For an example of how transfers have impacted programs across the Football Bowl Subdivision, consider the state of quarterback play in the Southeastern Conference
Kentucky may start Terry Wilson, who began his career at Oregon before taking a pit stop in junior college on the road to the Wildcats. Auburn starter Jarrett Stidham began his career at Baylor. Stanford transfer Keller Chryst is one of two contenders for the starting job at Tennessee, which in the past two years saw one of its former quarterbacks, Riley Ferguson, set school records as the starter at Memphis.
Ohio State graduate transfer Joe Burrow is the favorite to start for LSU, one year after Ed Orgeron and the Tigers called on Purdue transfer Danny Etling as the starter. A former Florida transfer, Will Grier, is an All-America and Heisman Trophy contender at West Virginia. Once the future at Mississippi, Shea Patterson is now sits atop the depth chart at Michigan. Georgia transfer Jacob Eason is next in line under center for Chris Petersen at Washington.
When college coaches call the rising tide of transfers at quarterback an epidemic — coaches, like everyone, are prone to some hyperbole — the claim holds some truth in this respect: Now more than ever, quarterbacks are beginning their college careers at one school and choosing to end them at another.
“I think the culture has changed a little bit,” said Alabama coach Nick Saban. “There was a time when it was sacrilegious to transfer, to leave your team.”
It’s also true that transfers are up across the board, and not just at quarterback. There were 211 graduate transfers playing in the FBS in 2017, a drastic increase from the 117 such transfers in 2016 and the just 17 in 2011. But no other position embodies the transfer craze quite like quarterback, perhaps due to the overwhelming attention always paid to the position in the first place.
It’s led to the near extinction of a certain type of college player: the career backup. Once a roster staple, senior quarterbacks who begin their careers on scholarship and stay with the same program through four years of eligibility without ascending to the starting role are now the sport’s rarest breed.
“It’s definitely different, there’s no doubt,” Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. “Those guys are few and far between.”
There are only seven quarterbacks in the Football Bowl Subdivision who fit the criteria. Just two, California’s Chase Forrest and TCU’s Grayson Muehlstein, play in a Power Five conference. Forrest has attempted 28 passes across six games; Muehlstein, once a three-star recruit from Decatur, Texas, has yet to make a single attempt through his first three seasons.
Another pair, Navy’s Garret Lewis and Army’s Luke Landon, play at service academies. One of the seven senior backups is headed for the starting role in his final season: Western Kentucky’s Drew Eckles is the Hilltoppers’ projected starter heading into fall camp.
“I’ll use Hutson Mason as example,” said Georgia coach Kirby Smart, citing the former Georgia backup who ascended to a starting role as a senior in 2014. “He grew and got better and better. You don’t see that.
“Everybody would like to have three deep. How many is that, 390 or something? It’s crazy.”
Coaches who discussed the topic with USA TODAY Sports cited two primary reasons for the rise in transfers, while describing how the specter of losing bodies and depth at quarterback each offseason has altered how major-conference programs approach how they recruit at the position.
For one, these coaches said, the transfer theme is ingrained into the landscape even before prospective recruits first step on campus — it’s now more common than ever for prospects in certain states, such as California or in the Southeast, to transfer between high schools as often as twice before enrolling in college.
It’s a fact of life for North Carolina State within its recruiting footprint of Georgia and Florida. Members of the N.C. State coaching staff will visit an area high school on those recruiting battlegrounds and be told of an incoming quarterback, and then be shown highlight film of the prospect from his time at his previous high school
“I think kids are a product of their environment,” said N.C. State coach Dave Doeren. “None of us, even the high school coaches in those states, think it’s the right thing. But that’s what happened in the last four years.”
Added Smart, “It's trickling up to us. It’s happening in high school. They’re positioning in eighth and ninth grade. ‘Where can I go be the quarterback?’”
Warily, a few coaches pointed out a shift in mindset among this current generation of student-athletes — many quarterbacks are driven by “instant gratification,” said N.C. State offensive coordinator Eliah Drinkwitz, “so there’s no value in toughness or sticking something out. There’s no value in that.”
