So you’re a college football coach, and you want to develop a quarterback. Good luck telling your bosses — and your school’s fan base — to be patient.
“There is no such thing as a build,” a Power 4 head coach told The Athletic. “You may go from being undefeated to being on the hot seat in 12 months. So this era just forces you to constantly win, which removes the ability to have growing pains with a young quarterback.”
The two teams that played for the national championship on Monday would agree.
Indiana and Miami both started transfer quarterbacks this season: Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza for the Hoosiers and Carson Beck for the Hurricanes. They also started transfers at quarterback last season and will do so in 2026 as well. Indiana recently signed Josh Hooever from TCU, and Miami is the heavy favorite to land Duke’s Darian Mensah.
They aren’t alone. Seven of the 12 teams that made the College Football Playoff started transfer signal callers this season. In 2026, as many as 45 of the 68 Power 4 programs could start a transfer at quarterback.
It’s been trending this way for a few years, but quarterback development has become an afterthought at most high-level programs.
“(Coaches) don’t want to risk their careers in an ultra-high-pressure environment on kids who have not played yet,” a P4 front office staffer said. “They could’ve seen flashes in practice, but people don’t know what they truly have until a kid is in a game setting. They want to make as educated guesses as possible — that lies in the guys with experience on the field.”
By winning the national championship in Year 2 at Indiana, Curt Cignetti essentially eliminated all excuses for coaches who have preached patience. Fans and administrators now look at their school and ask, “Why can’t we do it?”
“In the new era, people are not patient,” the Power 4 head coach said.
It’s not just the coaches. The quarterbacks, their families and agents are complicit as well.
Blue-chippers will say they want to play early but sign with brand-name programs that frequently go portal shopping at the position — and then seem surprised when confronted with that reality.
Year 2 has typically presented a major fork in the road for most blue-chip QB prospects. If they’re not on track to play by then, it’s probably best to look for a change of scenery. And the numbers back that up. Class of 2024 recruits just wrapped up their second season of college football, and 23 of the 32 four- or five-star quarterbacks from that cycle have already transferred.
In the 2025 class, several of the elite QB prospects didn’t last longer than one season, with four of the top 10 transferring by the end of their first fall in college.
Three of them, Husan Longstreet (USC to LSU), Deuce Knight (Auburn to Ole Miss) and Bryce Baker (North Carolina to Virginia Tech), entered the transfer portal earlier this month. They each left programs where they weren’t likely to start in 2026 and landed at programs where … they aren’t likely to start in 2026.
“I think what ends up happening is guys go in with certain expectations and what ends up happening is expectations aren’t met, and they feel slighted somehow,” said private quarterback coach Danny Hernandez, who trains Mendoza and Ohio State’s Julian Sayin, among others. “They almost take it personally, and now they’ve got to make a move because they’re not being valued or whatever the case is. And things can go sideways for some of those guys.”
There are more and more examples popping up of how sideways things can get. Let’s go back to those 32 blue-chip quarterbacks from the 2024 recruiting cycle. Not only have 23 already transferred, but nine have transferred at least twice and will be playing for their third school in as many years next fall.
It’s difficult to actually develop as a player when you’re not getting enough game reps and bouncing around to different offensive systems every year.
“I definitely believe it’ll become a point where some quarterbacks will be willing to sit for two or three years behind another or two other potential starters and then have their time at a big school,” the P4 head coach said. “Or if you want to start at a young age, you have to go to a midtier program, start and then decide if you wanna go up. The problem is the patience of the top quarterbacks, who don’t want to sit and wait, which means they will transfer a lot.”
There’s some credence to the theory that it’s probably better to start your career at a school that may not be as sexy but offers an opportunity to play quickly. Hernandez had a front-row seat for that with Colton Joseph, another one of his pupils.
Joseph didn’t have any P4 offers coming out of high school in Southern California during the 2023 recruiting cycle. He signed with Old Dominion, became a starter during his second season and blossomed this past fall with 2,624 passing yards, 1,007 rushing yards and 34 total touchdowns. He was named Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year and signed with Wisconsin shortly after entering the transfer portal.
On, Wisconsin🦡 pic.twitter.com/sTHpiPJjod
— Colton Joseph (@_ColtonJoseph1) January 4, 2026
The experience he gained at ODU helped tremendously because he had a viable body of work.
“Play as soon as you can because now it creates your next opportunity,” Hernandez said. “Now some of these mid-major, smaller schools have a legit pitch to a four- or five-star guy because they can say, ‘Why are you going to such and such school and sit for two, three years when you can come here and play as a true freshman and make $5 million at the next place? Your stock is going to go up tremendously because you have the reps.’”
Money is obviously an element that can’t be overlooked in this conversation. Joseph is a good example of how developing at a lower level can create a better financial opportunity for a quarterback, but there are many examples of careers that have taken unexpected turns and players who have ended up in worse situations over money matters — notably Jaden Rashada, who committed to both Miami and Florida but signed with Arizona State and has since transferred three times, and Nico Iamaleava, who transferred from Tennessee to UCLA last offseason.
There’s also a complicated issue that’s starting to pop up. Programs would love to have as much talent at the quarterback position as possible, but it doesn’t make sense to pay for an expensive blue-chip quarterback to sit on the bench for a few years when he’s not contributing on the field.
“Managing and developing your QB room has always been difficult. Cost just adds a new layer of complexity,” said a source who works in the NIL space. “It’s expensive to have a young, unproven QB on the bench with a higher flight risk. QBs are hard to project, they expect to play early, they expect to get paid handsomely. Every year, there’s a new internal debate on what makes the most sense from a recruitment standpoint. How much time and money do you spend hoping your high school recruit becomes the guy? If he’s good enough to at least be a solid backup for a year or two, it’s worth it. If not, cut ties early and find the next.”
The conversation around quarterbacks is wildly different from what it was just a few years ago. So when you’re reading about the blue-chip quarterback your favorite program received a commitment from this summer, don’t get too clingy. The odds are getting higher and higher that he won’t be around too long.
“I think college football is a one-year lease,” Hernandez said. “It’s about, ‘What can we do to win today, to win right now?’ So there’s really no, ‘Hey, there’s wins three or four years down the road.’ That’s why guys are better off going somewhere they can get on the field.”
