In the evolving world of QB recruiting, transfers are the priority and high-schoolers get squeezed

Denny Thompson’s phone lit up, and he was sure this was the one. It was a coach from an FBS program — Thompson won’t say which — that needs to bolster its quarterback room. “Finally,” the Jacksonville, Fla., QB trainer thought to himself, “someone is going to recruit a high-schooler.”

Thompson prepared to start singing the praises of Davin Wydner. Wydner is a 6-foot-5, 225-pound slinger whose Cocoa High team is preparing to face Jacksonville powerhouse Bolles on Friday in the semifinal round of Florida’s Class 4A playoffs. Wydner, tabbed a three-star recruit by 247Sports.com, has completed 71.4 percent of his passes for 3,004 yards (averaging 11.6 yards per attempt) and 19 touchdowns against one of the toughest high school schedules in the nation’s most talent-rich state. Thompson, who trains Florida QB Anthony Richardson, Georgia Tech QB Jeff Sims, Georgia QB Carson Beck, Auburn QB commit Holden Geriner and many others, believes that a few years ago, a player such as Wydner would have had his pick from more than a dozen FBS scholarship offers. Instead, he’s gotten a few “this-message-will-self-destruct” offers that evaporated shortly after they were given. Part of the reason Wydner left the private school he attended last year and transferred to Cocoa was so he could graduate in December and join his college team in January. But now, less than two weeks from National Signing Day, Wydner has zero committable offers. “It’s like playing musical chairs blind,” Wydner’s father Dan said.

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Wydner wound up in this holding pattern because of a paradigm shift in the way colleges recruit quarterbacks thanks to recent changes to the transfer rules. That shift has become even more pronounced with so many college players carrying an extra year of eligibility because 2020 didn’t count for anyone thanks to the pandemic.

Thompson’s face fell as the coach on the phone started talking. He wanted to know if any of the college players Thompson trains wanted to transfer. “People aren’t even apologetic,” Thompson said. “They don’t want to recruit a high school kid.”

Schools haven’t stopped recruiting high school quarterbacks altogether. The players at the top end are still getting committable offers. For example, former USC commit Devin Brown (Corner Canyon High in Draper, Utah) committed to Ohio State on Wednesday. Brown also had offers from Ole Miss and Texas. But former Arizona State QB Rudy Carpenter, who trains Brown, said he has experienced the same issues with other high-schoolers he trains. College coaches believe they can stock their rooms through the transfer portal. Asked if his team — which is losing its starter after this season — intended to sign a high school QB in the 2022 class, a Power 5 assistant texted, “Has to be all-world.”

In the class of 2017, 173 high school quarterbacks signed scholarship papers with FBS schools. Five years later, only 113 high school quarterbacks are committed to FBS schools. A handful more will commit and sign on Dec. 15, but the final number will be dramatically lower than the year when 2022’s super seniors signed.

Meanwhile, current college quarterbacks believe they can find that elusive perfect match of program and scheme that will allow them to become stars at their next stop. “It’s not who you sign out of high school,” said a Power 5 head coach who expects his starting QB to return in 2022. “It’s who you sign out of the portal.”

The portal will include plenty of options. Spencer Rattler, the former Oklahoma starter who began the 2021 season as the Heisman Trophy favorite, is there. Dillon Gabriel, who smashed records at UCF before missing most of the 2021 season because of a broken collarbone, is there. Jake Haener, who starred at Fresno State in 2021, is there. (Haener is expected to return to Washington, where he signed out of high school in 2017. Former Fresno State coach Kalen DeBoer was just hired as the Huskies’ new coach.) Former LSU starter Myles Brennan is there. Adrian Martinez, who started the past four seasons at Nebraska, put his name in the portal Thursday. Jack Plummer, a onetime starter at Purdue, is there. So are a bunch of QBs you probably haven’t heard of unless you follow recruiting closely.

