Two years ago, Eric Morris got a routine call from a friend asking if the North Texas head coach had an open walk-on spot for a quarterback.
The Mean Green happened to have one free that spring and didn’t mind bringing in someone who could essentially serve as a camp arm the next few seasons to help run the scout team and get receivers additional work during practice. Morris asked for the film to check the player out as they were considering a number of options across a state that is overly productive at the position.
“The guy just started laughing,” recalls Morris. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s the thing. He doesn’t have any film. But just trust me, this kid’s going to be special.’ ”
Normally that would have been the end of any conversation, even at a Group of 5 program like North Texas trying to maximize every resource available and leave no stone unturned. But the trust factor ran high between the two, so Morris was intrigued enough to see the player, Drew Mestemaker, throw in person as he narrowed down the team’s options.
That made sense. The quarterback position is the most important one on the field but also the most enigmatic. NFL teams spend millions trying to figure out which QB can be the face of the franchise and often millions more on new coaching staffs and front offices when it doesn’t work out. A good college signal-caller can be the difference between getting fired after three seasons or contending for conference titles and moving on up the coaching ladder for those with hands on a star player’s development.
Despite being a former receiver under Mike Leach at Texas Tech, Morris has a well-earned reputation as one of the best quarterback whisperers around. He recruited and coached Patrick Mahomes and Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield as an assistant in Lubbock, plucked eventual No. 1 pick Cam Ward from the obscurity of running the wing T as Incarnate Word’s head coach and made one of the few FBS offers for current Oklahoma star John Mateer when he signed out of high school with Washington State. Virginia’s Chandler Morris, who has the Cavaliers in the thick of the College Football Playoff race after spending last year in Denton, Texas, is another protégé.
The coaching Morris (no relation to Chandler) has certain nonnegotiables when he initially sets eyes on a QB, particularly a quick release. He dislikes having to tweak or coach a player’s throwing motion so having a high baseline to work with is another box to tick before diving into footwork, overall arm talent, accuracy and more. Figuring out how quickly high schoolers or transfers can process and retain information is also paramount.
Then there’s the matter of seeing it all come together up close.
“We want to see these kids throw in person. I mean, we won’t ever take a kid if I haven’t seen him throw in person live—to see the way they react, see the way they take coaching. We love them to play other sports, too,” Morris says. “We saw Mahomes play basketball. We saw Cam Ward on the basketball court. We saw Baker Mayfield on the baseball diamond. We saw John Mateer on the diamond.
“Because there’s no helmet on, you can see their facial expressions and see some leadership styles that are hard to tell during the course of a football game with a helmet on from so far away.”
Still, even for a veteran at navigating the art of finding a quarterback, the arrival of Mestemaker on campus was something practically unheard of at any level—more the stuff of Rudy than real life. He did not start a game at the position for Vandegrift High in northwest Austin (hence, no film) and played mostly safety and punter at the varsity level prior to looking for an opportunity to walk on somewhere in college. The 6' 4" Mestemaker’s last full-time starting duties at quarterback came back when he was a scrawny freshman on the school’s junior varsity “B” team.
“We saw the raw talent there. Big, strong, athletic, could make all the throws. Obviously that was on air and there’s no videotape of him, but he makes decisions and processes information in a hurry—which is one of his biggest strengths, in my opinion,” says Morris of the initial workout. “We didn’t know if he was going to be able to put it all together. Quite frankly, we weren’t expecting him to. He kind of just brought him into camp as a project and a camp arm.”
It didn’t take long for Mestemaker to go from project to building block last season. He began fall camp as a true freshman in 2024 throwing with the fifth string but quickly progressed to be the team’s primary backup by their final scrimmage ahead of Week 1. After Chandler Morris left for the portal in December, Mestemaker was given his first start behind center since ninth grade. By now a scholarship player on the team, he promptly set a school record for passing yards in a bowl game and showcased his wheels at the position, too, rushing for a wild 70-yard touchdown that may have earned him a little more social media attention than expected following a subsequent detour to a sideline trash can.
Mestemaker played a big role this year in helping North Texas to a 7–1 record, the program’s best since 1977. Last Friday against Charlotte, the kid who couldn’t even start for his high school team wound up throwing for four touchdowns plus a school- and conference-record 608 yards—the most by any FBS player in five years and the 16th most all time. The school says it was the most yards passing in a game by a freshman in the last three decades.
