What to Expect From Your New Grad Transfer QB?

So your school just got a Grad Transfer QB, it’s the hottest new trend in college football. Now what to expect from him? For Arkansas, Ben Hicks comes in with some pretty good numbers. On the positive side he knows the coaching staff, and the staff already has a good sense of his strengths and weaknesses as a quarterback. On the negative side, he’s coming into a rough situation, with a shaky at best offensive line and he’ll face stronger and faster defenses in the SEC.

Grad Transfers are a pretty new situation so there isn’t a ton of historical data, but we do have plenty of quarterbacks in 2018 to look to. According to Grad Transfer Tracker there were 24 grad transfer quarterbacks in FBS. From Joe Burrow to Jeff George Jr., here are the season stats for all 24 of those.

There’s a huge range of stats there, and only two that transferred from a Group of 5 School to a Power 5 School like Arkansas’ Ben Hicks did. Those two were Gardner Minshew, undoubtedly the most successful of the bunch. And Dru Brown, who didn’t throw a pass.

Those are the two extremes obviously, anyone who expects Hicks to have a Minshew like impact is...

• a) completely undervaluing Mike Leach’s development skills
• b) unaware of the stability Leach brought to Washington State
• c) is wildly optimistic
• d) all of the above.

If he ends up not finding the field like Brown that would be a huge disappointment, although in fairness to Brown he is competing for the job this year after playing behind an established starter Taylor Cornelius.

So what’s in the middle? Well the average numbers for the transfer QB’s who threw more than 30 passes in 2018 look like this.

• 57.89 Comp. %, 1790.5 yards per game, 11.25 touchdowns, 5.75 interceptions

The Average for those who played at Power 5 schools is a little better

• 58.08 Comp. %, 1963 yards per game, 12 touchdowns, 5.83 interceptions

That looks a lot more like what a conservative guess of what Hicks’ numbers will be. An aggressive number would be getting to the 3,000 yard mark and Joe Burrow type numbers. Hicks came close to those numbers each year at SMU, but the adjustment from AAC defenses to SEC ones will be a big one.

Personally, splitting the difference there, getting 2,500 yards this season on 55% completion would be a nice improvement from last season. If he can keep the interceptions down like he did in 2018, then his season would look very similar to Brandon Allen’s 2014 year, which most Hog fans would take in a heartbeat.

So for 2019, expectations probably fall in the line of this. A Wilton Speight/A.J. Bush type season would be the low end. Most likely, I’d expect his numbers to fall in the line of K.J. Carta-Samuels. And exceeding expectations means Hicks is touching 3,000 yards and 20 touchdowns on the year.