Bruce Feldman discusses SEC quarterbacks & early signing periods

Key quotes from Bruce Feldman interview

“I think the biggest thing in the SEC world is going to be, again, lots of uncertainty at quarterback. We had that going into last year with the exception of Dak Prescott, and Mississippi State had a good year. There’s that. I think a good subplot is you have some big-name coordinators with familiar faces who are in new places. Obivously, at A&M, it’s John Chavis. At Auburn, it’s Will Muschamp. Those are headline-name guys – some other ones are a little smaller. Tennessee has a new offensive coordinator. Florida has an entire new coaching staff. You take those, and I think that that kind of shakes up the balance. LSU is going with Kevin Steele. Seeing how those guys do is going to be really interesting; seeing how it shakes out. The SEC West is the most competitive division in college football, and it should be once again.”

“Look at LSU – we’re talking Kevin Steele for a second. LSU was a big issue last year, and they never resolved it. Anthony Jennings is now suspended after he had an off-field incident that the law was involved in. Brandon Harris has a ton of ability, but he was a true freshman last year and struggled a lot. Is he the guy? Are they going to get this kid who really didn’t play very well at Purdue as a graduate transfer? Is he going to come in? Who knows? Alabama – Jacob Coker had a lot of hype when he was at Florida State. He struggled reading defenses and getting acclimated there. He may be the Alabama quarterback this year by default. Who knows? There’s a lot of intrigue, not just to see who emerges and starts, but how well they actually play. If you don’t have a real good quarterback or get real good quarterback play, you can’t win a championship, I don’t think. There’s just too much to overcome with it.”

“I think you have a younger guy who is pretty accomplished at this point in Kyle Allen. He came in with a huge reputation, and he showed a lot of signs of living up to it. To me, the wild card is – I’ve heard so much about Kyler Murray. If he is as special as a lot of really smart football people think he is – can you overtake a guy who already is kind of established as the starter? I’m not saying Kyle Allen has two seasons as the starter, but he showed a lot of signs. I think that’s going to be real interesting to see. Can they play both at times with little packages here and there because their skill sets are a little different? I think that you want to see just how good Kyler Murray really is, because we’ve heard a lot. I’ve seen him in person. He’s not very big, but Johnny (Manziel) wasn’t very big. Johnny changed the SEC when he got in there. We’ll see. It’s going to be fun. I do know this: whoever gets the job is going to have really good receivers to work with, and that offense should be pretty prolific.”

“People say, ‘(An early signing period) works in college basketball. How come it can’t work in college football?’ The problem with that is that the college basketball season is much later in the calendar. College football – all the firings and changing jobs for these head coaches happen in December or early January. If you have a signing period in the middle of December, some of the moves will be made. Some of them won’t. You can say, ‘Okay, well those kids who are at places that are in flux – they don’t have to sign.’ What happens if you’re a kid – nobody expected Mike Riley to leave Oregon State to become the head coach at Nebraska. I know it happened a little before that signing period, but there are a lot of moves where guys leave a job not because they get fired, but because a ‘domino effect’ happens. Is the NCAA going to be giving all kinds of waivers to kids that get caught up in that through no fault of anybody’s? That’s the question. The other part of my column was speaking to David Cutcliffe from Duke. He made a strong point about the academic picture you get on a lot of kids. It’s not very clear on many of the kids that are getting recruited going into their senior year. Now the process is going to be moved up so much earlier, because coaches can’t help themselves. There’s going to still be a lot of pressure to rush to get those kids committed. You’re going to have kids going on visits have to be evaluating them going into their senior year where there’s still a lot of unknowns. I think that’s one thing that makes it a little more complicated. I get why some coaches want it, because I think they’re tired of having to keep recruiting kids that may have been committed for months. I get that part, but it’s not going to take that much pressure off of you, because there’s still going to be pressure. It’s just going to be moved. The cycle’s going to get moved up, because it keeps moving up.”

“The other difference between college basketball and football recruiting, is that a football player develops much later physically, because it is a more physical game than college basketball. You may get a kid who is playing the same sport no matter which camps they go to, whereas in football, there are plenty of guys who develop into something completely different as they get older and their body matures. Gary Patterson of TCU told me a few years ago that they were very fortunate that they waited on a few kids. Andy Dalton was a late recruit for them, in terms of them offering him at the end of his senior year, along with a bunch of other kids that they did not have to rush on. The more you have to rush, the more bad-character decisions you are going to make.”

“One off-the-radar team that could make a playoff push is Michigan State, but Connor Cook is back, they have a good offensive line and maybe as good a defensive line as anybody. They lost to Oregon last year, but now they have Oregon at home.”