Will coaches revise their strategy for QB Roulette after seeing Oklahoma and Kansas State?

As Saturday night unfolded, the questions became inevitable. 

How would Oklahoma’s offense have looked against Tennessee with Dillon Gabriel still running it?

Would Kansas State have been upset — clobbered would be the more accurate word, but the point spread was what it was — by BYU if Will Howard still played for the Wildcats?

In both cases, the answer is the team that lost its veteran quarterback this past offseason probably would have been better served starting a veteran quarterback rather than a high-ceiling second-year player. Gabriel probably would have helped Oklahoma capitalize on turnovers rather than handing the ball right back to Tennessee as Jackson Arnold did, but Gabriel is at Oregon playing for a potential national title contender. Howard probably would have taken better care of the ball in Provo than Avery Johnson did, but Howard is at Ohio State playing for a potential national title contender.

Oklahoma and Kansas State played Quarterback Roulette, and they might have lost.

This isn’t a column ripping Oklahoma coach Brent Venables and Kansas State coach Chris Klieman for their lack of foresight in allowing those older QBs to walk. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and as the name I’ve given this situation indicates, this game can produce some pretty dire consequences.

Of all the markets created and altered by the advent of name, image and likeness payments and the dissolution of transfer rules after yet another NCAA loss in court, the QB market is the most fascinating. In some ways, it has copied its NFL counterpart just as the pay scales for other positions have. But in other critical ways, it has diverged.

An NFL team that has an above-average veteran QB with tread remaining on the tires will pay that player. The most recent example is the Cowboys re-upping Dak Prescott, who probably will never win them a Super Bowl but who represents a less risky proposition than trying to draft a QB better than Dak Prescott. Before the Cowboys and Prescott agreed to terms on a new deal earlier this month, the re-signing of Prescott was treated as a fait accompli everywhere except the morning debate shows — where the hosts were trying to wish a Prescott free agency into existence because it would easily fill shows during the offseason. 

But college football is different. The five-star recruit often is a more tantalizing proposition than the steady, productive veteran. And because the transfer rules no longer exist, free agency happens every year. With no established dogma that the veteran is the safer proposition and the real risk of the fan base revolting if the high-profile recruit is allowed to walk after a year, the math changes. Further complicating matters is the fact that every college player now is a free agent every year. There is no contract to provide security on either side of the equation.

Let’s consider Oklahoma’s situation. The Sooners are about to hit the teeth of a brutal schedule with a quarterback quagmire. Arnold got benched in the 25-15 loss to Tennessee in favor of freshman Michael Hawkins Jr. Perhaps Hawkins is the answer. Perhaps not. Venables said the QB situation will be evaluated this week as the Sooners prepare for a trip to Auburn.

Meanwhile, Gabriel — a 52-game starter who was a unanimous first-team All-Big 12 selection last season for the Sooners — is 3-0 as Oregon’s QB and piloting a team expected to compete for the Big Ten title and the national title. Why isn’t he in Norman? It’s not simply because Venables chose Arnold.

Consider the factors that followed last season at Oklahoma:

• Offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby, who runs the Veer and Shoot, got the head coach job at Mississippi State. He was replaced by Seth Littrell, who comes from the Air Raid tree. Yes, Art Briles once worked for Mike Leach at Texas Tech. No, those two offenses are not the same. So whether it was going to be Littrell running the offense he spent most of his career running or adjusting to a different offense, it wasn’t going to be a seamless transition.

• Offensive tackles Tyler Guyton and Walter Rouse headed to the NFL, where they were first- and sixth-rounders, respectively. Center Andrew Raym also exhausted his eligibility. So Gabriel knew the offensive line would have to be mostly rebuilt. Guard Cayden Green entered the transfer portal a few days after Gabriel did, but if Gabriel had any inkling that move was coming, then Gabriel knew it was a near-total rebuild.

Meanwhile, Oregon had two future NFL offensive tackles (Josh Conerly and Ajani Cornelius), an offensive coordinator (Will Stein) entering his second season with the program and a bevy of proven skill-position players. Given these factors, Gabriel’s decision seems pretty easy.

Oklahoma certainly would have welcomed him back, but the Sooners didn’t pursue a Gabriel return that aggressively. But even if they had, Gabriel still might have chosen the Ducks because Oregon offered a better situation for him.

Meanwhile, imagine the offseason howls if Gabriel had stayed in Norman and Arnold had transferred. If you polled coaches in 2023 about which class of 2023 they would have most liked to sign, the vote likely would be split between Arnold and Nico Iamaleava, who started for the Tennessee team that beat the Sooners on Saturday. Arnold was viewed as one of the nation’s highest ceiling QBs. And he might still be. Tennessee’s defense is going to make a lot of QBs look bad.

