Tanner McKee is one of the most in-demand football prospects in the class of 2018. The quarterback at Centennial (Calif.) is the No. 3 pro-style passer in the country, the 247Sports Composite says, and by far the highest-rated not to commit anywhere yet. Other than Georgia dual-threat QB Justin Fields, McKee is the best uncommitted QB anywhere. And he’s probably not going to commit for a while yet.
5-star QB Tanner McKee will be worth a two-year recruiting delay
He’ll take a Mormon mission. Then he’ll join a team as one of the best prospects in the country.
McKee’s is an unusual recruitment. He is a devout Mormon, and he plans to take an LDS church mission for the first two years after high school. He won’t enroll at the college he chooses until 2020 or 2021. But McKee is expected to sign later in the 2018 cycle, after he takes official visits to five schools. Those will be BYU, Texas, Alabama, Washington, and Stanford.
There are plenty of Mormon players in major college football, and two-year delays for missions are not unusual among them. At Mormon school BYU, at least as many recruits delay their careers for missions as those who don’t. The Cougars’ 2017 roster will include about a dozen players who just completed theirs.
The way it works: McKee intends to sign in February, the second of two signing periods for 2018 prospects. The team he signs with will keep a scholarship open until he joins up, likely in 2020. He won’t count against a team’s 85-man total scholarship limit until he actually enrolls. Teams have some flexibility in how they allot signees to stay within their 25 “initial counter” limit for a given year. With McKee, that might be helpful.
When McKee does arrive on campus, some team will get an elite QB.
It’s not hard to project McKee turning into an incredible player. He’s about 6’6, with a sturdy frame and a smooth throwing motion that makes college coaches salivate. McKee puts a lot of focus on the mental side of the position, he says.
“Cool demeanor, pretty confident,” he told SB Nation in June, asked for a scouting report on himself. “Make quick decisions, make smart decisions.”
He was one of the best quarterbacks to appear at The Opening Finals, a summer showcase for elite recruits at Nike’s headquarters in Oregon.
Where McKee will land is hard to predict.
Expert opinion has coalesced around Stanford, so we should probably consider the Cardinal the favorite.
The Cardinal, who are known for not verbally offering all that many scholarships, offered him one in late July. After, he called Stanford “a dream school.”
But McKee has said he’ll take his visits, and some of the schools expected to get them are known for being pretty persuasive. Alabama is Alabama and hard to turn down, and Tom Herman’s Texas has recruited like gangbusters since he took over in Austin last winter. The longer McKee’s recruitment goes on, the more that can happen.
