Ian's 4 laws of college quarterback play

What goes into college quarterback play and which guys are the real difference makers for winning?

One of my all-time great Twitter takes was this nugget about the importance, or lack thereof, of returning your starting quarterback for winning a National Championship the following season:

Only four likes for this prescience!

Now granted, Georgia would win the title with returning starting quarterback Stetson Bennett, but not a lot of people would say Georgia won either title because of Bennett. The people who thought Georgia would win in 2022 didn’t think they’d win because of Bennett. Not to say he wasn’t a productive player who made important plays, but a lot of his plays were of the sort many other guys could also be imagined to have made. He wasn’t the engine of Georgia’s success.

College quarterbacks rarely power champions, instead they’re often glue guys who facilitate and connect championship talent at receiver and the O-line. He’s the jockey or driver for a powerfully built machine.

There are exceptions, of course.

A massive factor here is the fact college offenses tend to be built around the run game. The blue bloods stockpile elite big men to power their attacks in the trenches and the over-achieving non-blue bloods are generally the schools who work out innovative ways to run the ball and set up play-action without having access to elite O-line recruiting.

Boise State and Baylor (under Art Briles) are obvious examples of the latter. Nebraska could count here as well even though everyone counts them as a blue blood due to their sustained success, but instead of using play-action they used the option pitch or quarterback run game.

These dynamics, along with quarterback play in general, are all pretty poorly understood by the general college football commentariat. Here at America’s War Game, I’ll try and offer a better prism for evaluating college quarterbacks and understand what actually matters for winning quarterback play in college.

Allow me to present Ian’s four laws of college quarterback play.