(05-13-2023, 05:40 PM)jfredmuggs Wrote: Okay, somebody explain to me how this guy can transfer to Stanford as an academic junior or senior. I was under the impression that Stanford only accepted transfers who had completed just the first year of college. Graduate transfers, too, if they can get into a Stanford graduate program, but that’s not the case here. If I understood correctly, this was what Tara said about the limits of the transfer portal for the women’s program. Are we now making exceptions for football? Fine with me if we are. The transfer portal is hard enough to deal with as it is.
Our incoming transfers for football include Gaethan Bernadel (entering his third year of college like Lamson) and Trevor Mayberry (entering his fourth). I don't think academic year has anything to do with it. In fact, I suspect undergrad transfers of any year are easier for us to get via transfer than graduate transfers because they're non-rivalrous with regular students. Lamson, Bernadel, and Mayberry just take a spot from a high school senior football player. Grad transfers take spots from non-athletes and thus have to get in more on their own merits than the football team's request/capital. Anyway, no, I don't think year has anything to do with it and we should expect to continue to see mid-college transfers.
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* On paper this looks like another 3-star QB coming in to compete on a level playing field with Ari Patu, Ashton Daniels, and Myles Jackson. There's nothing in Lamson's profile that separates him from the pack. We are still in the same boat of multiple plausible options but no standout options, high likelihood of competition continuing throughout the summer if not into the fall, and a possibility of a two QB system like Taylor ran at Sacramento State. That being said, Lamson feels like the new favorite to be QB1, with the strongest signal of all being the act of transferring in, which says something about his perception of the competition and Taylor's perception of him.
* In terms of what Lamson has proven.....absolutely nothing. In two years in Power Five football he's played zero snaps, compared to Patu playing 56 snaps in two years and Daniels playing 38 snaps in one year. All of those are low enough that I imagine Taylor will view all three as fundamentally inexperienced and unproven and this won't be a differentiator. I just mention it because with transfers college production is a much more interesting data point than anything about the high school profile and in this case we don't have anything to judge. Except....
* Syracuse fans seem to think he has real potential. Notably (though IMHO not significantly as I think spring games are wildly overrated), Lamson has been a darling of the Syracuse spring game both of his years in college. His first year his spring performance was viewed as winning him QB2 until he suffered an injury that wiped out his redshirt freshman season. This year he got the lion's share of spring game reps and out-performed his competitor, Carlos Del Rio-Wilson, producing a sense he could again be in line for QB2. For those looking to get a sense of what QB2 at Syracuse translates to, QB1 is Garrett Shrader, who was #39 in the nation in Total QBR last year (Tanner McKee was #79), making him most comparable to Michigan State's (now Auburn), Arizona State's Trenton Bourget, West Virginia's Tommy DeVito (now New York Giants free agent), Notre Dame's Drew Pyne (transferring to ASU to compete with Bourget), and Florida's Anthony Richardson (now the fourth overall NFL pick for the Indianapolis Colts). That's a very nice bird in the hand to have as QB1, so QB2 for Syracuse could very easily be QB1 for Stanford.
* That's not to say Lamson is buzzy in the grand scheme of things though. 247 has him as approximately the 85th ranked QB in the transfer portal this off-season and On3 has him #120 (!!!!!!!). I think we can reasonably hope he's a lot better than that but....yeah, not buzzy. Those aren't typos. 119 QBs transferring this off-season On3, which is pretty credible, has ahead of Lamson. Our hope is that his inactivity and unavailability makes him out of sight and out of mind and there's a lot more talent than most people realize.
* Inactivity and unavailability are the words I'd use. I've been scathing toward Patu in these regards so it's only fair I be objective here. I mentioned how Lamson missed his redshirt freshman season with a non-contact knee injury. Like Patu, Lamson skipped his COVID-delayed senior year of high school to enroll early in college.
* But the comparison stops there, as while Patu was a backup QB his junior year of high school a ten minute drive away Lamson was winning Sacramento Bee Player of the Year honors. It's fair to say Lamson slung it much more prodigiously in high school than either Patu or Daniels did. As a junior against very good competition (top 24 percent of Stanford recruits), Lamson completed 66.3 percent of his passes for 3,114 yards (9.98 yards per attempt....pretty good, Davis Mills and Josh Nunes the most comparable in our recent experience), 24 touchdowns, and 8 interceptions. That's a nice year, though the TD-INT ratio is not as dominant as we've sometimes seen and raises some question about ball security (though the same thing could have been said about Andrew Luck....ha!). But it's certainly way better than what Patu or Daniels demonstrated in high school. It's not as good as Myles Jackson, though Jackson played horrible competition while Lamson played very good competition. (I continue to think Jackson matriculating next month is the big story in the Stanford QB room people aren't talking about enough. I understand Jackson is skipping his senior year of high school and behind the curve compared to his competitors, but I wouldn't rule him out. I would bet on Lamson to be QB1 first but don't forget about Jackson.)
* Lamson's rushing stats in high school were not special - 462 yards and 5 touchdowns on 3.4 yards per carry as a junior - but what's interesting in corroborating some athleticism is that while Lamson was riding pine on offense as QB2 as a high school sophomore he was starring as a safety. As a sophomore against good competition (not quite as good as what he threw against as a junior but still pretty good), he had 6.3 tackles per game (second on the team), two interceptions (team lead), 2 passes defended (tied for fourth), 5 tackles for loss (fifth), and 0.5 sacks (tied for tenth). The other data point we have to support athleticism is supposedly playing varsity basketball, though his team reported pretty complete stats his junior year and he doesn't show up at all so I'm not really viewing this as significant at all.