Yeah, that's how I see it for the most part. NIL in this sense is like salary cap management, at least from the roster construction side. Need to manage the roster to optimize return on the budget you have. QB, OT, and DT are probably the 3 "luxury" positions where there is a very big drop off in talent from the best available and a good one is going to cost a lot of your budget, and the demand extremely outweighs the supply. And it makes sense. You can get value running backs, wide receivers, and secondary, and they'll probably be decent enough if you surround them with the right pieces, whereas value QBs, OTs, and DTs just lose you games unless you strike gold on your evals.
Optimally, you probably want to avoid going to the portal for DT and OT needs as much as you can by relying on your prep talent evals and development such that when they're ready to see the field you have them at a discount for the season before they need to get paid the big bucks. And if you can do that effectively over multiple years, even if you lose some to the portal during the offseason each year, you have the next batch ready to step in.
Quarterback on the other hand, needs a lot of time, development, and sunk cost as a prep. And any that does show promise as a freshman is going to be recruited very hard 24/7. And it's hard to turn away starting QB NIL from another program especially if you've been sitting on the bench all year developing. Makes me think that for QB Bret has been well ahead of the curve. Vulturing talented QBs from other P4 schools who have been sitting or passed over in favor of someone else and has a couple years of eligibility remaining, or a proven high midmajor QB seems like the right approach. You're going to spend a lot of money on the position regardless, might as well spend the money on a better known commodity that is ready to start and can develop as needed on field.
