Here's the deal about the Heisman finalists.....people have known for years that those guys were great athletes that just needed the right situation to flourish in. That's an entirely different situation then, "I saw this guy that nobody's ever heard of that's in the transfer portal and we should look at him". Leach will absolutely pay attention to any truly great player that's available in the portal if that person is interested in WSU. He'd be dumb not too.
WSU doesn't have the resources available to entertain every swingin' dick that puts their name into the portal though. Sometimes it feels like people don't get that. We spend a lot of money developing the players we have. We should only be bringing in players where the coaching staff feels that there is a need....or where the transfer is a significant talent upgrade over what we have.
I'm more open to looking at a transfer portal guy at QB this year because I personally believe that the loser of the Cruz/Cooper sweepstakes is going to leave the program themselves. Because you never know how a player is going to develop so we have to take a QB every year. However, by getting high quality QB's every year, we are almost guaranteeing that we are going to have players transfer away once they feel that playing time is unlikely.
I don't have an issue with the transfer portal, but I think it's got to be used carefully and with an eye to the long term.
Just like high school recruiting, the primary intent should be to improve the team. There should be essentially zero consideration of whether your redshirt sophomore QB is going to be upset that you brought in another QB - the sophomore still has the opportunity to win the job. If the new guy is better, you just improved the team.
But - if you're bringing in veterans and upper-classmen, especially if it's a player who only has one year, it needs to be players that are ready to play and will have an impact
now. And then you get into a bit of a balancing act - do you bring in the game-ready transfer this year and risk having your underclassman bail, so then you have nobody next year? Or, do you go with the underclassman that maybe isn't quite ready this year, and have a veteran starter next year? I don't think there's a firm answer, it's going to be situational and case-by-case.
For our 2020 QB, I think it makes a lot of sense to keep an eye on the transfer portal. We have nobody returning who has ever taken a live snap, so a little insurance seems like a no-brainer. But, right now I don't see anyone in the portal that provides much insurance. Not sure how many of them are actually eligible for 2020 yet, and some of the ones that seem interesting are already committed.
I don't see Jett Duffey as a viable alternative. The knock on him is that he doesn't work hard in practice, which Leach would hate. He also apparently doesn't do film study, which probably limits his potential performance from week to week. Sounds like he just wants to show up for games and be given the ball, but hasn't translated that to success. TD:INT ratio is just over 3:1, and in spite of a decent completion percentage and 350 yards per game he wasn't able to pull out wins. That's not all on him, but I also read that he had a tendency to throw decisive INTs late in close games.
