All four teams in the College Football Playoff have good quarterbacks.
All 4 Playoff teams are part of the QB transfers story
QBs are moving around more than ever. Whether in or out, it’s affected every team in the final four.
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Additionally, all four teams are recently removed from or in the midst of transfer storylines about their QBs.
QB transfers are now the way of the world. Most five-star QBs leave their schools with eligibility remaining, and plenty of others with starting experience or big-time recruiting profiles move on. Others transfer for more personal reasons.
Put together, QB transfers have made it impossible for teams to plot detailed depth charts years in advance. Whoever’s not playing might leave. In the Power 5 conferences this year, there were just two senior QBs who entered the season with their original team and had never started a game, according to ESPN, both in the beautiful, hideous Cheez-It Bowl.
This trend has reached the Playoff teams, too, in different ways.
1. Oklahoma has had transfer QBs win the last two Heismans.
Baker Mayfield came from Texas Tech, where he’d become the first walk-on true freshman in FBS history to in Week 1. Mayfield had some sort of falling-out with coach Kliff Kingsbury and, after not playing down the stretch in 2013, went to OU. He played his first available year in 2015, making immediate magic alongside new coordinator and eventual head coach Lincoln Riley.
When Mayfield left to be the No. 1 draft pick, former Texas A&M transfer Kyler Murray replaced him. Murray was a five-star Texas A&M signee and is still regarded as one of the best high school athletes in Texas history. (Maybe you’ve heard the little-discussed fact that he also dabbles in baseball.) Murray’s transfer sit-out year was 2016, and then he backed up Mayfield during Mayfield’s 2017 Heisman campaign. Now Murray has his own statue.
The transfer QB thing has worked out great for OU, obviously, but the Sooners aren’t immune to the other side of it. Former four-star Trevor Knight, who’d spent three mostly disappointing years in Norman, left for Texas A&M after Murray pledged to the Sooners.
2. Clemson’s 2017 Playoff QB left 2018’s team after four games and transferred to Missouri.
Kelly Bryant was steady for Clemson last year. He was never going to entirely fill Deshaun Watson’s shoes, but he was an effective runner and thrived at not turning the ball over. With Bryant at the helm, Clemson was just 45th in Offensive S&P+, but that wasn’t a big deal until the Tigers faced Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The No. 1 defense was plenty.
This year, Clemson happened to add five-star QB Trevor Lawrence, now the second-highest QB recruit in history behind Vince Young, according to the 247Sports Composite. Bryant held him off for a while, but when Lawrence was named the starter after four games, Bryant took advantage of the NCAA’s new four-game redshirt rule. He’s going to Mizzou, which seems like a smart all-around fit.
Bryant’s the most famous QB to have transferred out, but not the only one. His backup in 2017, Zerrick Cooper, excelled at Jacksonville State this season. A few months after Cooper left, former five-star Hunter Johnson went to Northwestern. All of those exits came after Lawrence had committed to Clemson and become the heir apparent to Watson’s throne.
Fortunately, Lawrence has been so good that Clemson’s as scary now as ever.
3. Notre Dame’s had a handful of recent QB transfers and is probably about to have another one in Brandon Wimbush.
2014 starter Everett Golson transferred to Florida State. 2015 starter Malik Zaire, whom injury knocked out in the second game, never permanently won his job back from DeShone Kizer and transferred to Florida after 2016.
2017 starter Brandon Wimbush stayed the starter for the first three games of 2018, but Brian Kelly pulled him after a couple of shaky games, with Ian Book taking over.
Wimbush has remained the backup, and several outlets reported before the Playoff that he’ll be a grad transfer somewhere. He remains with the Irish for now, though, and seems to have gotten along unusually well with the guy who took his starting spot.
4. And then there’s Alabama, site of the season’s most talked-about QB controversy, which hasn’t been a controversy for months.
It was sort of a controversy in the offseason, when Bama hadn’t said whether it would start 26-2 Jalen Hurts or five-star Tua Tagovailoa, who’d replaced Hurts’ in 2017’s championship game and led a comeback win over Georgia. Tagovailoa’s dominant Week 1 start against an overmatched Louisville ended any hint of controversy, but Hurts has hung around and, in limited action, put up better passing numbers this season than ever before.
Tagovailoa is going to be Bama’s quarterback in 2019, still a season shy of NFL draft eligibility. So despite Hurts’ growth and incredible SEC Championship comeback while Tagovailoa was hurt, he has no path to starting at Bama without further Tagovailoa injuries.
The Tide have also recruited a lot of QBs, signing both Bear Bryant’s four-star great-grandson and Tagovailoa’s four-star little brother in the class of 2019. They’d have at least six scholarship QBs on the roster next season if everyone currently lined up to be on that team stuck around. The chances of that happening are microscopic.
Combine all of that with his dad’s comment in the summer that Jalen would become “the biggest free agent in college football history” if he didn’t win the Bama starting job, and everyone gets the idea.
Jalen said before the Playoff that talk about a transfer was “assumptions” by others, and he’s absolutely right. But those assumptions will keep being made. He graduated from Bama in December and would be immediately eligible at another school.
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