Tuesdays with Gorney: Transfer QBs finding success at the highest levels

Of course, we’re being facetious, but the days of quarterbacks transferring being a black mark on their success are so far gone it’s hard to remember.

The success of transfer quarterbacks is striking, compelling and impossible to overlook.

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Notre Dame will face Ohio State for the national championship on Monday night and both teams have transfer quarterbacks as the Irish’s Riley Leonard came from Duke and the Buckeyes’ Will Howard used to play at Kansas State.

Three of the top four quarterbacks – Howard, Leonard and Texas’ Quinn Ewers – in the final four of the College Football Playoff were transfers as Penn State’s Drew Allar was the only one who signed with the same program out of high school.

From 2017 until this season, there have been six quarterbacks who have won the Heisman Trophy. Alabama’s Bryce Young was the only non-transfer as Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels started at other programs.

What’s also incredible about that list is that by transferring almost all of them except for Williams, who was awesome at Oklahoma before being awesome at USC after following coach Lincoln Riley, rejuvenated their careers at their second schools.

Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer famously told Burrow he throws like a girl. Burrow then transferred to LSU where he had one of the best seasons ever and parlayed that into the No. 1 overall pick.

Mayfield started at Texas Tech before finding stardom at Oklahoma where he was the No. 1 pick. Murray threw five touchdowns and seven interceptions in his one season at Texas A&M, transferred to play for the Sooners and two years later threw for 4,361 yards and 42 TDs before becoming the No. 1 selection.

Williams was the no-brainer No. 1 draft pick by the Chicago Bears in the most-recent draft and Daniels, who’s led the Washington Commanders to the franchise’s first playoff win in nearly two decades, was the second overall selection.

This year’s Heisman Trophy winner? Travis Hunter, a transfer to Colorado from Jackson State, and even though he isn’t a quarterback is the first two-way player to win college football’s most prestigious individual award since Charles Woodson in 1997 (Hunter would be born six years later).

There were six quarterbacks taken in the first 12 picks of the 2024 NFL Draft, an incredible run, and at the time some of those selections – Atlanta taking Michael Penix Jr. and Denver going for Bo Nix – seemed questionable.

Four of those QBs (Williams, Daniels, Penix and Nix) were transfers. Penix’s career was going nowhere at Indiana, he transferred to Washington and took the Huskies to the national championship. Nix, a former five-star, was floundering at Auburn, transferred to Oregon, got in the Heisman race and became a superstar for the Ducks.

Mock drafts heading into this draft cycle look super heavy for transfer quarterbacks as well.

Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders likely will be among the top-10 picks, and both are transfers. Ward is actually a double transfer who starred at Incarnate Word before starring at Washington State before starring with the Hurricanes.

There used to be a belief that a transfer, particularly at quarterback, was a caution flag to NFL scouts, an indication that the player chose to run when things got tough. Those days and those beliefs are long gone now as a lot of players – especially at quarterback – are finding more success by not staying at the program they picked out of high school.