Today, the Syracuse Orange football team will play its spring game. During the game, all eyes will be on quarterbacks Charley Loeb, John Kinder, and Terrell Hunt, as the most important question for the Orange this offseason is who will take over for Ryan Nassib as the team’s quarterback. The answer: none of them. When Syracuse takes on Penn State to kick off the 2013 season next fall, the starting quarterback will be Drew Allen, who won’t even be on campus until this summer after he completes a transfer from Oklahoma. Even though the quarterbacks have been at Syracuse longer, Allen will be the guy taking the snaps for Syracuse this season and not the three guys that will be on display at the spring game today.
Allen has seemingly come out of nowhere, as we only heard about the mutual interest between him and Syracuse a few weeks ago. With one year of eligibility left after sitting behind Landry Jones on the depth chart at Oklahoma for the past four years, Allen chose Syracuse over North Carolina State as the place where he’d like to use his final season of eligibility.
Why would the Syracuse coaches recruit and ultimately accept a transfer with just one year of eligibility remaining when they have three quarterbacks that have been in the program for years and two incoming freshmen arriving this summer? The answer is simple: because he’s going to play. It may seem unlikely, and perhaps a little unfair, that a quarterback that hasn’t gone through spring practice, doesn’t know any of the receivers, and won’t arrive on campus until this summer will win the starting job, but the Syracuse coaches wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to recruit him and get him to join the Orange if they didn’t think he could win the starting job in training camp. Obviously, Allen will have to compete with the rest of the quarterbacks and win the job fair and square, but deep down that’s what the Syracuse coaches expect him to do, and they’ll likely give him every opportunity to prove that he should be the starter. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t like the quarterbacks they currently have, although it’s not a ringing endorsement of them either, it just means they think their chances will be better with Allen under center.
What does this mean for the current crop of Syracuse quarterbacks? Sadly, another year of waiting. A great deal of symphony should be felt for Loeb, who has been the patient backup behind Nassib for the last three seasons and thought he would finally get a chance to start in his final year of eligibility. His contributions as the team’s holder haven’t gone unappreciated, nor did the swing pass he threw in the Pinstripe Bowl go unnoticed, but it appears as if he will not be able to shake the label of “career backup” and get his chance to lead the team. For Kinder, Allen’s arrival is a sign that he should either switch positions or switch schools. He has the athleticism to change positions and has even seen the field as a member of the kick coverage team, but if he wants to start at quarterback in his two remaining years of eligibility, it won’t be at Syracuse. For Hunt, who may be at the top of the post-spring depth chart, it means another year on the sidelines, which may not be a bad thing. He could have another year of development and still have two years left as the favorite to be the starter, although by 2014 he would have some competition from incoming freshmen Austin Wilson and Mitch Kimble.
Is it jumping the gun a little bit to assume Allen will be the starter months before he even steps on campus? Perhaps, but with three competitors going through spring practice, the Syracuse coaching staff wouldn’t have pursued Allen if they didn’t think he was a step above the rest and capable of beating them out during training camp this summer. That is why when the Orange kickoff the 2013 season against Penn State, it will be with Allen as their quarterback.