohs-and-aahs from the guys. Then he goes up and makes a leaping, two-handed catch. After the third one, we said, ‘You’re our new receiver.'”

This was the summer of 2009, and Ebron had yet to play a snap of high school football.  A week or so later, Brewington took a group of players to Chapel Hill High School for a skills camp. Ebron was impressive running a 40-yard dash, and Brewington overheard a man standing nearby saying, “Wow, I’m looking at Bubba Franks,” who at the time had just wrapped up a decade-long career at tight end for the Green Bay Packers.

Brewington turned around and saw it was Butch Davis, then two years into his tenure coaching the Carolina football team. They got to talking and Davis told Brewington that the Carolina staff was holding camp that weekend and that Ebron had to be there. Two days later on a rainy Saturday afternoon, Ebron was running routes in Kenan Stadium.

“Nobody was catching hardly anything because of the rain,” Brewington says. “Coach Davis told him to move to tight end. So Eric joined that group. They gave me a lunch pass, and I went to get something to eat. I came back an hour later and Eric’s all excited. He says, ‘Coach, they just offered me a scholarship.’

“I said, ‘Eric, you must have misunderstood. Maybe they said you have the potential for an offer.’

“No, Coach, seriously, they said I have a scholarship.”

“So I told him we’d go talk to Coach Davis and straighten it out. We walked over and I said, ‘Excuse me, Coach. Eric is under the impression you guys offered him a scholarship.’ He said, ‘We absolutely offered him and, in fact, we want him to commit right now.”

Years later, Davis reflected on that moment.

“Eric was exactly what we were looking for,” says the Tar Heel head coach from 2007-10. “I’d had Bubba Franks and Jeremy Shockey and Kellen Winslow Jr. at Miami, and when I was at Dallas (in the NFL) we had Jay Novacek and a lot of guys like that. I thought, ‘This guy is literally someone who could unbelievably dominate.’

“Eric was just big hands, caught everything. You could have 500 kids at a camp and about 10 of them will jump off the screen and you say, ‘We want that guy, that guy, that guy and that guy.’ He was one of those. It doesn’t take long to figure it out.”

And so the legend and legacy of Eric Ebron began.

Ebron didn’t accept the Tar Heels’ offer immediately, but it certainly put the Tar Heels in great stead as the 2009 football season opened. Ebron was one of four receivers in the team’s four-wide offensive set and scored the first touchdown in the first game, a 42-0 win over Winston-Salem Atkins, and the Golden Eagles’ losing streak came to an end.  The raw but talented Ebron attracted intense recruiting interest from everyone in the ACC and SEC powers like Alabama and Tennessee. Smith went 5-7 that year and improved to 10-2 the following season.

“Eric had a huge bulls-eye on his back during his junior year, but he was really still learning how to play,” says Brewington, now the coach at South View High in Fayetteville. “By his senior year, he absolutely dominated. There’s no question he was the best player in the area.”

Ebron committed to Davis and the Tar Heels before his senior season started, and his imposing physical presence and trademark bright smile were visible around the Carolina program during the 2010-11 academic year. Former Tar Heel tight end Alge Crumpler, who had just retired after a decade in the NFL, remembers watching the spring game that April and Ebron picking him out of a group of former Tar Heels seated in Kenan Stadium.

“He walked right up to me, introduced himself and said he was going to break every record I ever had at UNC,” says Crumpler, who caught 68 passes from 1996-2000. “Little did he know I was a run-blocking tight end and didn’t catch a lot of balls in college. He knew me from my professional career. I loved his confidence. I told him, ‘Okay, young man, I look forward to it.'”

Crumpler chuckles. “It didn’t take him long to catch me. And today he’s always one of my early picks in fantasy football because I know he can deliver.”

Ebron was used sparingly during the 2011 season, the Everett Withers-coached “bridge year” between Davis and Larry Fedora, snaring a scant 10 passes. But one of them set the tone for what would develop. Carolina was playing at Georgia Tech in late September and had the ball at the Tech 20 early in the fourth quarter. QB Bryn Renner remembers calling a pass with Ebron as his first target.

“I told Eric to get past the linebacker and I was going to hit him,” Renner says. “You can see his eyes brighten. He runs the seam, throttles in the window, catches the ball and gets drilled by the backside safety. But he hangs on. I’m like, ‘Man, this dude can play.’ Eric was unique for a young guy because he had the physical tools, obviously, but he had the brains and desire as well.”

Withers was out the next year and in came Fedora and with it a transition from the pro-style offense of Davis and coordinator John Shoop to the fast-paced tempo attack of Fedora and coordinator Blake Anderson. Ebron exploded as a sophomore and junior, with 40 catches for 625 yards and four touchdowns in 2012 and 62 for 973 and three scores in 2013. He averaged 16 yards a catch over three years.

