Hayes: Max Duggan, Stetson Bennett will play for a national title while 5-star QBs watch from home
Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Maybe it’s time to reassess the chase for the almighty 5-star.
Stetson Bennett vs. Max Duggan isn’t exactly the way recruiting experts drew it up.
“Quarterback is a unique position, and it takes a unique person,” TCU coach Sonny Dykes said.
There’s something oddly comforting about it all. In an age of quarterback is everything, backup plans and castoffs rule the most important position on the field.
Joe Burrow. Mac Jones. Stetson Bennett.
All castoffs and/or backup plans, all national champions over the past 3 seasons.
So it should come as no surprise that the 2 quarterbacks playing in Monday’s national championship game fit perfectly in the new order of college quarterbacks.
While there are clear instances where 5-star quarterback recruits impact programs at the championship level — Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence, Deshaun Watson (by several recruiting services) — the majority of Playoff national championships have been won with quarterbacks eventually finding their way through the maze of 5-stars who didn’t make it.
Cardale Jones was a 3-star recruit at Ohio State playing for injured starter JT Barrett, and won the Big Ten Championship and 2 Playoff games in the 1st CFP season. Jake Coker, a 3-star who transferred from Florida State, won a national title a year later with Alabama.
After a 3-year run of championships won by elite quarterbacks, Burrow, Jones and Bennett won titles. Burrow was a recruiting backup plan at Ohio State, couldn’t get on the field and transferred to LSU, where he won it all after 2 years in Baton Rouge.
Jones, a 3-star recruit, spent his career backing up Jalen Hurts and Tagovailoa — and then got his chance in 2020 and had a season for the ages. Bennett’s story from walk-on to national champion unfolded last season, and now here we are with Bennett and Duggan — a former 4-star left for scraps at the end of his career.
Georgia did everything it could to not play Bennett, and he kept coming back. After it was clear he wasn’t beating out the 5- and 4-star star recruit on the roster (Jacob Eason, Jake Fromm), he left for junior college and came back to another 5-star ahead of him (JT Daniels).
Even after Bennett led Georgia to the national title last season — after 2 years of proving his worth to the program — Georgia coach Kirby Smart tried this offseason to get coveted former 5-star transfer Caleb Williams.
“He has overcome us when we didn’t want him out there,” Smart said.
Which is eerily similar to the obstacle Duggan faced when Dykes arrived for his first season at TCU with new offensive coordinator Garrett Riley.
After spring practice and fall camp, Dykes and Riley named Chandler Morris the starter, leaving Duggan, in his final season at TCU, to sit and watch.
“Never pouted, not one time,” Dykes said. “Kept working, kept competing and wanted to be ready.”
It took all of 3 quarters in the season opener for Duggan to get his opportunity, after Morris sustained a knee injury in the win at Colorado. Duggan has played at an elite level since, and 3 months later, was in New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist.
That’s a long haul from 2 years ago, when prior to the 2020 season and during a routine exam, he found out he was born with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. He went through 9 hours of surgery to fix an electrical pathway that causes a rapid heartbeat, and 2 days later a blood clot formed and forced another surgery.
So 4 years after signing as a Top 250 4-star recruit — after 3 years of serviceable success with a struggling program, and dealing with significant medical problems off the field — Duggan is playing in the biggest game of the season against another reclamation project.
After they both beat teams led by higher-ranked QBs (Michigan’s JJ McCarthy, Ohio State’s CJ Stroud) in the Playoff semifinals.
“His whole approach and laying it on the line every single day,” Riley said. “Those are the things we feed off.”
Sounds like another overachiever who won last year’s national championship.
Bennett played well at times in 2020 while Daniels was still recovering from offseason knee surgery. So well, in fact, that Smart played him probably longer than he should — after a loss to Florida cost Georgia the SEC East Division title.
Daniels started the following game and won 4 straight to finish the season, including a Peach Bowl win over Cincinnati. He began 2021 with offseason Heisman hype, and signed 1 of the first NIL deals for college football players.
Everything was set up for a huge season for the former 5-star, who then sustained an oblique injury in fall camp — one that flared up in a season opening win over Clemson. He sat out Week 2, and started 2 more games until sustaining another injury (to his lat) that put Bennett in for good.
And the storybook season began.
“Max is an awesome dude,” Bennett said. “Works hard, all those things. Heart and soul of that team. And there’s something to be said for both his story and my story and the fact that we’re here in the end.”
