Chazz and Sage Surratt are 2 of the best athletes NC has ever seen. Their NFL dream awaits
For close to 20 years, the Surratt family has shared an NFL dream.
Their vision should be realized sometime this weekend, as brothers Chazz and Sage Surratt finally get to figure out what’s next for two of the best high school athletes in North Carolina history.
The Surratts will likely be either second- or third-day picks in the NFL draft, which begins Thursday night with Round 1 and continues through Saturday afternoon. Older brother Chazz, the quarterback-turned-linebacker at UNC, is projected to go somewhere from rounds 2-4, so he will probably be picked either Friday or Saturday. Sage, the wide receiver who played at Wake Forest, will likely be a Saturday selection (rounds 4-7).
“I’ve been looking forward to this my entire life,” Chazz Surratt said this week in a phone interview. “Sage and I are both really excited to see where we’re going.”
“We’ve been working toward this since we started playing flag football around age 4,” said Sage Surratt, who is 14 months younger than Chazz but bears such a striking resemblance to his older brother that they’ve often been mistaken for twins. “We’ve pushed each other to be better ever since then.”
The two hadn’t lived together since high school until January, when they stayed together for three months in the Fort Lauderdale area, training for the draft and falling back into familiar sibling patterns.
“I learned he’s still pretty messy,” Chazz said.
“I’m not sure how much credibility he has to say that,” Sage said.
Local legends in 2 sports
Because Chazz and Sage Surratt grew up not far from where I live in Denver, N.C., I’ve watched them blossom as athletes since they were in their early teens.
The two combined for a state football championship at East Lincoln in 2014, with Chazz the dual-threat quarterback and Sage his top receiver. In basketball, they were just as deadly, with Chazz the physical point guard who no one wanted to draw a charge against and Sage the silky shooting guard who seemed to score 35 in every game.
To watch the Surratts in those days from the stands was to marvel at what the future might hold. Chazz was clearly the No. 1 star on the gridiron — “I was always a football player first,” he said — and he played basketball like a football player, too. But I thought the 6-foot-3 Sage would have at least been an excellent college basketball player if he had wanted to be, and possibly even had a professional career.
Was Sage the better basketball player of the two?
“I’m not going to admit he was better at anything,” Chazz said.
“I think we both know deep down I’m a better basketball player,” Sage said. “But his big-brother mentality isn’t going to let him say that.”
First, the Surratts were local legends, much like the Maye brothers were becoming at the same time in the north Charlotte area.
Father Kevin Surratt, once a defensive back at Winston-Salem State, would usually serve as a coach for their teams. Mother Brandi was always in the stands. The two parents were strict with their sons, who had a 9:30 p.m. bedtime for much of high school and didn’t get smartphones until Sage was in 10th grade and Chazz was in the 11th.
“And we only did it then because college coaches wanted to communicate with them,” Brandi Surratt said. “Even then, my husband will tell you he regrets giving them cell phones that early.”
Before long, the Surratts took their show statewide, with Sage (who played his senior year at Lincolnton High, after Chazz had graduated) setting numerous records for receiving in football and scoring in basketball and Chazz ending his career at East Lincoln with state records for total offensive yards (16,593) and touchdown responsibility (229).
Chazz would even go national as a senior, being named Parade magazine’s Player of the Year in February 2016.
College ups and downs at UNC, Wake
College was also successful for the Surratts, although reality intruded far more often.
It turned out that once the defenders were bigger and faster that Chazz Surratt no longer could make playing quarterback look nearly so easy. He threw three interceptions in just 10 attempts in the only game he played as a sophomore in 2018, against Miami. An injury and a four-game suspension for selling team-issued Nike shoes made the rest of that forgettable year disappear.
Eventually, UNC’s heir apparent to QB Mitch Trubisky materialized after Mack Brown replaced Larry Fedora as the Tar Heels’ head coach — but it was Sam Howell, not Surratt.
Surratt could have transferred then, as so many players do in similar situations. Instead, he made the rare switch from quarterback to linebacker, and became an All-ACC player in his very first season at his new position, winning the UNC-Duke game in 2019 with a clutch interception (his favorite moment as a collegian). He’s now played two years at the position and is projected in the NFL as a weakside linebacker and a special-teams ace.
Sage Surratt was recruited in two sports but never did play basketball in college “because football was where my heart was,” he said. He had two strong seasons at Wake Forest as a receiver, showing great hands and a knack for high-pointing the football, but not the breakaway receiver speed that NFL scouts salivate over. Then he sustained a shoulder injury against Virginia Tech in 2019 that made him miss that season’s final four games.
Sage then opted out of the 2020 football season due to uncertainties about COVID-19 and a desire to concentrate on his NFL draft preparation. While Chazz played 34 games in college — 24 at linebacker and 10 at quarterback — Sage played in only 19.
A post-draft NFL party
Now the 24-year-old Chazz and 23-year-old Sage, who both already have their college degrees, are draft-eligible together. There have been many sets of successful brothers in the NFL who have paved the way for them — the Mannings, the Perrys, the Kelces and the Watts among them.
Their personalities are similar. They aren’t big talkers, willingly fading into the background in group situations and saying “yes sir” to most requests.
“We try to be nice to everyone, mainly,” Sage said, and I’ve watched the two of them from a distance in enough situations over the past decade to know that’s true. But they aren’t exact duplicates.
“Chazz and I tend to fly a little hotter,” Brandi Surratt said. “We have a temper, and you can see it on our face when something is wrong. Sage is more like his dad emotionally. They are so even-keeled that you’ll never know whether they’re ahead of behind in a game.”
Wisely, given the draft’s uncertainty, the Surratts aren’t trying to plan a draft party while the event is in full swing.
What night would you hold it, after all? And what if one brother was selected hours, or even a full day, before the other?
Instead, they will keep the draft-night gatherings limited to nuclear family at their parents’ Mount Holly townhome for the three-day event, then have a draft party in Charlotte after everything has been decided on Saturday night.
Of course, there is a small possibility that by Saturday night, the Surratts could be on the same team again. That hasn’t happened since high school.
“We know there’s not much of a window for that,” Chazz said. “But it would be so cool.”
Likely, though, the Surratts will be headed to two different NFL cities, much like they decided to do on their own for college. The two did play against each other once in college in 2019, with Sage catching nine passes for 169 yards and scoring on a 51-yard TD in Wake Forest’s 24-18 victory over the Tar Heels.
“Chazz never did tackle me, either,” Sage said. “He almost hit me once on the sideline, but I ducked out of bounds before he could.”
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Chazz and Sage Surratt are 2 of the best athletes NC has ever seen. Their NFL dream awaits."
