Dear Andy: Is a second-year transfer QB ready to make a Burrow-Daniels leap?

Welcome to Dear Andy, your weekly chance to ask me college football questions. We also answer questions on Thursday episodes of Andy Staples On3 (live at 8 a.m. ET on the On3 YouTube channel and on demand anytime after), but some questions better lend themselves to a written response. 

Plus, let’s be real. We know you like to have something to read during those “breaks” at work, and hearing me answer your question in a YouTube video might disturb the folks in nearby stalls.

Every column also will end with a Random Ranking. I have to rank college football teams frequently, so sometimes I like to rank other things. Past rankings have included Best Threequels (third movie in a series) and a list of the scenarios in Alan’s Morissette’s “Ironic” ranked from least to most ironic. (Most of them are coincidence, bad luck or poor planning; Alanis’ English teacher truly failed her when explaining that particular concept.)

On to your questions… 

From Travis in Houston

In the past we’ve seen transfer QBs make big jumps in their second season as a starter. Not asking for a Jayden Daniels-level leap, but do you see any QBs under the radar poised to lead their team to a jump in the win column? (My pick is Kyron Drones.)

Virginia Tech’s Drones, who came from Baylor before last season, is an excellent choice for this category. It seemed as if it took about half of last season before Hokies offensive coordinator Tyler Bowen and Drones got comfortable with one another. But once they did, Drones got much more efficient. Virginia Tech’s final two regular-season games — a 35-28 loss to N.C. State and a 55-17 win against Virginia — felt like a turning of the page. 

But Drones isn’t the only QB trying to join a growing club of transfers who thrived in their second seasons with their new team. Though Baker Mayfield’s 2016 season, the year before he won the Heisman Trophy, probably was the first of this phenomenon, Joe Burrow’s 2019 Heisman season is the ultimate example of this jump. But the group keeps expanding as more teams take transfer quarterbacks with eligibility remaining. Last season, the top three Heisman Trophy votegetters (LSU’s Jayden Daniels, Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., Oregon’s Bo Nix) were transfers in their second season with their new teams. Dillon Gabriel produced jumps in completion percentage (62.7 to 69.3), yards per attempt (8.6 to 9.5) and touchdown passes (25 to 30) in the same number of games in his second season at Oklahoma. (He’ll take over for Nix at Oregon this season.)

The list of quarterbacks who could make the second-year transfer leap this season is long because there are more QBs in that situation. We’ve discussed Drones. Here are some others.

Shedeur Sanders, Colorado

Yes, Sanders followed his head coach (and dad) from Jackson State, but Deion Sanders doesn’t call the offense and Shedeur had to adjust to the offense coordinator Sean Lewis ran last year. Deion panicked and replaced Lewis late last season, and now former NFL coordinator Pat Shurmur will run a different offense with Shedeur at the helm. What does improvement look like for Shedeur, who already was very accurate (69.3 percent)? It’s more efficiency. Shedeur averaged only 7.5 yards per attempt last season. LSU’s Daniels, last year’s Heisman winner, averaged 11.7. Nix, who was criticized in the pre-draft process for operating in a dink-and-dunk offense, averaged 9.6. That’s probably a good goal for Sanders. But he needs help, too. Colorado allowed 56 sacks last year. Cut that number by 25 and get closer to average, and Shedeur should get much more efficient.

Haynes King, Georgia Tech

King was a top-10 quarterback recruit in the class of 2020, but that didn’t show during his time at Texas A&M. Former Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher’s insistence on a robotic style robbed King of his natural athleticism. Working with quarterbacks coach Chris Weinke and coordinator Buster Faulkner at Georgia Tech allowed King to reclaim his natural wiggle, and that made a huge difference. King ran for 737 yards (with a 6.1 average) and 10 touchdowns, so assuming similar rushing production, King doesn’t have to post absurd passing numbers to terrify defenses. But like Sanders, there is room to improve from a 7.7 yards per attempt average, and King needs to cut his interceptions (16 last year) by at least half. 

