Oregon adds commitment from 2025 4-star QB Akili Smith Jr.

College QB news - August 1, 2023

Photo courtesy of GoDucks.com

Assuming you spend your day tracking hundreds of high school football recruits, you’ll see plenty of “official offer” social media posts today from 2024 prospects. This probably used to matter on some level but seems to be an outdated process considering 113 of 156 QBs rated 3-5 stars in the class are already committed. I still don’t have a great understanding of what an official offer actually means outside of cool social media graphics and videos.

When I started this site, I considered not even tracking scholarship offers because they mean so little. Believe it or not, when a story of the 10-year-old getting a scholarship offer goes viral, that doesn’t mean the prospect can make a commitment. Also when a team offers five quarterbacks in a day, that doesn’t mean they’re ready to take a five-QB recruiting class.

The initial scholarship offer seems to be strictly for social media engagement and to say that school offered him earlier than the competition. It really means nothing until it’s communicated that a player can actually make a commitment.

A couple months ago, a QB prospect announced a commitment on social media before deleting it all when the team said the offer didn’t mean what he thought it did. Additionally, a recent podcast guest told me whether or not an offer is committable or not is one of the most confusing parts of the recruiting process. We need different words for the various scholarship offers to let us know what they actually mean, and I’m open to suggestions.

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COLLEGE FOOTBALL QB REPORT

Quarterback Central | Teams | Players

Akili Smith Jr. committed to Oregon, the 2025 4-star QB from California announced on his Twitter account. The Ducks now have four 4-star quarterback commitments in three recruiting cycles as Smith joins Michael Van Buren (MD), Luke Moga (AZ) and Austin Novosad (Stats). He visited Oregon over the weekend for its Saturday Night Live event as QB recruiting continues to roll in the Dan Lanning era with a huge piece added to the 2025 class.

Utah QB Cam Rising (Stats) will be limited during fall camp, head coach Kyle Whittingham said during the press conference. This will be the most important quarterback injury to track throughout training camp after tearing his ACL during the Rose Bowl. Whittingham said the hope is for limitations to be limited as the Utes get closer to their Week 1 matchup with Florida. If Rising is unavailable, Whittingham said Brandon Rose (Stats) is the leader to get the start with Nate Johnson (Stats) and Bryson Barnes (Stats) also in the mix.

Arizona received a commitment from in-state 2024 4-star QB Demond Williams Jr. (AZ), he announced on Twitter. It’s been trending this way ever since Williams decommitted from Ole Miss earlier in the month. Wildcats fans have to be thrilled with what’s happening with the future of the QB position in the Jedd Fisch era. After going 1-11 in 2021, Arizona has been able to land consecutive 4-star quarterbacks with Williams and 2023 QB Brayden Dorman (Stats).

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DEPTH CHART & INJURY REPORT

Week 1 College football QB depth charts & injuries

Arizona State QB Trenton Bourguet (Stats) received the first snaps during team drills, according to 3TV/CBS 5’s Brad Denny. Notre Dame transfer Drew Pyne (Stats) worked primarily with the No. 2 offense, and it seems like there is a bit of separation from the top two to true freshman Jaden Rashada (Stats). Head coach Kenny Dillingham previously said a starting quarterback decision is expected to be made no later than a week before fall camp begins and at this point, Bourguet seems to be the favorite.