Grayson McCall, NC State and the transfer quarterback conundrum in college football

When Grayson McCall entered the college football transfer portal late last November, he said not long ago that it was a “whirlwind of an experience,” with suitors lining up to make their pitches. He already knew some of the coaches at N.C. State, where he ultimately chose to go, from when he’d entered the portal in 2022 before withdrawing. Other schools came calling, too, for the Coastal Carolina quarterback.

Time was short, though. McCall wanted to make a quick decision.

He visited Raleigh. He visited Orlando, and UCF. He listened to overtures from coaches at South Carolina and Oregon State and Baylor, too, before deciding to play his final college season with the Wolfpack. News of McCall’s commitment last December became cause for celebration among State supporters who’d grown weary after two seasons of largely suspect quarterback play.

Finally, the Wolfpack had its man. A football team’s most important position was taken care of.

Or so the thought went.

Two games into McCall’s sixth and final college season, an uncomfortable truth has emerged — or, well, reemerged: for both an incoming transfer quarterback and his new team, immediate success isn’t as easy, or nearly as guaranteed, as everyone might hope when a player departs the transfer portal for a fresh start somewhere else.

During his years at Coastal Carolina, McCall dazzled with his passing touch and scrambling ability. He made great plays look ordinary, and often turned broken plays into positive ones with his knack for making something out of nothing. He became something of a national sensation at the so-called “Group of Five” level — that, a reference to Coastal’s non-power-conference status — and his numbers, along with his highlights, spoke for themselves.

McCall has not performed poorly through the Wolfpack’s first two games, but he has not necessarily resembled the player State thought it was getting, either. During the season-opener against Western Carolina, he threw an interception that was nearly returned for a touchdown. The Wolfpack was losing after three quarters, and the offense sputtered before a long-awaited awakening.

Against No. 7 Tennessee on Saturday, meanwhile, McCall did throw an interception that was returned for a touchdown — an 85-yard score, that proved pivotal and disastrous for State — and the offense remained dormant during a humbling (to put it mildly) 51-10 defeat. Afterward, McCall spoke with hope about an eventual turnaround but also looked as though he was in a bit of a daze; this certainly wasn’t the sort of start at N.C. State that he envisioned, either.

“I don’t think they really change,” McCall said late Saturday night of the expectations, both of himself and his team. “You know, it’s to not flinch. We’ve got to watch the tape, and then we flush it.

“We can’t let one loss turn into two or three.”

The transfer QB conundrum

To be sure, McCall is hardly the only transfer quarterback who has had trouble finding their footing early in this college football season. He is, in fact, among several high-profile transfer quarterbacks who’ve struggled to turn the considerable offseason hype that surrounded them into tangible results in their new destinations.

At Florida State, for instance, angry Seminoles fans (and is there any other kind these days?) appear to have already turned against DJ Uiagalelei, who has looked more like the Clemson version of himself as opposed to the one who found success a season ago at Oregon State.

Like Uiagalelei, former Duke quarterback Riley Leonard was seen as a coveted commodity when he entered the transfer portal last season.

Notre Dame quickly prioritized him and Leonard became the Fighting Irish’s quarterback of the future (“future,” meaning one season) around the same time McCall chose to play at N.C. State. Through two games with his new team, Leonard has yet to throw a touchdown pass. He has yet to throw for 200 yards in a game, too, and his two interceptions loomed large in Notre Dame’s stunning 16-14 defeat against Northern Illinois on Saturday.

None of this is to suggest that transfer quarterbacks can’t be hugely successful. Caleb Williams followed his head coach, Lincoln Riley, from Oklahoma to USC and won the Heisman Trophy. Joe Burrow, in the not-so-distant time before the portal became so ubiquitous, went from Ohio State to LSU, where he won the Heisman and led the Tigers to a national championship. Miami’s Cam Ward, this season, looks like the latest quarterback to make success look easy after transferring.

But for every Ward (and Williams and Burrow and Russell Wilson and the list goes on), there are many more transfer quarterbacks who have to work much harder to find themselves in their new environments — or at least to find their games. It’s enough to consider whether it’s worth all the trouble, on both sides. A moot question, yes, given we’re never going back to roster stability in college athletics (at least not without an athlete union, and collective bargaining), but still.

NC State has been here before

In a way, N.C. State has become a prime example of the perils of the portal for quarterbacks — both for the incoming and the departed. Former State quarterback Devin Leary, for instance, was among the most-wanted quarterbacks in the country when he entered the portal in December 2022. During his lone season at Kentucky last year, Leary never quite met the hype, or the expectations, and he often became the focal point when the Wildcats struggled.

Brennan Armstrong, meanwhile, transferred into N.C. State in part to reunite with his former offensive coordinator (Robert Anae, who coached Armstrong at Virginia), only to be benched early last season in favor of MJ Morris. And then Morris, who asked to be benched so that he could preserve a season of eligibility, entered the portal and transferred to Maryland — where in the preseason he lost the competition to be the Terrapins’ starter.

Would Leary have been better off staying at State? Would Morris have been?

It’s arguable, especially in a football sense. In a financial sense, perhaps it’s not as debatable.

Both players undoubtedly commanded a bountiful sum of compensation in NIL dollars. Which, of course, adds another component to all of this: Players at the highest level of college football are getting paid now — and often handsomely — and thus the pressures are greater and the expectations higher for immediate performance, and a return on the investment.

That hasn’t happened yet at Florida State. Or Notre Dame. Or countless other places reliant on a transfer quarterback. And it can’t be all that surprising, necessarily, given all there is for an incoming quarterback to learn, and in such a short amount of time: the playbook, for one, yes, but also his new teammates and a new environment, along with a new team culture, however such a thing can be defined.

McCall undoubtedly commanded a decent amount of NIL money, too, at N.C. State. He said an agent took care of the financial particulars after he entered the portal, and that he limited his conversations with coaches and programs to football — how he’d fit into an offensive scheme; who his teammates would be; the potential of a given situation. There’s a lot of time for him to figure it out, but his transition to a higher level hasn’t been smooth.

McCall’s two interceptions this season match his total from 2022, and are only one fewer than his total in each of the 2020 and 2021 seasons. In time, McCall may thrive. But there’s never enough time in college football. State’s biggest and most important non-conference game is already in the past. Another difficult test, at Clemson, looms in less than two weeks.

Last season, Armstrong, after his early-season benching, regained his starting position after Morris decided to sit out. And suddenly, from mid-November on, Armstrong looked a lot more like the player he was during his best season at Virginia — a lot more like the quarterback N.C. State thought it was getting all along. It just took a while for it to manifest.

During the Wolfpack’s final three regular season games last year, Armstrong threw six touchdown passes and no interceptions and completed about 70% of his passes. He proved to be a capable running threat, too. He’d finally found his place.

And then the season was over, and it was time to find a new quarterback.