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This will be the first full offseason since the schools voted to amend the NCAA’s transfer rules to allow undergraduates to transfer and play immediately. Previously, they had to either sit out a season or get a waiver from the NCAA to play right away. No one knows exactly how the rule change will affect quarterback recruiting, but the early returns suggest that coaches have looked at the new rule — which allows one free transfer for undergrads — and made a strategic choice. “Once they’ve transferred once, they can’t leave them,” Thompson said. “If they take a high school kid, he could leave.”

College coaches and those who train the QBs differ in opinion on how this will affect the overall dynamic of recruiting college football’s most important position. Quincy Avery, the Atlanta-based QB coach who trains Liberty QB Malik Willis (a potential first-rounder) and Florida QB Emory Jones as well as NFL quarterbacks such as Deshaun Watson and Jalen Hurts, believes the rules will force college coaches to be more honest with quarterbacks during their initial recruitment and once they’re on the roster.

“For so long, college coaches have been able to operate without a level of transparency with their quarterbacks,” Avery said. “That’s a lot of the frustration. They lie. They just tell so many lies that it makes it really, really difficult. When college coaches realize that they can’t operate the way that they did previously and they have to be honest, that will allow them to keep two guys on their roster.”

Everyone who works with quarterbacks agrees that many college coaches will say whatever they must to get and keep a quarterback on the roster, but Avery thinks the possibility of losing a young QB without the threat of that player having to sit out for a year will force coaches to shoot players straight. Avery said that if coaches want an example of how they can keep a room stocked by being honest, they should look at the way former Florida coach Dan Mullen and former Gators quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson (now Hurts’ position coach with the Eagles) handled a room that included Feleipe Franks, Kyle Trask and Emory Jones. Had they been dishonest and turned off Trask or Jones, Trask might not have been on the roster to save the day — and supercharge the offense — when Franks broke his ankle in 2019. Jones might not have been there to give Florida a more experienced backup for Trask in 2020.

When Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray left Texas A&M in the same week amid a prolonged — and information-light — offensive coordinator change following the 2015 season, it felt extraordinary. No one had imagined both players would leave and be willing to sit out a year because they were so dissatisfied with the situation in College Station. But Avery’s point is that without the threat of sitting a year, it’s quite easy to imagine an entire QB room leaving if the coaching staff can’t provide accurate information to all the players. And it’s easier than ever to catch college coaches in a lie. Quarterbacks attend the same camps throughout high school and build friendships. If a coach says he isn’t planning to bring in a QB from the portal or a second high-schooler in a class but actually plans to do one of those things, that QB room can get blown up by a text or a DM from one buddy to another. The QBs can quickly discern which schools their fellow QBs have talked to and learn the contents of those conversations.

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Thompson isn’t as confident as his colleague Avery that the new transfer rules will usher in an era of honesty from college coaches. The doomsday scenario described above involving an entire QB room leaving? If it happens, a coach can refill it from the portal because players are more willing to transfer when they know they don’t have to sit a year. “I think there are less consequences now than there have ever been,” Thompson said. “Because before, at least you had the possibility of being left without (a QB).”

Avery said he’d recommend any QB whose head coach left for another school or was fired enter the portal after the season. The new coach was always going to decide whether to recruit the player back or process him out of the program anyway, so at least the player will have an idea if there’s a market for him outside the program by entering the portal. If every quarterback on such a team decided to follow Avery’s advice this offseason, the portal would be star-studded.

Caleb Williams, the top-ranked QB in the 2021 class who usurped Rattler during Oklahoma’s comeback win against Texas, could enter the portal and probably would be offered by all 130 FBS teams within minutes. Florida’s Richardson and Jones could both enter and force new Gators coach Billy Napier to show his hand as to how he intends to approach the position. Because coaches are still limited to 25 new players (including transfers) in most years — this year, they’re allowed to go up to 32 because of players taking extra years due to the pandemic — a new coach can’t replace everyone who enters the portal. So a proven or high-ceiling player has leverage in that scenario.