What stands out about Mestemaker’s rise from being the rarest of overlooked gems at the most vital of positions is that he’s actually not the only quarterback impressing from out of nowhere this season.
The banner carrier for this trend is naturally Diego Pavia, who has Vanderbilt improbably positioned to make the CFP out of the SEC after beginning his career at the New Mexico Military Institute. According to tracking data supplied by Teamworks Intelligence, the swaggering signal-caller ranks in the 97th percentile of all FBS passers for pocket awareness in 2025, a measure of a player’s ability to feel pressure and escape sacks. He’s on pace to set a number of career highs and has increased his completion percentage nearly 10% while also raising his yards per attempt.
While Pavia has become more of a known commodity nationally the further into his career he’s gone, others are jumping right onto the big stage even if they began the season well off of it. Pitt has also joined the Commodores, at least on the fringes, of the playoff discussion after it switched to true freshman Mason Heintschel behind center following two September losses under incumbent starter Eli Holstein.
Heintschel has gone 4–0 since being handed the starting reins and led the Panthers to third in the ACC’s standings behind undefeated Georgia Tech and Virginia. He’s averaged over 300 yards per game while throwing for nine touchdowns and given life to a team that has gone from dark horse to disappointing back to a threat to make it to the ACC championship game.
That’s not bad considering Pitt was Heintschel’s only power-conference offer coming out of high school, where he led Clay High School in Northeast Ohio to its first conference title in 42 years as a senior.
“Part of me wants to say I don’t know. But part of it is where I’m from in Oregon, Ohio,” Heintschel said this week about being overlooked in the recruiting process. “I tell people I’m from Oregon and they think it’s the state. I think it’s partly that … but I’m appreciative of what Pitt has done for me and what they’re doing right now. That’s a testament to the coaching staff, especially Coach [Kade] Bell and Coach [Pat Narduzzi], having that trust and belief in me to come find me and take a kid from a small town in Ohio.”
“I think it’s recruiting evaluation, I think it’s development and getting the best out of our kids,” added Narduzzi. “That’s what we do as coaches. Our job is to take the players we get and make them productive on the field.”
That’s what is also transpiring at Mississippi, which lost a first-round quarterback in Jaxson Dart over the offseason, saw its prized starter Austin Simmons suffer an ankle injury in September and had to turn to little-known backup Trinidad Chambliss to keep the Rebels alive—and thriving—in the playoff chase.
Safe to say it has actually all worked out for the Rebels, who may well have pulled the retrospective coup of the season in snagging Chambliss from the portal following a standout four-year career which culminated in leading Ferris State to another Division II title in 2024. In Oxford, Miss., the dual-threat has passed for at least 250 yards and a touchdown in each of his six starts while recording 40-plus yards on the ground in all but one game.
Even in the team’s lone loss, on the road at Georgia, Chambliss was masterful in frustrating Kirby Smart and diced up the Bulldogs defense for three scores as part of five consecutive touchdown drives to open the game. He followed that up by throwing for 315 yards to beat Oklahoma last week in Norman, Okla.
The fact that Chambliss is even at Ole Miss and performing like has been in the SEC is remarkable given the jump in competition—he was ticketed to visit Temple before the Rebels swooped in—as well as a testament to his coach’s adaptability at the position. Though Lane Kiffin has a rich history of finding talented quarterbacks over the years, dating back to the likes of Matt Leinart during his time as an assistant at USC, lately that has included more players like Chambliss who are equally dangerous scrambling as they are throwing darts outside the numbers.
“Maybe over a lot of years it’s evolved, just because of our offensive system now and how we value the ability to get out of trouble being really significant. Especially in college versus a long time ago with the really big, pro-style quarterbacks,” says Kiffin of his evaluation process. “We saw [Chambliss’s] ability to make plays and run with the ball. And he won a national championship, you know? That’s a big deal.”
That’s the goal now, no matter the level and no matter where the signal-callers come from.
It is often said that finding a quarterback is more art than science in trying to decipher a multitude of factors that separate the great ones from the types that wind up as recruiting whiffs or NFL busts. This season in college football, a handful of programs have managed to unearth some real diamonds from the rough to find success behind center, adding a unique layer to an already difficult task.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Hidden QBs Like Drew Mestemaker With No Film or Offers Became Playoff Contenders.
