Tennessee football: Vols shouldn’t be pursuing graduate transfer quarterbacks
Tennessee football is pursuing graduate transfer quarterbacks Keller Chryst and Gardner Minshew. Here’s why that’s a mistake for the Volunteers.
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If Tennessee football is going to pursue a transfer at quarterback, he should be a guy who’s going to play at least two years. Jeremy Pruitt and the Vols are not doing that with their current targets, however.
Keller Chryst, who is a graduate transfer from the Stanford Cardinal, visited Rocky Top over the weekend. Meanwhile, Gardner Minshew, a transfer from the East Carolina Pirates, reportedly called Tennessee “intriguing” according to a report from Bruce Feldman of SI.
Neither quarterback does anything for Pruitt and his program long-term. Let’s be honest here. Tennessee football is not winning any national championship next year. Heck, they aren’t even going to compete.
So a guy who’s going to start at quarterback for them for one year does them no good. It just stifles the development of whomever wins the quarterback job among J.T. Shrout, Jarrett Guarantano and Will McBride.
Any of those guys will start for three years for the Vols if they win the job. Why not get their feet wet as early as possible in a year when you have nothing to compete for?
Now, you can admire Pruitt and staff for putting an emphasis on winning as early as possible. But even, then, it doesn’t make sense to go after the two graduate transfers he wants.
Chryst never completed better than 56 percent of his passes in a season at Stanford. Minshew, meanwhile, is coming off a 3-9 year in which he completed 59 percent of his passes.
What about either of these two quarterbacks suggests that they are good enough to come in and start for a year? Looking at what they’ve already done, there’s no guarantee that they’d be better than Guarantano or Shrout anyway. And even if they were, they aren’t worth stifling either quarterback’s development, or even McBride’s development.
Tennessee football is much better off building for the future with one of its young quarterbacks. Unless Pruitt can get an elite passer on Rocky Top who would make a huge difference for the Vols next year, getting a graduate transfer does no good.
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It makes less sense when you consider the fact that he is pursuing very mediocre quarterbacks. Neither would do much for the Vols or give them a better season than what they are going to have anyway. As a result, going after such players is a waste of everybody’s time on Rocky Top.