Graham Mertz, Florida

Considering all the criticism Mertz got at Wisconsin, he performed pretty well in year one in Gainesville. He completed 72.9 percent of his passes and averaged 8.1 yards per attempt. He ended his season breaking his collarbone while dump-trucking a defender trying to gain extra yards in a close game at Missouri. Teammates love him, and he has the trust of the coaching staff. It’s telling that as excited as everyone is about freshman D.J. Lagway, there is no question that Mertz should be QB1 in 2024. He can’t make Florida’s defense better — which is the Gators’ bigger problem — but he can help by developing new targets to help replace first-rounder Ricky Pearsall. Eugene Wilson III is the obvious big-play threat, but the Gators need to find a secondary option and cultivate their tight ends more. Mertz seems capable of doing his part to make that happen.

Payton Thorne, Auburn

Coach Hugh Freeze gave Michigan State transfer Thorne a vote of confidence before the Music City Bowl, but after Thorne averaged 5.3 yards an attempt in a 31-13 loss to Maryland, the questions started again. Still, there is reason to believe Thorne will look completely different this year. Freeze has retaken control of the offense after parting ways with last year’s OC Philip Montgomery, and Freeze’s offense is historically very QB friendly. Plus, Auburn bolstered the receiving corps with Penn State transfer KeAndre Lambert-Smith and five-star freshman Cam Coleman. Part of Thorne’s issues last season stemmed from drops of catchable balls. Improved receivers should help on that front.

Alan Bowman, Oklahoma State

How old is Bowman? As a freshman, he started at Texas Tech for Kliff Kingsbury, who has since been the coach of the Arizona Cardinals, an offensive analyst at USC and is now the OC for the Washington Commanders. Bowman bounced from Lubbock to Michigan to Stillwater, where he nailed down the starting job last season. This year, an old offensive line and the fear of what tailback Ollie Gordon might do on the ground should allow Bowman to improve on his completion percentage (60.7), his yards per attempt (6.9) and his touchdown-interception ratio (15-14).

Cade McNamara, Iowa

McNamara is different from the other players on this list in two ways. First, he’s the only one who led a team to a conference title and a four-team College Football Playoff berth as a starter. He did that at Michigan in 2022. He also didn’t get much of a first year at his new school. McNamara injured his hamstring in preseason camp, slowing him during the early season. Then he tore his ACL in game five, ending his season. A healthy McNamara plus a healthy Luke Lachey plus new offensive coordinator Tim Lester might allow McNamara to make the leap and might stop us from making all those easy jokes about Iowa’s offense.

From @Wiley_E_Dawg on X

With the scholarship limit going up to 105, any thoughts on how teams will all make that jump in one year?  If even 40 teams do, that is 800 players?  More high school recruits? Converting existing walk-ons? Even more transfer movement?

This is going to be fascinating to watch, because if the House v. NCAA settlement gets approved, every FBS program has the opportunity to go from 85 to 105 scholarships but also likely has to reduce its roster size from around 120 (in some cases more) to 105.

The first thing to remember is that this isn’t a requirement. Not every school will jump to 105 players on a full scholarship, though we’re assuming that the schools that want to compete for national titles will. Another factor to consider is that football is no longer a head count sport in NCAA parlance. Before, FBS football programs were only allowed to give full scholarships. They couldn’t divide them like their counterparts in FCS football or Division I baseball. Now they can. 

Why is this important? Because the House settlement requires schools that add scholarships above the current NCAA maximum to pay for those new scholarships with revenue sharing money (https://www.jmco.com/articles/collegiate-athletics/house-v-ncaa-settlement/). Adding the cost of 20 scholarships will take away from the amount of hard cash could go to other players. 

So what does this mean at the various levels of the FBS? Expect most of the Big Ten and SEC to fully fund 105 scholarships and to sign a lot of the best high school players. After a few years of the transfer portal eating into how many high school players could sign with top-tier programs, these next few years might be the best ever if you’re what would have been a mid-level power conference recruit. Now, you’ll have many more options.

Meanwhile, don’t expect everyone in the ACC and the Big 12 to fully fund those scholarships, and expect very few Group of 5 schools to do that. They may spread 80-85 scholarships worth of money to 105 players, but fully funding football also requires adding more scholarships in women’s sports or cutting other mens sports to satisfy Title IX. 

