BEAVERTON, Ore. -€” It’s time for The Opening, Nike’s annual showcase of some of the best high school football talent in the country. The event is littered with blue-chip college prospects on both sides of the ball, but one of its signature phases is the final showcase of the Elite 11, a quarterback-only camp on Wednesday and Thursday for a handful of elite signal callers.
Here are the 2017 QB recruits considered the country’s best by Elite 11
Welcome to The Crootletter (sign up to get this in your inbox every morning!). This is a big week in college football recruiting, and we’ll be covering it live from Nike’s campus in Beaverton, Ore.
Because football cares not for its numerical labels being accurate (Hi, 14-team Big Ten!), the Elite 11 isn’t limited to 11 quarterbacks. This year’s event happens to have 12.
Former NFL QB Trent Dilfer oversees the competition, one of The Opening’s most-watched programs. Its previous participants include Jameis Winston, Teddy Bridgewater, AJ McCarron, Tajh Boyd, Andrew Luck, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, Carson Palmer and Matthew Stafford.
This year’s Elite 11 roster:
| Player | State | Committed to |
| Davis Mills | Georgia | Stanford |
| Hunter Johnson | Indiana | Clemson |
| Chris Robison | Texas | Oklahoma |
| Dylan McCaffrey | Colorado | Michigan |
| Jack Sears | California | |
| Jake Fromm | Georgia | Georgia |
| Myles Brennan | Mississippi | LSU |
| Sam Ehlinger | Texas | Texas |
| Sean Clifford | Ohio | Penn State |
| Tate Martell | Nevada | Ohio State |
| Tommy DeVito | New Jersey | Syracuse |
| Tua Tagovailoa | Hawaii | Alabama |
Everybody has at least a strong three-star rating on the 247Sports Composite, but most are four-stars. Eleven of the 12 have already made verbal commitments. The only one who hasn’t is Sears, a 6’3, four-star Californian who’s thought to be considering UCLA, Tennessee and Duke.
Like any verbal commitment months before National Signing Day, those here aren’t set in stone. Fromm has already flipped from Alabama to Georgia, and Martell from Texas A&M to Ohio State. Any quarterback who gets to the Elite 11 finals already has a serious national profile, and competing programs won’t stop calling.
Most of these quarterbacks are classified as pro-style passers by the major recruiting services, but there are some run-heavy players, too. Martell, Tagovailoa and Ehlinger are known to do plenty of damage with their legs.
How this roster was assembled
To understand what all these quarterbacks are doing in Oregon, you have to understand the sprawling world of recruiting camps. Nike and its partners host regional camps at sites around the country between February and May. Most of the best players from those camps get invitations to The Opening’s finals at Nike’s Beaverton campus, and that’s what’s happening this week.
But there’s now an extra step for the QBs, who had a dedicated Elite 11 final in Los Angeles in June. From there, 12 wound up with invitations to Oregon, and now we’re left with a showcase. It includes footwork drills, an accuracy competition and a bunch of playbook learning ahead of the camp’s seven-on-seven phase later in the week.
Quickly
Three-star OT Xavier Newman is a current Texas commit, but a recent offer from Oklahoma has the sands shifting in the Sooners’ favor.
Alabama is still Alabama, and the Tide just landed the commitment of four-star 2018 running back Dameon Pierce.
Georgia is really on a roll now.
North Carolina got a nice boost over the weekend with the commitment of three-star running back Michael Carter. Carter has a pretty solid offer list, including Florida, Tennessee, Louisville, Mississippi State and more.
Walk-on commits don’t usually get a lot of mention, but let’s take a moment and admire the spectacular name of new Wisconsin commit Danny Vanden Boom.
