Meet NFL prospect Gunner Kiel, the blue-chip QB with 4 different college ties

To say Gunner Kiel has been around the block would be a bit of an understatement. Our hero came prepackaged with a badass name when he made his first splash on the college football landscape in the summer of 2011.

Kiel is one of the guys you swear has been in college for a decade, and it’s easy to see why. He’s been a part of the consciousness of the CFB fan for almost six years. Now he’s headed to the NFL, so let’s look back on his journey to the league.

Kiel committed to Indiana the July before his senior of high school. Yes, he’s from the Hoosier state, but Kiel was rated the No. 27 player in the entire country and the nation’s best QB. It turned some heads.

Kiel is a 6’4, 220-pound quarterback with a powerful arm, and he’s likely to be a potent signal-caller in Kevin Wilson’s offense. But it’s those skills that made him a logical quarterback of the future for any number of schools — he earned scholarship offers from Alabama, USC, and Michigan, according to Rivals — and Kiel’s talent could dwarf that of most of the players in the Hoosiers’ program as soon as he hits the practice field in Bloomington.

A look at the all-time commitments for Indiana bears this out. The Hoosiers have never had a football five-star sign, and they’ve only had six blue-chips sign. Kiel would have been an absolute coup.

Now, it’s not uncommon for elite QBs to commit early in a recruiting cycle. For instance, the highest-rated QB in the 2018 recruiting class, Trevor Lawrence, committed to Clemson back in December. Usually, these pledges stick.

Three months after committing to the Hoosiers, Kiel opened up his commitment again. Essentially every school in the Midwest with a pulse had offered him, in addition to the usual big fish like Alabama, USC, Florida, and LSU. Take a peek at his senior highlight tape.

Kiel went through the visit circuit, taking officials to Notre Dame, Vanderbilt (a nod to what James Franklin was building in Nashville at the time), and LSU. As an early enrollee, his recruitment would close in January instead of dragging all the way to Signing Day.

So when Kiel committed to the Tigers on Dec. 27, 2011, it looked like the Tigers had the QB of the future signed, sealed, and delivered.

Uhh, not so fast. Days later, Kiel pulled the rug out from all of us by flipping to Notre Dame. On Jan. 16, he decommitted from LSU, with the writing reportedly on the wall.

The next day, the Fighting Irish would make the thing official, announcing Kiel as one of their early enrollees.

Former LSU coach Les Miles seemed all cool with Kiel’s decision ...

“Young people make a variety of decisions for a variety of reasons. A guy in the Midwest wanting to stay close to home was his right decision. I can understand that,” Miles said. “We need people who would be happy in Louisiana.”

... but he would later go on record throwing some shade at the former Tiger:

“He did not necessarily have the chest and the ability to lead a program,” Miles said about the “young man from Indiana.”

It’s notable that the Tigers didn’t sign a QB in 2012 because programs typically aim to sign one every year. Futility at the position was one of the things that doomed Miles’ tenure in Baton Rouge.

At Notre Dame in 2012, It was assumed Kiel would challenge for the QB1 job. He was already on campus and had an entire spring to get immersed in the playbook, as well as a college strength program.

But Kiel redshirted (not exactly a rarity for highly touted prospects at QB) and decided a year after arriving in South Bend that the Golden Domers were not the right team for him. He’d been unable to beat out Everett Golson. So Kiel transferred. But it wasn’t exactly an open-and-shut transfer case.

Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Mississippi State were some of the high-level schools that reportedly expressed interest in him. But Cincinnati became the destination.

He finished in the top 20 nationally in passer rating in 2014 and 2015.

He led Cincy to a 9-4 season in 2014, but he battled his body in 2015, missing two regular season games and then had to sit out of the bowl game due to a personal matter.

By 2016 he’d been usurped by two quarterbacks ahead of him on the depth chart. Kiel started three games last season, but was eventually benched in a disappointing 4-8 season that saw coach Tommy Tuberville get fired.

He played in the East-West Shrine Game leading up to the draft, but our Dan Kader doesn’t have Kiel in his three-round mock draft.

It is likely Kiel may end up undrafted, and a whole new roulette for his services on the pro level will begin.