One major-conference head coach, who couldn’t name the player in question due to NCAA bylaws prohibiting coaches from publicly mentioning unsigned recruits, spoke of a quarterback prospect who asked if the staff would look at him differently if he made the third transfer of his high school career. Of course we would, the coach replied.
Other coaches are more pragmatic. Quarterbacks who sign with high-profile programs are groomed for the next level long before their high school graduations. Upon arrival, these quarterbacks expect to not just play but start early in their careers because that’s what they’ve been told for years — that they’re good enough to succeed at this level, if not talented enough to eventually progress into the NFL.
“I think it does go back to, to me it’s more of an opportunity thing than anything else,” Mississippi State coach Joe Moorhead said. “The guys want a chance to have the ball in their hand.”
But the truth for FBS programs is that this cycle — recruit, lose a transfer, recruit again — is one that constantly feeds itself. With few exceptions, most teams carry four on-scholarship quarterbacks and one walk-on; some, such as Stanford, carry fewer in order to allocate scholarships to another position. For every team, losing a quarterback to a transfer skews not just the immediate depth but the coaching staff’s recruiting blueprint.
And the easiest way for coaches to rapidly offset the loss of a backup quarterback to transfer without greatly upsetting the established pecking order — since teams prefer to space out their quarterbacks by year, from freshman through senior — is to enter the transfer market themselves.
“The only way you can make up for it is by taking a transfer,” said Doeren, who has landed two impressive transfers, Jacoby Brissett from Florida and Ryan Finley from Boise State, during his tenure with the Wolfpack.
So the cycle continues. Quarterbacks fail to ascend to the starting job early in their careers and decide to transfer. Programs parry the loss of depth but searching for their own transfer. As changes are made to rules for the FBS — recent legislation allows players to transfer without first receiving permission from their current school — another thing is clear: the transfer numbers may only increase in the near future. How teams handle the trend moving forward is the most intriguing current subplot within the larger picture of college recruiting.
“There’s only one quarterback can play and they all want to play,” said Malzahn. “And I just think that after a while (with) some of these guys, reality hits that the only way they’re going to play is if a guy gets hurt.”
Quarterback transfers altering college football's landscape because 'culture has changed'
Kentucky may start Terry Wilson, who began his career at Oregon before taking a pit stop in junior college on the road to the Wildcats. Auburn starter Jarrett Stidham began his career at Baylor. Stanford transfer Keller Chryst is one of two contenders for the starting job at Tennessee, which in the past two years saw one of its former quarterbacks, Riley Ferguson, set school records as the starter at Memphis.
Ohio State graduate transfer Joe Burrow is the favorite to start for LSU, one year after Ed Orgeron and the Tigers called on Purdue transfer Danny Etling as the starter. A former Florida transfer, Will Grier, is an All-America and Heisman Trophy contender at West Virginia. Once the future at Mississippi, Shea Patterson is now sits atop the depth chart at Michigan. Georgia transfer Jacob Eason is next in line under center for Chris Petersen at Washington.
When college coaches call the rising tide of transfers at quarterback an epidemic — coaches, like everyone, are prone to some hyperbole — the claim holds some truth in this respect: Now more than ever, quarterbacks are beginning their college careers at one school and choosing to end them at another.
“I think the culture has changed a little bit,” said Alabama coach Nick Saban. “There was a time when it was sacrilegious to transfer, to leave your team.”
It’s also true that transfers are up across the board, and not just at quarterback. There were 211 graduate transfers playing in the FBS in 2017, a drastic increase from the 117 such transfers in 2016 and the just 17 in 2011. But no other position embodies the transfer craze quite like quarterback, perhaps due to the overwhelming attention always paid to the position in the first place.
It’s led to the near extinction of a certain type of college player: the career backup. Once a roster staple, senior quarterbacks who begin their careers on scholarship and stay with the same program through four years of eligibility without ascending to the starting role are now the sport’s rarest breed.
“It’s definitely different, there’s no doubt,” Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. “Those guys are few and far between.”
There are only seven quarterbacks in the Football Bowl Subdivision who fit the criteria. Just two, California’s Chase Forrest and TCU’s Grayson Muehlstein, play in a Power Five conference. Forrest has attempted 28 passes across six games; Muehlstein, once a three-star recruit from Decatur, Texas, has yet to make a single attempt through his first three seasons.
