At all levels of football, the starting quarterback is the face of the team. All the QB cliches are true- “the most important position in sports,” “it all starts with the quarterback” etc. etc. For the third season in a row, Northwestern football will be led by a transfer signal caller in his final season of collegiate eligibility. This time, it’s Preston Stone from Southern Methodist University.
Last season it was Mike Wright, who came in from Vanderbilt, having previously been at Mississippi State.
Wright failed to live up to expectations, as Northwestern coach David Braun gave him the hook extremely early on in the season. Despite all the issues at QB last term, Braun never went back to him.
The year before that, 2023, saw Ben Bryant come in from Cincinnati and he led the Wildcats to an 8-win season that included a Las Vegas Bowl triumph.
In other words, the results have been mixed, to say the least. So what is the outlook for 2025? The best betting websites have set the Northwestern College Football Playoff futures are priced at +8000.
The market for NU’s Big Ten title futures is conveying a consumer sentiment of about +50000.
While a trip to Tulane might not sound like the most intimidating of season openers, the Cats are 6.5 point underdogs for that.
Maybe Preston Stone will helped the Wildcats to a place that defies all the odds?
If he leads them to four wins, it would surpass what a lot of places have the O/U on season wins set. If NU gets to five wins that’s better than last year’s 4-8 mark.
Last season, Stone got replaced by Kevin Jennings at SMU, who led the team to a College Football Playoff appearance.
However, let’s look at what he did in Ft. Worth in 2023. Stone had a very impressive 161.3 passer rating, on 9.3 yards per attempt, with 28 touchdown passes against just six interceptions.
He threw for 3,197 yards, with 206 completions in 344 pass attempts. Most importantly, the team record was 10-2.
If we’re going to figure out how far he, and the team as a whole, can go, we need to look at where we’ve been.
Between Bryant and Peyton Ramsey in 2020 (the second of the two Big Ten West division title seasons), Northwestern whiffed on all their other transfer portal QBs.
They have become a transfer portal program at this position (much like many other programs, because hey, the times, they are-a-changing in college football.
Northwestern was awful, through and through, in 2022. They were a horrific 1-11, 1-8 in the league. Ryan Hilinski never lived up to expectations, as he showed some promise at South Carolina, before coming to Evanston.
It wasn’t his fault though, everyone else who played the QB position flopped as well.
Speaking of transfers from the south, Hunter Johnson came in from Clemson, totally fizzled, and then later transferred back to Clemson. Rated the top QB in his recruiting class, he was a part time starter during two 3-9 campaigns, 2019 and 2021.
When you look back at it, the last time they had year over year stability at the QB position was Clayton Thorson, from 2015-2018.
You don’t have to do it that way anymore, with the homegrown and development method. You can do it by bringing in a new transfer every year.
So how will NU be this season? Is the newest transfer QB the answer?
To quote Earth, Wind and Fire
Bringing questions of their own, yeahTruth is, truth is written in the stone
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter