Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/847744
I t would be a mistake to minimize the loss of a 5ve-star, universally praised quarterback only a few weeks a8er his decision to reopen his recruitment. So I'm not going to do that. Justin Fields is a tremendous prospect and by all accounts is a great kid o7 the 5eld, too. Regardless of whether you're a member of Penn State coaching sta7, a Nittany Lion player, a fellow recruit or a fan, Fields' decision was unwelcome news, at minimum, for the 5rst full week in June. I'm also not going to spend time talk- ing about there being other 5sh in the sea. That practically goes without say- ing. A program of Penn State's caliber won't spend the next six months blindly scraping the bottom of the barrel for a replacement, especially a8er the success it enjoyed a year ago. Truly, the Lions will be 5ne. So instead, this seems as appropriate a time as any to re6ect on the quarterback position itself and my relatively brief history covering it at Penn State. The list of starters I've covered in- cludes Anthony Morelli, Daryll Clark, Rob Bolden, Matt McGloin, Christian Hackenberg and Trace McSorley. As people, I've found all of these guys to be generally well-mannered and likable. (Full disclosure: As a rule, I tend to like just about everyone.) Still, in surveying the a8ermath of Fields' decommitment, I can't help but note the relative frequency with which Penn State's quarterbacks either come up short of their lo8y expectations or far exceed them. As a reference point for the guys I've covered, the top-down order of their 5nal Rivals rankings is as follows: • Morelli was the No. 12 overall player in the country in the Class of 2004, a 5ve-star prospect who was con- sidered the No. 2 pro- style quarterback. • Hackenberg checked in next, also the No. 2 pro-style QB, and was given 5ve- star status and the No. 24 overall spot in the country. • Bolden was the No. 136 overall player in the country, ranked No. 2 among all dual-threat QBs with a four-star rating in the Class of 2010. • Clark was unranked nationally but was given a three-star rating and was considered the No. 24 dual-threat QB in the country in the Class of 2004. • McSorley 5nished his outstanding Virginia high school career with plenty of hardware, but was considered by Ri- vals to be a three-star, and the 50th- ranked athlete in the Class of 2014. • And then there's McGloin, a pre- ferred walk-on in the Class of 2008 who was unranked at his position and did not appear on the national or state lists. He was also given no stars. Trying to compare statistics or individual performances from these guys, especially given the radically di7erent circumstances that have evolved with the Penn State football program in the past 11 seasons, would be a fruitless endeavor. It's a team game, a8er all. And what's more, each year is unique. At Penn State, a series of catastrophic events have had a monu- mental impact on the team's overall per- formance from 2012 onward. But in my 11 seasons of covering Penn State football, I can easily point to the quarterbacks who were the most fun to write about and follow. As a reporter, I don't have a horse in the race. I simply pull from the old media playbook of rooting for stories, not wins or losses or individual suc- cesses or failures. It's not that great sto- ries don't or can't exist when a team is going through a rough patch; they ab- solutely can exist, but the quest for ob- jectivity does not negate the reality in this profession that a winning team Rankings don't always reflect QBs' potential at college level C O M M E N T A R Y B Y N A T E B A U E R DECOMMITTED Fields had been one of the top- rated players in Penn State's class before reopening his recruitment. Photo courtesy of Rivals.com