Reviewing PSU's QB recruiting: How did room end up where it is today?

The top question on the mind of Penn State football fans during the bye week focuses on whether or not Sean Clifford will miss no games, maybe just one or two, or most if not all of the final six contests in the regular season.

It is far and away the most popular topic these days after a 5-1 start, but right behind it is this: Why do the Nittany Lions only have three scholarship quarterbacks in the first place, and only one who had had any meaningful snaps at this level prior to Iowa?

There are two obvious answers to this question: Recruiting wins and losses, and the transfer portal.

How did head coach James Franklin's program reach this point at such a pivotal position? Tracing the last five years offers all the insight that is needed.

Before we do that, one note on Clifford: Franklin said Wednesday night that no decisions have been made about who will start against Illinois yet and also that Clifford is preparing as the starter per the usual. However, he wasn't seen at practice, so we're still in wait-and-see mode there.

Penn State knew in 2017 that it would not be long before a replacement for Trace McSorley would be needed, so it focused on landing Sean Clifford out of Cincinnati, Ohio St. Xavier, and of course, did just that.

Despite frustrations over his play in 2020, Clifford has easily been the best product out of the group the Lions focused on back then, which included in part Hunter Johnson, Dylan McCaffrey, and Kasim Hill. All three of those guys have transferred out of the program they first committed to out of high school.

This is a cycle that every Penn State fan remembers, as the Nittany Lions had a pledge from now Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields before he ultimately backed away from it and picked Georgia. Fields was committed to Penn State from Dec. 2016 to June 2017. The five-star wouldn't thrive until getting to Ohio State via the transfer portal, of course, but it'll always be a 'what if' proposition for those who follow the blue and white.

With Fields not decommitting until June, it put Penn State in a tough position, but the Lions ultimately ended up with Will Levis after a strong performance at one of their camps. Levis did everything asked of him over the course of a few seasons in State College before ultimately moving on to Kentucky, where he's found greener pastures with the No. 11 Wildcats in 2021. Speaking of 'what ifs', this is the class of them, as many believe that Penn State would have beat Iowa if Levis was still the backup in State College. Alas, we'll never know whether or not that hunch is true.

Penn State also had interest in Phil Jurkovec that year, but he ended up committing to Notre Dame in May 2016, which was very early in the cycle. Like so many others, he also found success after entering the portal, ending up at Boston College.

Penn State ended up with a pair of passers in this cycle. Ta'Quan Roberson still remains but didn't throw a pass until earlier this year and experienced his first major game opportunity on the road at Iowa last Saturday, while Michael Johnson Jr. transferred after the 2020 season.

There were some other players offered in this cycle, of course. Taisun Phommachanh was highly regarded yet can't get on the field at Clemson despite the Tigers' struggles on offense to start the year. Garrett Shrader followed Joe Moorhead to Mississippi State but was eventually passed over and transferred to Syracuse.

Penn State had a pretty full quarterback room and fine class distribution at the start of this cycle. It ended up with Las Vegas three-star Micah Bowens, which gave it, at the time, a healthy number of scholarship passers when he committed on Feb. 19, 2019.

But, defections were coming down the road, including from Bowen himself, who left after just one season with the Nittany Lions to become the third-stringer at Oklahoma.

Penn State had real interest in Drew Pyne, Jeffrey Sims, Anthony Richardson and Robby Ashford at different points in the cycle, but they were unable to pick up momentum with any of them to the point where they were seriously considering a commitment.

The pandemic-impacted recruiting class was one of the more difficult ones for programs to navigate, as they couldn't host recruits for a large chunk of it and senior film was hit or miss.

It led the Lions to sign only one player, Christian Veilleux, who grew up in Canada but came to the U.S. to further both his education and athletic careers.

Penn State made his top-five, but they were never seriously in the mix for Washington, D.C., star Caleb Wiliams, who could now be Oklahoma's starter. The top in-state option, Kyle McCord, committed to Ohio State early in the cycle.

Now we get to the section many of you have been waiting for: Why didn't Penn State add a transfer portal quarterback this offseason?

Everyone knew it was possible as the Nittany Lions entered the year with just three scholarship quarterbacks and only one with meaningful game experience, but it didn't work out, even if they wanted it to as badly as fans did. There are three problems when it comes to adding players and especially quarterbacks, via the transfer portal. One is that they have to fit your system and be ready to be a backup at worst, two is that they have to be OK with being a backup if they can't beat out the starter, and finally, and perhaps most importantly, it's a tightrope walk to bring somebody in who has that mindset all while still not alienating your returning starter in the process.

Penn State was very interested in LSU transfer TJ Finley, but he ultimately chose to stay in the south and committed to Auburn, while a pair of junior college passers, Michael Hiers and Nate Glantz, were intriguing but never received an offer from Franklin, Yurcich, and co.

It's easy to say that the Nittany Lions should've added someone to fill out the room, and maybe just about anyone, but it's just not that easy. Most guys are in the portal because of some kind of deficiency in their game, and it's hard to justify using a scholarship spot on someone who you don't believe is capable of running the offense you want to run at the highest level possible, especially when your current roster might be that way outside of the starter. Finley fit that, but everyone else, not so much. Former Oregon quarterback turned Texas Tech starter Tyler Shough was another player they looked at but didn't push all out for.

Penn State had its best offseason to date in the portal from an incoming transfer perspective, but losing Levis was a killer that was probably unavoidable, as he knew he could start at Kentucky but wasn't going to here, so who could blame him for moving on?

Maybe the Lions should've done more to prepare Roberson. That will be argued about endlessly by fans, who, by the way, should prepare themselves with the fact that few college football teams will have game-ready backups in the age of the transfer portal and the chance to use it as a means to find both more playing time and possible NIL opportunities.

Some years will be better than others, of course, but this is the way things will work moving forward.

2017: Trace McSorley, Tommy Stevens, Jake Zembiec, Sean Clifford

2018: Trace McSorley, Tommy Stevens, Sean Clifford, Will Levis

2019: Sean Clifford, Will Levis, Ta'Quan Roberson, Michael Johnson Jr.

2020: Sean Clifford, Will Levis, Ta'Quan Roberson, Micah Bowens

2021: Sean Clifford, Ta'Quan Roberson, Christian Veilleux

Two things jump out here, Obviously the first is the fact that Johnson Jr., and Bowens spent only a year on campus, and the second is that two passers left following the 2020 season and the lone replacement was a freshman who hasn't taken a game snap since 2019.

To avoid this moving forward, step one is to have quarterbacks stay with the program longer, of course, and the other is to continue evaluating the transfer portal every single year with perhaps a willingness to take a player who maybe isn't exactly what you're looking for but has college experience and some history of success, even if he doesn't check all the boxes.

Arguments can be made that playing backups more often could help, but there's another part of that puzzle: There were really only two out of six games where that was a possibility this year, whereas, in previous seasons, there probably would have been three, at minimum.

Ultimately, it's a topic that will be discussed endlessly in the days, months, and years ahead, and one that Penn State will aim to be on the right side of in the future.

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