Tom Keegan: Hunt is on for graduate or juco transfer QB

By Tom Keegan     Nov 4, 2016

FORMER KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERBACK BILL WHITTEMORE is among the many Jayhawks who transferred to Mount Oread from Jayhawk Conference schools. He played his junior-college ball at Fort Scott Community College.

Kansas second-year head football coach David Beaty consistently praised quarterbacks Montell Cozart, Ryan Willis and Carter Stanley during fall camp, but that says more about the coach’s optimistic nature than about reality.

Seasons change more than leaves. They change opinions, too, and another rough one at QB for the ‘Hawks has opened Beaty’s eyes to the truth. Kansas needs to bring in a game-ready quarterback for 2017 in case freshman Tyriek Starks isn’t quite ready. I asked the coach if he is open to recruiting a quarterback in this class, even with scholarship availability dwindling.

“As of right now, we’re looking at everything,” Beaty said at his Tuesday news conference. “Everything, including quarterback.”

The reality in college football today is that talented quarterbacks whose paths to stardom are blocked by another tend to find a new school.

So let’s find a quarterback who fits that profile.

Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes has five of the conference’s 10 400-yard passing games and three of the Big 12’s five 500-yard efforts. Mahomes has a solid grip on the job and his backup, Nic Shimonek, has just one year of eligibility remaining. Might Shimonek be interested in joining the team he beat up so badly in Lubbock five weeks ago?

No way of knowing. Maybe Mahomes bolts to the NFL a year early, opening the job for Shimonek. Even if Mahomes stays, Shimonek might rather stay in Lubbock. Even if Shimonek were to decide to transfer, he would be off-limits until granted a release from his current school.

If the name sounds familiar, then you probably watched Shimonek turn a close game into a 55-19 victory against Kansas after Mahomes went down with a third-quarter injury. Shimonek completed 15 of 21 passes for 271 yards and four touchdowns, looking very much like a starting quarterback.

I don’t understand football offenses well enough to know the degree to which the Kansas and Tech ones are similar, but Beaty worked as wide receivers coach under Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury (offensive coordinator) at Texas A&M in 2012 on Kevin Sumlin’s staff. Beaty learned Kingsbury’s version of the Air Raid with Johnny Manziel at quarterback.

I do understand how the two offenses are dissimilar: Tech ranks first among 128 FBS schools with an average of 603.4 yards in total offense, Kansas 118th with 340.4 yards.

If Shimonek or some other QB recruit came to Kansas, he could compete with Starks, a high school recruit from New Orleans spending his first season as a redshirt.

It’s all a pipe dream at this point because Shimonek might want to stay at Texas Tech or find a team that he believes would have enough talent surrounding him to bring out the best in him better than KU could.

I mention Shimonek only as an example of how Kansas might significantly improve its offense by welcoming a better trigger man into the program for a year.

Even so, fresh examples from Kansas show how the graduate-transfer approach is far from a panacea. Dayne Crist (Notre Dame) and Jake Heaps (BYU) were unable to draw blood out of a stone.

A one-year fix would not mean that Starks is not considered the quarterback of the future. Landing a graduate transfer would give Beaty the option of grooming Starks for the job by easing him onto the field, first as a backup gaining experience late in games.

KU also has gone the junior-college route in search of finally finding a productive replacement for Todd Reesing, whose last season, 2009, seems as if it happened just a few centuries ago.

Quinn Mecham came to KU from Snow College in Utah, but didn’t have the arm strength to keep the job he temporarily took from Jordan Webb. Deondre Ford, given a scholarship by Beaty out of Dodge City Community College, where he threw more interceptions than touchdown passes, is fourth on KU’s QB depth chart and has one year of eligibility remaining.

Finding the right juco quarterback can revitalize a downtrodden program, as Bill Whittemore proved in leading the Jayhawks to the Tangerine Bowl in his and Mark Mangino’s second season in Lawrence.

For now, Starks and either a graduate or juco transfer are not options, and KU has four games remaining, starting with today’s 6 p.m. kickoff at Milan Puskar Stadium. The rest of the way, it’s Cozart’s job to lose. Keep in mind that the other options don’t exactly generate customary demands from fans to play the backup. Many want Cozart out. They just don’t want anyone on the roster to replace him. Ryan Willis already has lost the job. Carter Stanley has not shown enough in practice and late-game duty to be given his first start. Ford started once in 2015, at Rutgers, left the game with an injury, missed the rest of the season, and hasn’t reappeared in a game.

Face the truth: This year’s options can’t be candidates to start in 2017 or Memorial Stadium will become a ghost town.

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