Maybe it’s time to start reassessing the chase for the almighty 5-star.
Back to back to Beck.
(Insert prayer emoji)
Very impressed with Duggan and TCU from the games I’ve seen. Should be a hard fought game for the championship!
I think, more than reassessing the amount of stars, it goes to show that there’s more than one way to build a program.
Sometimes, even five-star prospects need development.
Also, sometimes, the recruiting rankings are wrong. We have to remember those are based on how a player did in high school, which is a completely different talent pool than in FBS.
Bennett and Duggan are both perfect fits for their teams, and both have been developed nicely by their coaches.
Can’t wait for Monday.
“Sometimes, even five-star prospects need development.”
Sometimes???? Try “most of the time.”
“We have to remember those are based on how a player did in high school, which is a completely different talent pool than in FBS.”
Anyone that follows sports knows this to be true. Hype around certain players out of high school often leads to nowhere.
Trent Dilfer ran some elite QB program years ago. Most of those kids never went on to play in college, and if they did they ended up stinking.
Absolutely. You’re own Will Levis is another example. All three do fit their teams (Levis, Bennett, Duggan) and all three have that intangible “grit and gut it out mentality” which cannot be coached. Yes, there are 5* successes but use clemson’s ukalele as an example as a 5* (and #1 Pro Style QB) absolute bust and you could also put Rattler in that same conversation as a “bust” based on the 5* rating and what he’s done at OK and SC.
The majority of NFL QBs have not been 5 stars. Want to do some interesting sleuthing just look at HOF QBs in NFL history. The vast majority were not 5 stars or highly recruited out of high school.
Technology has had a huge influence on scouting and recruiting. Mostly in my day, recruits were invited to camps at universities and that is where the evaluations took place. Recruiting is
Light years ahead now.
Ron, you are correct in the fact there are many 3&4 stars turning out to be the best quarterbacks in the NFL.
It’s a money machine for high school scouts as well.
“Maybe it’s time to start reassessing the chase for the almighty 5-star.”
Signing day is mostly for show. It’s a clickbait ratings game for ESPN, SDS etc.
Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers were both 4/3 stars out of high school. Both are headed for the NFL HOF.
The fact that Stetson Bennett beat out 5 star QBs shows how stupid the star rating system is.
Example is Kyle Trask
So many examples.
Recruiting is a very inexact science. Stars often relate to physical attributes and perceived potential. So much of the QB position is mental, which is hard to divine through a recruiting service’s rating or even how they performed in high school. Offensive system and QB coaching/developing also plays heavily into everything. Football is truly a team sport and there are so many variables that go into a success offense and winning games.
QBs get over-rated sometimes because they look the part, as if they were being cast in a movie by Central Casting. He’s 6’ 5” and 225, so he must be good. The NFL seems to be about the same.
Spot on boxster. Stars are just a projection, a guess on how impactful a HS player could be at the college level, the higher the star the more impactful they ‘think’ the player will be. They don’t measure intangibles like work ethic, heart, or fit in a certain style or system. And it’s not limited to QB’s. Nick Bolton for example, by far the Chiefs best defensive player even though to this day his frame isn’t ideal and not quite fast enough to be a 5-star recruit.
Bennett has guts. Moxie. Toughness. All those things that everyone keeps writing about. Not the best in arm strength. Throws short a lot. But can make every throw with laser focus on his fundamentals. Short. Sometimes hampers his sight down the field.
But what everyone continues to miss or understate is his ability to read a defense. Dude can get through his progressions with time to spare. He’s quick in his thought process. And can turn on the jets when it ain’t there. Many of those five stars when the heat is on gets through ONE receiver before falling apart.
Bennett is Cool hand Luke
Stetson Bennett IV continues to impress the college football world. I recall in the Ohio State game when it was all of the line, that look of determination on his face as he walked to get his helmet. The Mailman
just Delivers. Go Dawgs ! Bring that Natty Home !
I think Stetson is super smart, will be interesting to see what his wonderlic test scores are if he gets an NFL shot. My bet is that they are super high. I think the ability to process lots of information very rapidly is something that quarterback/recruiting rating services miss out on often; and it is a different type of smart, not analytical smart, but see the whole picture fast kind of smart. I think Stetson, Duggan, Trask, Mac Jones all have that and that quality helps them overcome their “talent” shortfalls….jmvho….
