Like Maryland, UConn was also in the midst of a quarterback competition heading into week one. Unlike Maryland, UConn went ahead and announced their starting quarterback for their season-opener.
After remaining coy to open Tuesday’s press conference, head coach Jim Mora announced that former Oklahoma and Wisconsin quarterback Nick Evers defeated veteran Joe Fagnano and redshirt freshman Tucker McDonald to be named the starting quarterback.
"They (the quarterback room) know who the starter is," Mora said. "Listen, you want to know who the starter is? Nick's the starter. Nick's our starter and we're going to throw all of our support behind him and put him in a position to win. We know that Joe and Tucker and Cole are ready to go if we need them," Mora added.
Evers will make his first career start on Saturday in his first game with the Huskies. The former four-star prospected transferred into the program in the spring from Wisconsin, where he didn’t suit up in 2023 with the Badgers. Evers spent one season in Madison after transferring from Oklahoma following his freshman season.
While he has yet to show it on the college level after being entrenched behind other veterans in his first two seasons, Evers showcased his big-play ability during his final two seasons of high school football after throwing for nearly 5,000 yards and totaling 62 touchdowns.
As for Maryland, the team has been made away who the starting quarterback is as head coach Mike Locksley detailed what went into his final decision with Billy Edwards Jr. battling MJ Morris and Cam Edge.
“Going into it, I was pretty clear on what, what it would take to be the starting quarterback and it starts with who gives us the best chance to win now. Not preparing for later down the road, but who gives us the best chance to win against UConn? And it starts with the metrics that I've used. Unfortunately, I've been part of a lot of quarterback battles, whether it was at Alabama, Jalen [Hurts] came in as a true freshman and whether it was when Tua [Tagovailoa] came in and him and Mac [Jones] are in the same room. It's not my first rodeo trying to figure it out,” Locksley said on Tuesday.
“And one of the biggest metrics I always look at is the drive chart. When we chart live drives and practices and games with the ones, the twos, the threes, they all mixed and they played with different players. And the thing you want from your quarterback is he has to have the mind of a coach and a skill of a player and the ability to mitigate risk. So when you're practicing with the threes and they don't really know what they're doing, how do you manage that group? And so the guy that we picked, I couldn't tell which group he was going with because he managed the groups to where I didn't know if he was with the ones, twos or threes. And so the metrics of the drive chart and the drives ending in kicks, punts, field goals and extra points. The next piece is protection of the football. Who does the best job of taking care of football? And the third is who elevates the play of the players around them? Because we've got playmakers on offense to where our quarterback, it’s not necessarily on him. He just has to mitigate the bad plays and make sure he does a good job of getting into the right guys. And I have to have a trust level. I mean, some of it is trust. Who do I trust most going into this game as our starter? And so the guy picked met those metrics.”
Saturday’s game between Maryland-UConn is set for a noon kickoff on FS1.
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