The Quarterback Conundrum we are in

No matter what takes place during the weeks leading up to September 5th, the Vols will begin the 2009 season with two QB’s on scholarship.

The reason that we are in this position is because in the ’08 class our sole QB commitment Casey Kelly was drafted (as was expected) by the Boston Redsox and chose Baseball over football. (If anyone wants to see how he’s doing go to this link.) Therefore, we ended the 2008 recruiting class failing to sign a QB.

During the following season we had commitments from 3 QBs at one time or another. One was 4 star Josh Nunes. During the Florida game last year when Nunes was in attendance. Jonathan Crompton was booed so much that Nunes decided to de-commit from the Vols and instead signed with Stanford leaving us with 3 star Bryce Petty as our only committed QB at that point.

Then just before the news of Fulmer’s release from the program, we landed the #1 dual-threat QB in the nation 4 star Tajh Boyd. One of Kiffin’s first tasks before even assembling a class was to go to the house of the gifted QB and tell him that it would be best if they all just moved in a different direction. Tajh ended up signing with Clemson.

3rd order of task was to tell Bryce Petty that he didn’t have what it takes to play at this level via a phone call made – not by Kiffin himself, but by the coach that had been recruiting him Jason Michaels.(no longer with the program.)

So we signed no QB’s in the 2008 class and considering we didn’t sign one in the 2007 season either, we are left with who is on the roster at that point, Jon Crompton, Nick Stephens, and BJ Coleman.

After Spring Drills, BJ decided on his own to leave the program and he did it by throwing jabs at the coaching staff and the way they do things on his way out. He is likely to sign with UTC.

So now we don’t just have the deficit of not signing any QB’s in back to back recruiting classes we are down to a Senior and a Junior who haven’t played well when given the opportunity.

Looking at the situation from the coaches perspective you would think they now want to signat least 3 QB’s in this recruiting class (2009) and they have several guys they are looking at right now and they are busy game planning the way they want the cards to fall.

I think we can unequivocally say that at this point we have at least one silently committed QB, but he is likely a JuCo guy. The coaches have not been very impressed by the names that are out there in this year’s crop and are not at all confident that one of those guys can take over the team next year after Jonathan Crompton graduates. That’s why they are looking JuCo for at least one guy.

It appears that that guy will be Robert Marve. Marve had some off the field trouble when he broke a car’s mirror – not his car – and fled from the police. He was suspended for two games and the charges were dropped. He was also suspended for another game for missing an English class for the fourth time in one semester.

Marve sat out the spring semester to concentrate on finding a new home with another team. He has been released by the program, just not to Tennessee due to Miami claiming there was tampering involved with Tennessee talking to the family before Marve was released. As a result, if he were to play at UT he would have to pay for one semester due to the fact that he has already sat out one semester from football and then he could be placed on scholarship.

We are also still looking at Cameron Newton — the former Gator QB that backed up Tebow. He got into some legal trouble of his own when he “allegedly” stole a laptop computer, spray painted “Cam” on it, and when the police came by to look for the notebook, he chucked it out the window behind a dumpster where it was later reclaimed.

Newton enrolled at Blinn (Texas) Junior College in an effort to repair his image while serving in a pre-trial intervention program for first-time offenders (no jail time, basically). Newton maintains that he didn’t steal anything and that he bought the laptop from someone anonymous.

Cam is a 6’6″, 450 lb guy that runs a 4.5 40. But he played in a spread system at Florida that is much different than the pro-style system Kiffin is implementing here at UT.

Then you have the HS Seniors. The top 3 on our board right now are Jake Heaps, (8th ranked Pro-Style QB in the nation) Jesse Scroggins, (6th ranked Pro-Style QB) and an up and comer who has plenty of big time offers himself in Andrew Hendrix.

Out of the three Andrew Hendrix seems the most likely guy to commit soon to the Vols. I don’t think you will see one of these Junior College quarterbacks commit until the coaches have the guy(s) they want out of high school committed.

So it makes for a really confusing mess, but with not signing QB’s in the last two classes and the defection of BJ Coleman, it is certainly possible that the coaches now want 3 quarterbacks in this class, possibly even four.

There are many different scenarios for what may happen. We may take 2 of the Junior College guys, but one wonders if Marve might be irked at having to pay for a semester’s worth of school when the coaches are bringing in a guy also that will directly compete with him for the starting QB position for 2010.

So we may just sign one of the JuCo guys (likely Marve in this scenario) and look to the HS ranks for the other 2 QB’s. It’s impossible to predict right now.

No one – not even the coaches it seems, know how this situation is going to play out on National Signing Day in 2010. We should know somewhat prior to that though. One thing we do know howwever is that it’s going to be a lot of fun following it.