Another pair, Navy’s Garret Lewis and Army’s Luke Landon, play at service academies. One of the seven senior backups is headed for the starting role in his final season: Western Kentucky’s Drew Eckles is the Hilltoppers’ projected starter heading into fall camp.
“I’ll use Hutson Mason as example,” said Georgia coach Kirby Smart, citing the former Georgia backup who ascended to a starting role as a senior in 2014. “He grew and got better and better. You don’t see that.
“Everybody would like to have three deep. How many is that, 390 or something? It’s crazy.”
Coaches who discussed the topic with USA TODAY Sports cited two primary reasons for the rise in transfers, while describing how the specter of losing bodies and depth at quarterback each offseason has altered how major-conference programs approach how they recruit at the position.
For one, these coaches said, the transfer theme is ingrained into the landscape even before prospective recruits first step on campus — it’s now more common than ever for prospects in certain states, such as California or in the Southeast, to transfer between high schools as often as twice before enrolling in college.
It’s a fact of life for North Carolina State within its recruiting footprint of Georgia and Florida. Members of the N.C. State coaching staff will visit an area high school on those recruiting battlegrounds and be told of an incoming quarterback, and then be shown highlight film of the prospect from his time at his previous high school
“I think kids are a product of their environment,” said N.C. State coach Dave Doeren. “None of us, even the high school coaches in those states, think it’s the right thing. But that’s what happened in the last four years.”
Added Smart, “It's trickling up to us. It’s happening in high school. They’re positioning in eighth and ninth grade. ‘Where can I go be the quarterback?’”
Warily, a few coaches pointed out a shift in mindset among this current generation of student-athletes — many quarterbacks are driven by “instant gratification,” said N.C. State offensive coordinator Eliah Drinkwitz, “so there’s no value in toughness or sticking something out. There’s no value in that.”
One major-conference head coach, who couldn’t name the player in question due to NCAA bylaws prohibiting coaches from publicly mentioning unsigned recruits, spoke of a quarterback prospect who asked if the staff would look at him differently if he made the third transfer of his high school career. Of course we would, the coach replied.
Other coaches are more pragmatic. Quarterbacks who sign with high-profile programs are groomed for the next level long before their high school graduations. Upon arrival, these quarterbacks expect to not just play but start early in their careers because that’s what they’ve been told for years — that they’re good enough to succeed at this level, if not talented enough to eventually progress into the NFL.
“I think it does go back to, to me it’s more of an opportunity thing than anything else,” Mississippi State coach Joe Moorhead said. “The guys want a chance to have the ball in their hand.”
But the truth for FBS programs is that this cycle — recruit, lose a transfer, recruit again — is one that constantly feeds itself. With few exceptions, most teams carry four on-scholarship quarterbacks and one walk-on; some, such as Stanford, carry fewer in order to allocate scholarships to another position. For every team, losing a quarterback to a transfer skews not just the immediate depth but the coaching staff’s recruiting blueprint.
And the easiest way for coaches to rapidly offset the loss of a backup quarterback to transfer without greatly upsetting the established pecking order — since teams prefer to space out their quarterbacks by year, from freshman through senior — is to enter the transfer market themselves.
“The only way you can make up for it is by taking a transfer,” said Doeren, who has landed two impressive transfers, Jacoby Brissett from Florida and Ryan Finley from Boise State, during his tenure with the Wolfpack.
So the cycle continues. Quarterbacks fail to ascend to the starting job early in their careers and decide to transfer. Programs parry the loss of depth but searching for their own transfer. As changes are made to rules for the FBS — recent legislation allows players to transfer without first receiving permission from their current school — another thing is clear: the transfer numbers may only increase in the near future. How teams handle the trend moving forward is the most intriguing current subplot within the larger picture of college recruiting.
“There’s only one quarterback can play and they all want to play,” said Malzahn. “And I just think that after a while (with) some of these guys, reality hits that the only way they’re going to play is if a guy gets hurt.”
Quarterback transfers altering college football's landscape because 'culture has changed'