College coaches and players will have to decide how they navigate the portal. One Power 5 head coach said he intends to change his portal QB recruiting strategy in 2022. Last year, he had a returning starter his school had signed out of high school as a four-star recruit. The coach wanted to add some experience to the room, but he didn’t want to have the starter looking over his shoulder. So the coach signed an older quarterback from a far less prestigious program who could be serviceable but whose ceiling was limited. Near the end of the season, the coach said he wouldn’t do that again. He’d recruit the best quarterbacks available in the portal and not worry about the starter’s feelings.

Players also must decide what they want when they enter the portal because if they’re undergraduates, they’re stuck at the next stop until they earn a degree. “To me, it’s about identifying what each individual player wants for his career,” said Carpenter, the Arizona-based coach. Does the player want a school that offers a valuable degree? Is the QB willing to sit behind an established player to get a crack at playing at an elite program? Does a player want to play immediately? Carpenter said the young version of himself fell squarely into the third category, and he believes most transferring QBs also fit there. The Power 5 head coach quoted above agrees. “They just want to freakin’ play,” he said.

When Carpenter advises the players he trains, he tries to cut through the coaches’ recruiting spiel to get to the heart of the matter. He recounted the second recruitment of Chandler, Ariz., QB Tyler Shough. Shough originally signed with Oregon and started all seven games for the Ducks in the 2020 season. But when it became clear Anthony Brown or freshman Ty Thompson would start in 2021, Shough entered the portal. He talked to several schools. One of those was Cal. Carpenter didn’t understand why Cal was even recruiting Shough, who had made clear he wanted to play right away. Bears coaches had said Shough would get a chance to compete for the job, but Carpenter pointed out that rising senior Chase Garbers had started every year he’d been on campus. “You’re going to give Tyler a chance to win the job even though you guys beat Oregon last year with your three-year starter?” Carpenter remembered thinking.

Shough eventually chose Texas Tech, where he won the starting job. An injury in September ended his season, but he did accomplish the goal he set when he entered the portal: He found a place where he could play immediately. Carpenter advises QBs in the portal to keep the main focus on their top priority, no matter how much eye candy coaches may put in front of them. “Who cares about the weight room and the stadium and the gear? The depth chart is what matters,” Carpenter said. “Make those coaches explain to you why this depth chart is in your favor. And whoever can give you the most compelling argument makes the most sense.”

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Meanwhile, back in the high school-to-college ranks, Thompson’s pupil Wydner will try to keep his team alive in the playoffs and in the process hopefully nab some offers before early signing day. Wydner has accepted that he might need to wait until February to sign, but it’s also possible that after the dust settles he could see a supply/demand shift similar to the one that boosted Iowa State QB Brock Purdy four years ago. Or, Wydner may get an offer he wants as the dominoes fall during the next few weeks. When Canton, Ga., QB A.J. Swann decommitted from Maryland earlier this week, Terrapins coaches reached out to Wydner. Since Jim Mora Jr. took over at Connecticut, the Huskies have been in contact with Wydner as well. A UConn assistant visited him at school this week. As of this writing, UConn and Maryland planned to have coaches at Wydner’s game against Bolles.

Further up the recruiting rankings, Carpenter’s pupil Brown will head to a quarterback room in Columbus that could be bound for more movement. Buckeyes starter C.J. Stroud has at least one more year before he can turn pro and — based on eligibility — could conceivably be Ohio State’s QB1 for three more seasons. Jack Miller just entered the portal, leaving former five-star recruit Kyle McCord and Quinn Ewers on the Buckeyes’ depth chart. Ewers, from Southlake, Texas, was originally the No. 1 prospect in the class of 2022, but he reclassified to the 2021 class and enrolled at Ohio State because the high school governing body in Texas doesn’t allow athletes to sign name, image and likeness deals. With Brown coming, it’s logical to expect more movement.

With QBs on the move looking for the perfect school and schools stacking QBs looking for the perfect arm, the only constant will be change. Avery, the QB coach in Atlanta, perfectly described the state of quarterback recruiting at the dawn of 2022. “Recruit as many of the best guys as you can,” he said, “and hope somebody sticks.”

(Top photo of Spencer Rattler: Kyle Rivas / Getty Images)

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