Our recruiting generally has been a disaster, so who knows if this has an actual impact, but I do worry that our QB recruiting is going to be damaged by continually bringing in mediocre transfer QBs and starting them while converting talented but flawed prep recruits to WR (though I am very excited about IW and Deuce at WR, don't get me wrong).
We won't get, and don't necessarily need, 5-star QB recruits. He's having a rough start to this year, but Michael Penix Jr. at Indiana is an example of a good 3-star prospect who chose a non-powerhouse program over a place like FSU. I'd much rather have him than Peters. But if Indiana was bringing in guys like Peters, with the expectation the job was theirs, I doubt Penix would have gone there.
I think it is a bit early to worry about the impact of bringing in QB transfers and converting “talented but flawed” prep recruits to WR. At least thus far, it doesn’t appear BB and his offense value dual threat QBs, and that is primarily what IW, Spann and Taylor (actually switched to DB I think) were. Collier was also a dual threat QB in HS, so it will be interesting to see what happens to him. According to 247, Illini have offered four QBs in 2022class (signed one) and three in 2023 class, and none appear to be of the dual threat variety. So other than possibly Collier in the future, position shifts likely won’t be an issue nor will those already made impact future recruiting. If anything they probably will help future recruiting since QB room isn’t as crowded now.
Obviously bringing in mediocre transfers at any position is not good, First, it is important to remember that BB didn’t bring in Peters, so whatever impact that had or didn’t have isn’t on BB. Second, though some people probably wanted to see IW win the job, given what BB likes to do on offense and their skill sets, I think most people expected Peters to win that job. BB has brought in what would appear to be two mediocre transfers — Artur and the guy from Northern Michigan — but that was mainly out of necessity because he felt he had to remake the QB room. As someone pointed out, finding a good transfer QB is difficult as there aren’t many good ones and those tend to go to the better schools. Given all that, I’d argue that Artur wasn’t a terrible pick up — rated fairly high as a prep and only a sophomore, so time to work with and develop him. Now after seeing him play, it is fair to wonder if he’ll ever develop beyond mediocre for the Illini but at least he still has time. And I don’t think having him here is going to scare off recruits nor do I think BB would have a problem elevating someone over him in the future.
I think with Peters moving on next year, BB might look in the portal to sign a QB next year out of necessity. But I do think he would prefer and is working his way toward relying on the development of 3 star (and hopefully a 4 star or two in the future) QBs. It’s just going to take some time Hopefully Donavan Leary is the first of those.