Rece Davis cites 'professionalization of college football' for 'lack of patience' with starting QBs
Swift hooks yanking starting quarterbacks have raised the eyebrow of ESPN “College GameDay” host Rece Davis this season.
Oklahoma’s Jackson Arnold turned the ball over three times, even fumbling it right back to Tennessee twice after his defense created takeaways in the second quarter of a 25-15 loss, and threw for only 54 yards before he was benched this past weekend. True freshman Michael Hawkins Jr. spelled Arnold and injected second-half life into a dormant Sooners offense.
Now, Hawkins will make his first career start, and he’ll do so at Auburn, where Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze has already pulled the plug once on his season-opening starting quarterback. Freeze moved on from veteran Payton Thorne after a surprising Week 2 defeat to Cal. Then he benched Thorne’s replacement, redshirt freshman Hank Brown, this past weekend in another loss, this time to Arkansas.
“The lack of patience at the quarterback position, some of it justified,” Davis said on “The Paul Finebaum Show” Tuesday, “that is something I’ve noticed about quarterback changes and coaches being candid about reasoning, which I’m not against at all — I think with the professionalization of college football particularly, you get to a point where if a guy is maybe not performing to the best of his capabilities or he’s not performing quite at the level you had hoped, you’re going to say so.
“We’ve seen that Oklahoma, we’ve seen it at Auburn. And I think in the past maybe guys were a little more reluctant to do so. But that’s been something I’ve noticed from a grand scheme in terms of how coaches are dealing with the success or failure or frustrations of their teams.”
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Arnold was the On3 Industry Ranking’s No. 8 overall prospect, and the No. 4 quarterback, in the 2023 class. He was the Elite 11 Finals MVP in 2022, and he arrived at Oklahoma last season as the quarterback of the future in Norman. Arnold started the Alamo Bowl after two-year Sooners QB1 Dillon Gabriel transferred to Oregon. Arnold showed a glimpse of his potential in that postseason outing with 361 passing yards and two touchdowns, but he also teased his compromising inconsistencies with a trio of interceptions.
Unprompted, head coach Brent Venables revealed Tuesday that Oklahoma didn’t push Gabriel out last winter. Instead, Venables said Gabriel asked for a meeting after the 2023 regular season finale and informed Venables of his plan to hit the portal and, in turn, opt out of the Alamo Bowl.
The departure of offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby and the yearning to play closer to home factored into the Mililani, Hawaii, native’s decision, according to Venables, who said Tuesday that, at the time of the discussion with Gabriel, he didn’t know Gabriel was planning on returning to college football for the 2024 season rather than entering the NFL Draft.
“You can’t make a guy stay,” Venables said, via ESPN. “The guy is trying to find the next thing, the next chapter for him. I’m sure there was probably some disappointment that [Gabriel] wasn’t more highly thought of in the NFL. He had an amazing year. He was a fantastic quarterback. But we didn’t run anybody off or things like that.”
Regardless, Gabriel’s transfer paved the way for Arnold’s continued ascent. Arnold’s development, however, has veered off track, with him failing to reach the 200-yard passing mark in each of his four starts this season.
When Venables made the change from Arnold to Hawkins official Monday night on his his coach’s show, the third-year Sooners coach cited the lack of consistency, chemistry and offensive cohesion necessary the first month of the season.
Leading up to Freeze’s initial pivot from Thorne to Brown at Auburn, he had this to say midweek during the SEC coaches teleconference, in the wake of the Tigers’ upset loss to Cal:
“There’s a very, very short leash on us playing as poorly as we did in certain moments in that game at that position,” Freeze said.
Thorne, who transferred in from Michigan State ahead of the 2022 season, had a short leash at Auburn this year — at least that was the case earlier this month — and the same went for Arnold at Oklahoma.
Arnold was a prized recruit. Thorne was a two-year starter when he entered the transfer portal. Perhaps to Davis’ point, both are currently commanding On3 NIL valuations north of $360,000, with Arnold even flirting with the $1 million On3 NIL valuation mark earlier this month.
The spotlight on college quarterbacks is growing larger, as are the expectations.
Programs around the country have made early-season changes at the position, not just Oklahoma and Auburn like Davis discussed. Michigan made the quick change from senior and former walk-on Davis Warren to Alex Orji after Warren posted a 2:6 touchdown-to-interception ratio through three starts.
North Carolina has started three quarterbacks in four games. After going into the year with Max Johnson as their starter and Conner Harrell close behind, the Tar Heels lost Johnson to a season-ending leg injury and then turned from Harrell in favor of fifth-year veteran Jacolby Criswell.
With an expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff, teams can afford a loss more than before. The urgency to find the right quarterback, though, is increasingly high, and the willingness to bench a season-opening starter appears to be soaring as well in today’s NIL- and portal-influenced landscape, as Davis alluded to Tuesday on “The Paul Finebaum Show.”