What’s going to be interesting to watch is how the recruiting effects of the rule change ripple across the sport. Are players that would have been signing with Texas Tech or Oklahoma State going to get those last few scholarships at Texas and Oklahoma now? Probably.

But there’s another important number to remember: 22. That’s the number of starting spots on offense and defense. Matt Cassel aside, history shows that if you’d like to play in the NFL, you need to see the field in college. So in a year or two, there will be dozens of players from schools like Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Oregon and the like hitting the portal. If coaches such as Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire or UCF’s Gus Malzahn maintained a good relationship despite getting spurned the first time around, they could load up in the portal. But that might take two years or so to shake out before a new ecosystem emerges.

From Sam 

You make a great point about the ACC eventually settling in their lawsuits with FSU and Clemson because their worst-case outcome (dissolution of the Grant of Rights if they lose in court) is so much worse than Clemson/FSU’s (membership in the ACC until 2036, which they’re already facing as things stand anyway). But if we assume that a negotiated exit cost would have to be low enough that over [N] years the increased revenue of Big Ten membership would more than pay it off, the same would have to be true of SEC membership.

Once the price is set and a path to withdrawal exists in precedent, why wouldn’t North Carolina and Virginia leverage their desirability into ride-along invites for their in-state brethren, leading UNC, N.C. State, Virginia Tech, and UVa into the SEC. Six of 17 members leaving would drop membership below the point at which ESPN is contractually entitled to renegotiate the rights contract. The new figure without those schools would be worse than Big 12 money, half of the remaining schools would reject that and take a raft to the SS Yormark and then you’re at the ACC’s worst-case outcome anyway. So maybe both sides are locked in a game of chicken that has to go to trial after all. What say you?

(Got to get these realignment questions in now because, thank God, there will be actual football soon.)

Thanks to Sam for explaining my stance on the ACC and the dueling lawsuits with Clemson and Florida State more succinctly than I ever could. Basically, if the ACC can’t find a way to get Clemson and Florida State’s lawsuits dismissed, it probably has to settle before one of those cases reaches a trial (which still could take a while).

But Sam is correct that setting a price that would allow Clemson or Florida State to buy their way out also would be an invitation for anyone else similarly aggrieved to buy their way out. And that’s why the ACC will fight these cases for as long as it can. Because when it sets a number — which I still believe happens at some point — it is an admission that the ACC is done as a power conference.

Should Clemson and Florida State buy their way out, North Carolina almost certainly would as well. While we still don’t know if the Big Ten or SEC would take Clemson or Florida State, we know from years of behind-the-scenes discussions with conference officials and athletic directors that both of those leagues would love North Carolina (and maybe Virginia as well). If those two were headed elsewhere, N.C. State and Virginia Tech likely would try to ride with them. Miami probably would attempt to buy its way out as well.

That would leave the ACC decimated. As Sam pointed out, it would allow ESPN to renegotiate its deal with the league. But if six schools left and all of them had to pay, say, $300 million, that leaves a $1.8 billion pile to soften the blow for the remaining schools. That would give that group some time to adjust and some leverage if it wanted to stay together or attempt something like a merger with the Big 12 schools. 

As ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said last week, the league will fight. And it should. As long as it has a chance to get those cases dismissed, it should fight tooth and nail. But if it becomes clear that one or both of the cases brought by the schools are headed to trial, then it’s just a matter of figuring out how much cash the remaining schools can extract from those that want to leave.

A Random Ranking

This week’s top comes from Warner: “Random ranking has to be favorite not-popular-in-the-U.S.-Olympic sports, right?”

You’re darn right it is, Warner. I left off three-on-three basketball because Warner asked for sports that aren’t popular here, and pretty much everyone I know grew up playing three-on-three if only six people showed up at the court. (Why we couldn’t send Caitlin Clark with that team to torch its way to gold?) I reserve the right to re-order this list after I get to watch Olympic break dancing next week.

1. Rugby sevens (so many Derrick Henry-quality stiff-arms)
2. Fencing (sabre)
3. Canoe slalom
4. Synchronized diving
5. Modern pentathlon
6. Badminton
7. Table tennis
8. Team handball
9. Gymnastics (trampoline)
10. Archery