Drake definitely has a lot of room to grow. That's good for us! He's just starting at a higher level than AK.
Back more to the topic of this thread, it's interesting to me that so many people were worried about him leaving, but not me so much. It seems to me that QB play has gotten so much better at the college level because of the portal & NIL. Instead of good QBs being buried on someone's depth chart or at a lower level G5/FCS, almost all of them jump to the P4 for a substantial paycheck. Even in our own league this year, Gronowski left SDSU to make Iowa very respectable at QB for the first time in who knows how long! Look at Nebraska just now, Raiola gets hurt and the backup looks good. The team has to likely step up and say we're going with you kid or they'll lose him to the portal. Raiola sees this and immediately jumps into the portal making another team better.
It's not just the blue bloods who's depth is being raided, but everyone's. Maybe I have a bad memory, but I just remember QB play in the B1G being much worse overall in the recent past. Drake looks good, but I think he would have looked A LOT better vs. his peers in the recent past. There are a lot of good QBs playing college football right now. I posted recently a list published by CBS sports of the top 50 college QBs and Drake wasn't even on it. Maybe they are wrong, but they aren't wrong that there are a lot of good QBs. Of the P4 teams we played this year, I saw impressive (not perfect) QBs at Cal, Rutgers, Ohio State, Iowa, MSU, and Oregon. Preston Stone was a two year starter at SMU, but got outcompeted for the starting job in 2024 so transfers to Northwestern and beats us throwing for over 300 yards. Our D struggles vs. the pass, but the point is the guy was far from a stiff! The teams we didn't play in the B1G that were known to have good QBs include Indiana, USC, Michigan, Washington, Illinois, UCLA, Penn State and Maryland. The highest rated of all these QBs coming out of high school was Dylan Raiola and he doesn't even make my list.
