Sep. 9—An injury to Jared Taylor in the fourth quarter of a 51-14 loss at Boise State on Friday cast a shadow of uncertainty over Eastern Washington’s quarterback situation heading into this Saturday’s matchup at Northern Iowa.
But the Eagles (0-2) are hardly the only Big Sky team with a lack of resolution at football’s most important position.
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Two weeks into the college football season — three counting the “Week 0” games played two weekends before Labor Day — the majority of the Big Sky’s 12 teams are still trying to figure out what they’ve got in the quarterback room.
It’s early, of course, but two statistics show what college football’s quarterback carousel has wrought in the Big Sky: Through last weekend’s games, the league’s quarterbacks have thrown a combined 30 interceptions while connecting on just 22 touchdown passes.
Last year, over a full season — with almost entirely different quarterbacks — the league’s signal callers combined for 108 interceptions and 286 touchdowns.
The reasons for the early struggles this season are various. Idaho State redshirt junior Jordan Cooke began the year well, only for head coach Cody Hawkins to reveal that Cooke would be out with an injury for at least a month. He started the 0-3 Bengals’ first two games and threw for more than 300 yards in each, making Cooke the only Big Sky player to pass that threshold this season.
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Northern Colorado, which appeared to have defeated Pac-12 bound Colorado State last week until a last-second touchdown was overturned on replay, executed that near-upset with backup redshirt junior quarterback Eric Gibson Jr. He had replaced junior Peter Costelli, who is out for the season due to an injury he suffered the week before.Eastern Washington is in a similar position in the short-term, because Taylor will not play against Northern Iowa, EWU head coach Aaron Best said on Tuesday. Taylor’s absence sets up redshirt sophomore Nate Bell to make his first start.
“We’ll continue testing day to day to see when that timeframe (for return) comes about,” Best said. “(He will) not (play) this week. That is the timeline for right now.”
Other Big Sky teams have taken the “try anyone” approach. Sacramento State (0-2) has used both transfers Cardell Williams and Jaden Rashada, who are a combined 24-for-46 throwing the ball for two interceptions and one touchdown.Cal Poly’s Ty Dieffenbach played well enough in Week 1 to earn Big Sky Player of the Week honors, but he was removed in the first half against Utah last week and replaced by Anthony Grigsby Jr.
Four Portland State quarterbacks have attempted at least 11 passes so far, combining for five interceptions and one touchdown. The Vikings (0-3) have been outscored 161-20.
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Weber State sophomore quarterback Jackson Gilkey, who didn’t see any game action in two previous seasons at UTSA, has just been bad, completing 20 of 48 passes for 152 yards, one touchdown and five interceptions for the 0-2 Wildcats.
Of those seven teams, just two have a victory so far: Cal Poly (1-1) and Northern Colorado (1-1).
The other five teams — UC Davis (1-1), Montana (1-0), Montana State (0-2), Idaho (1-1) and Northern Arizona (1-1), all of them ranked in this week’s FCS Stats Perform Top 25 — have more stability, with each relying on a primary quarterback so far. But none are particularly tested.
Northern Arizona junior Ty Pennington, who played for head coach Brian Wright in 2023 when they were both at Pittsburg State (a Division II program in Kansas), is 43 for 63 this season with two touchdowns, one interception and 433 yards. Pennington is the league’s lone full-time returning starter at the position.
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Montana played its first game of the season on Saturday, defeating Division II Central Washington, 42-17. Keali’i Ah Yat, a redshirt sophomore, started the game, completed 14 of 24 passes for 250 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions, and drew praise afterward from Montana head coach Bobby Hauck.
“I thought he played his best game yet, and I think that the best is yet to come,” Hauck said of Ah Yat, who was playing in his 17th game for the Grizzlies. “He’s calm, focused, knew what he was doing, didn’t get rattled when things didn’t go his way on a couple of things, even the point when he made a couple mistakes, he was unfazed by it, made some good plays with his feet: all the things that good quarterbacks do.”
UC Davis redshirt freshman Caden Pinnick leads the Big Sky with four touchdown passes in two games, completing 29 of 47 passes for 303 yards (those stats don’t include his 14-of-24 performance against Mercer, which was declared a no contest due to weather conditions).
Idaho sophomore Josh Wood has completed 32 of 45 passes for three touchdowns and one interception, and he’s also rushed 17 times for 188 yards and another score, making him — through two games — the league’s most prominent dual threat quarterback.
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During his senior year at Graham-Kapowsin High School, Wood verbally committed to EWU but changed his mind when then interim offensive coordinator Pat McCann left for a job at Fresno State. Wood followed him there.
Finally, there is Justin Lamson, who transferred to Montana State from Stanford, won the starting quarterback job in preseason camp and has completed 41 of 59 passes for 321 yards. But he also has not thrown a touchdown or an interception, and he also remains unproven, with 194 pass attempts in his three-season college career.
MSU head coach Brent Vigen acknowledged Lamson’s lack of experience was at least a factor in the Bobcats’ double-overtime loss to South Dakota State on Saturday, which came a week after MSU lost at Oregon.
“Experience is the best teacher. Justin’s played some, but he hasn’t been that guy at his previous stops getting those two-minute reps, even if it’s been in practice,” Vigen said during his Monday press conference. “We’ve done a fall camp’s worth, two week’s worth of two-minutes that we, you know, have played out in the stadium, and I hope those situations have taught him some things. … If we get a similar situation down the road, I hope he can handle it.”
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Many of the games within this sample size have been played against FBS opponents, and some of those quarterbacks may prove to be stars. EWU’s Eric Barriere, MSU’s Tommy Mellott, two Walter Payton Award winners, had to establish their pedigree, too, and for a while their sample sizes were small.
But with so many of the league’s quarterbacks in the position of proving themselves, it makes the Big Sky appear even more wide open than usual.