They rank the players coming out of high school. They rank the position coaches as recruiters. They don’t rank the position coaches on how good a job they do in developing the talent that they signed.
Bennett and Duggan, as well as their teams have had the benefit of great coaching and development.
This is so true, and something I think is really hurting Mizzou right now… poor/lack of development. Gary Pinkel had ONE 5* recruit while at Mizzou and he flaked out yet still “coached up” 2* and 3* recruits to multiple Top 10 finishes, even more Top 20 finishes, 2 SEC Championship Games, and 10 winning seasons out of 15 total at Mizzou not to mention his success at Toledo. Not the greatest coach ever by any means, but clearly a HOF coach because he developed kids as good as any coach could. Bill Snyder was another.
Something not hardly mentioned in this article is that, while the QB position is probably the single most important position in all team sports, it’s still just one out of at least 24 positions on the field that make meaningful contributions to the outcome of a game. It’s still the ultimate TEAM sport.
Can anyone here legitimately argue that the outcome of Saturday night’s semi-final game may have turned out differently had Marvin Harrison not been so unfortunately knocked out in the second half? UGA’s ultimate margin of victory would not have stood up to even one more long completion from Stroud to Harrison.
But for that untimely injury, we might now be discussing the upcoming duel between 5-star CJ Stroud and unheralded Mac Duggan. So, the fact that the 5-star guy lost that game had very little to do with his heroic performance that night.
This is NOT intended to diminish the heroic job SB4 did in that game too. It’s only meant to highlight how pointless it is to reduce the complex game of football to just a passing duel between two QBs.
I can argue a little about that. Marvin didn’t go out till the end of the third. Held catchless in the third. Seems to me ga had taken him out for 25% of the game after halftime adjustments. Just saying.
Would that have held up in the 4th? Probably not. But no one knows.
You are a total red and black Dawg homer! You mean to tell me that, after Stroud torched that UGA secondary all game long using Harrison and other receivers, you’re 100% confident that they would’ve shut Harrison down the entire second half? Remember, just one more 15-yard completion, right before that final FG attempt and we’d be having a different discussion right now.
Face it man, that game was just too close for comfort. That was a classic flip-a-coin finish.
The 4th quarter is part of the game so no, he didn’t torch them all game long.
He was shut down in the third. The rest of the team pretty much shut down in the 4h. 3 points. So why not stlgator??
We lost Washington in the first. Whose to say we don’t have 2 more tds while OSU trying to guard him????
BTW, congrats to the Dawgs.
I always want the SEC team to win playoff games, especially when the ending is based on coin-flip luck.
The luck was holding not called all night and in particular that last drive of ohios.
I think the 5 stars who come in with all the physical ability are sometimes used to just making plays based on talent, it haven’t had to work that hard to achieve on the high-school level. The competition level is harder in college, and they’ve never really developed the work ethic to spend time on footwork, film study. The lesser regarded guys have to work harder and come in to teams with a more gritty desire to compete, finding ways to get better and earn playing time.
A lot of those 5 stars have never had to fight for a starting job, not since pee wee football, and they spit the bit when they get to college and the coach sits them on the bench.
The mental agility demanded to play QB at the highest levels in college and pro football is every bit as high as the physical agility and arm strength demanded. The problem is that the mental agility is usually not challenged much in HS, especially in the physically gifted 5-star QBs.
Most HS QBs reach college with not much concept of whether they can read defenses and step through progressions while simultaneously avoiding the pass rush, then usually within 4 seconds, dropping a dime where only the WR can catch it, be it on either sideline, or over the middle, either ten yards, or forty yards downfield.
Most QBs at any star level, Anthony Richardson included, can’t do that. And it’s no more a crime than SB4 not having the arm strength to throw a fifty yard pass on a dime. However, SB4 can usually get away with his weak arm in college games, while AR couldn’t get away with his slow brain.
The difference between the two types is that arrogant coaches believe they can “teach” mental agility, while they know they can’t increase arm strength or athletic ability. Most of the time, they are proven wrong about what they can “teach” where it comes to mental agility too.
Dude…you going all in on it too…all up and down this thread you’re really going all in on how you feel…wow!
These 5 star ratings are assigned when a kid is 16 and 17 years old and playing against high school competition. Stetson Bennett is 25 years old and his experience and moxie are a big part of his success.
Punk.
Is that you Erik?