But the quickest way to enrage a fan base is to let go of a QB they’ve drooled over for multiple years. Unlike in the NFL, where it takes a terrible season to put a team in position to draft a potential franchise savior at QB, college fans watch the courtship — and the coaches engage in it — for years. Remember, Arnold committed to Oklahoma eight months before Gabriel played his first game for the Sooners. So while the prudent move probably was move heaven and Earth to keep Gabriel, the consequences of that would have been an offseason of hell. And it still doesn’t guarantee Oklahoma would be better than Tennessee or Texas.

This also is the situation in which Kansas State’s Klieman found himself. Johnson is one of the highest ranked players to ever sign with Kansas State, and that recruiting hype is multiplied by the fact that he’s a quarterback and a Kansas native.

Howard helped Kansas State win the Big 12 in 2022, but he did not seem thrilled when Klieman started carving out a role for Johnson in 2023. When the season ended, it didn’t seem as if Howard coming back to Kansas State was an option. He could choose between the NFL and the transfer portal.

Howard opted for the portal, where he was able to drive up his price thanks to interest from USC and from Ohio State. The Buckeyes shouldn’t have needed a QB, but incumbent starter Kyle McCord tried to get a guarantee that he’d start in 2024 and jumped into the portal when that didn’t happen. That left one of the most loaded teams in the country looking for a veteran QB.

Unlike Gabriel, who chose Oregon in mid-December, Howard stretched out his recruitment. He didn’t commit to the Buckeyes until Jan. 4. At the time, Ohio State coach Ryan Day hadn’t announced his intentions when it came to play-calling. But Day probably shared with Howard that he intended to bring in an experienced playcaller, and he might have shared that playcaller would be Bill O’Brien, who was finishing the New England Patriots’ season when Howard committed.

That didn’t go according to plan. O’Brien bolted to become Boston College’s head coach after Jeff Hafley took the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator job. But then Howard’s situation got even better when Day hired his mentor Chip Kelly to call Ohio State’s plays. Kelly’s hire meant Howard would get to run the best version of that offense. He’d be handing off to TreVeyon Henderson and Ole Miss transfer Quinshon Judkins. He’d be throwing to Emeka Egbuka, Carnell Tate and freshman Jeremiah Smith, who might be the best receiver in the country by the end of this season. Every one of those players named is better than every skill-position player Howard played alongside at Kansas State.

Howard should be thanking Klieman, who probably didn’t have a choice and who probably couldn’t afford to try to keep Howard and Johnson even if he’d wanted to. (Remember, Kansas State’s former offensive coordinator Collin Klein — who recruited Johnson — is now at Texas A&M.) 

But that doesn’t help Kansas State now. Johnson took the blame for two crushing interceptions in the 38-9 loss to BYU. Both picks led to short BYU touchdown drives. Johnson said he needs to get himself on the same page as his receivers. The first, which came with Kansas State trailing 10-6 late in the first half, wasn’t thrown anywhere near a potential receiver. Johnson got blitzed and overthrew a designed screen. The BYU defender who caught it seemed shocked it had been thrown at him. That led to a 29-yard touchdown drive. Then, after the half, Johnson was pressured and once again threw a ball that only a BYU defender could catch. That led to a 27-yard touchdown drive. A four-point game suddenly was an 18-point game, and Kansas State was cooked.

Would Howard have thrown those picks? Maybe the young Howard, but probably not this version. Those were the product of an inexperienced QB not understanding that sometimes taking a sack is the safer play.

As the college QB market evolves, college coaches might need to reconsider which is the safer play going forward. 

Should Venables have ensured he replaced Lebby with someone who ran a similar offense — thus giving Oklahoma a better chance to keep Gabriel? Should Venables have asked Oklahoma’s collective to break the bank to try keep Gabriel even though he only had one year of eligibility remaining and Arnold had four? 

Should Klieman have thought harder about one more year with Howard rather than potentially three more with Johnson? 

The situations aren’t the same, but they represent the dilemma college coaches will face every year for as long as this economic model rules the sport. Do you pay up to keep the sure thing and let the young guy walk? Or do you let the old guy go and pray it doesn’t blow up in your face?

The NFL franchises, which have dealt with such scenarios for longer, have made their position clear. You do whatever you can to keep the productive veteran. There will always be another young QB later.

College coaches would have to completely rewire their brains to do that. So will fan bases and collectives, who still get irrationally excited about highly rated high school quarterbacks even though the hit rate of such players remains about as scattershot as the hit rate of first-round QBs in the NFL.

And even if the college coach does alter his thinking and favor the veteran, the vet still might get a better deal elsewhere and leave anyway. 

Oklahoma and Kansas State are living the nightmare now, but they won’t be alone. Because more Quarterback Roulette is coming for more schools as soon as this season ends.