BYU's quarterback depth

The news that quarterback Riley Nelson is jumping from Utah State to BYU sure stirred things up on a quiet Memorial Day weekend. Nelson, who was the Aggies’ great hope for the future, announced Monday that he is transferring to BYU after his LDS mission in Spain is over.
Suddenly, the quarterback-rich Cougars just got richer.
They’ve already got junior Max Hall, who led BYU to a conference championship in his first season as the starter. He has two more seasons left to play. Meanwhile, highly touted QBs James Lark and Jason Munns are waiting in the wings. Lark is on a mission and Cougar coaches said Munns was planning to leave for a mission sometime after the conclusion of the recently completed spring drills.
No wonder BYU didn’t sign a quarterback last February. The Cougars are loaded at that position. Nelson, who was a Parade All-America after a stellar prep career, showed glimpses of his potential on the Division I level as a true freshman at USU in 2006.
One of coach Bronco Mendenhall’s foundational goals for the program is to re-establish dominance at the quarterback position. He and his coaching staff want to replace one great QB with another, just as the Cougars did during the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. Hall’s success on the heels of Beck’s outstanding senior year seems to indicate that is happening.
Remember during the early part of this decade how then-coach Gary Crowton threw recently returned missionaries like Beck and Matt Berry into the fire instead of bringing them along gradually? That, without question, was a major factor in the Cougars’ three straight losing seasons from 2002-2004. Ideally, Mendenhall wants his quarterbacks to be in the program a couple of years before taking snaps in a game situation. This kind of long-term depth at quarterback should allow BYU to do that.
On the other hand, a logjam at QB inevitably results in other quarterbacks leaving. We’ve already seen Cade Cooper, Jacob Bower and Sam Doman transfer after reconciling their place on the depth chart.
It should be interesting to see how this plays out in upcoming years. And Nelson’s impending transfer should stoke the fires a little bit more when the Cougars visit the Aggies on Oct. 3.
Nelson is somewhat undersized (6-foot-1), but he possesses a fiery competitiveness that BYU quarterbacks coach Brandon Doman loves.
Let the debate begin: Is Nelson BYU’s next great quarterback?