It was becoming obvious as the 2013 season evolved and pro scouts flocked to Tar Heel practices for a close look at Ebron that he would be a good candidate to leave for the NFL after three years. A Thursday night game on national TV in mid-October pretty much sealed the deal. He had eight catches for 199 yards against the No. 10-ranked Miami Hurricanes, including a 71-yard touchdown with 50 of those yards Ebron galloping down the right sideline outrunning a posse of Hurricane defenders.

“When people saw that, they’re like, ‘This dude just outran everybody in Miami,'” Ebron says. “You know what Miami’s known for, what Florida kids are known for? Their speed. And Coach Fedora called me in the next day and he was like, ‘You might have just put yourself in the first round of the NFL.'”

Fedora knew it was the right decision for Ebron to opt for the 2014 NFL Draft, but he and everyone around the program were sad to see Ebron’s effusive personality leave the confines of Kenan Football Center.

“Eric just brightens your day every day,” Fedora says. “He’s always got a smile on his face. He’s got an unbelievable personality, and I love being around the guy.”

“He’s been a comedian since I brought him home from the hospital. I’m serious,” his mother, Gina Jackson, says. “He opened his eyes, like he wanted to say something. I was like, ‘What is he doing? He’s a newborn. Don’t they start cooing like this at three?'”

Adds Brewington, “He’s Will Smith, he has that Will Smith flair and effect.”

Ebron’s three years at Carolina weren’t without hiccups and challenges. He was borderline flunking out during the spring of his freshman year, and it took diligent and rigorous catchup study sessions to get back into good academic standing.

“I hate letting people down,” Ebron says. “So that’s my biggest thing. I didn’t want to let my family down. I didn’t want to let Coach Fedora down. I didn’t want to let my teammates down. Because I created a band of brothers that we talk every day to this day. So I had a group of people I didn’t want to let down. So I had to do what I had to do to get back.”

Ebron was drafted in the first round and No. 10 overall by the Detroit Lions and has become a Pro Bowl tight end (2018). Through 2021, he has played four years in Detroit, two in Indianapolis and two in Pittsburgh with more than 350 receptions and 30 touchdowns. He and his wife Gabriela have two sons, Oliver and Aiden, and the Ebron family and some friends gathered in a private suite in Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field for the Tar Heels’ recent game against Pitt.

“I’m still connected to my Carolina family every day,” he says. “I text and talk with guys like Dre Bly, with Julius Peppers, with Alge Crumpler, with Bryn Renner, with Willie Parker. Our family is forever.”

In tribute to that family and his years at Carolina, Ebron recently made a generous financial contribution through The Rams Club to the Carolina football program, and his name now graces the tight ends meeting room in Kenan Football Center. That follows other recent gifts from Da’Norris Searcy for the defensive backs room, Hakeem Nicks for the wide receivers room and Jeff Saturday for the offensive line room. In addition, the linebackers room is named for Quincy Monk, whose memory is honored by gifts from his 1997-2001 era teammates following Monk’s death from cancer in 2015.

Ebron reflects back a dozen years to that camp session when Davis knighted him as a future Tar Heel.

“When I was offered a scholarship, I was very young,” he says. “I had no real understanding of the game and what it took to succeed. Carolina was the first team to actually believe in me and my talents. I had nothing to show at that time and they took a chance on me on pure ability. I’ve never forgotten that.

“My years at Carolina were the greatest years of my life,” he continues. “The University helped me mature, provided stability for me, provided a home for me. Coming to Carolina was absolutely the best decision I’ve ever made.”

It’s a rich scrapbook Ebron has authored since he and his mom moved to Greensboro all those years ago. The early offer. The coaching from Allen Mogridge and Walt Bell. First a spanking and then a pat on the back to get back into good academic standing. The energy the Ebron smile brought to the locker room. And gracious, the big plays—a spinning one-handed grab with the right hand against Miami in 2013; a leaping left-handed snare in the end zone in a driving rainstorm at Georgia Tech in 2013; even a few snaps at defensive end vs. N.C. State in 2012.

“Carolina pretty much built what I call a yellow brick road for me to succeed on,” Ebron says.

Uniquely put by a one-of-a-kind Tar Heel.

Lee Pace (Carolina ’79) is in his 32nd year writing about the Tar Heel football program and 18th as the Tar Heel Sports Network’s sideline reporter. His “Extra Points” features will appear throughout the season. The second edition of his book on Kenan Stadium, “Football in a Forest,” is available wherever books are sold. 

Interested in helping Tar Heel student-athletes continue to excel in competition and in the classroom? Join The Rams Club today – and be a part of the family that makes Carolina Athletics successful. Visit www.ramsclub.com for more information.