After spurning Texas, Ohio State star recruit Quinn Ewers is ready to rule Elite 11

By RJ Young
FOX Sports College Football Writer

Prediction: Five-star prospect Quinn Ewers is going to win the most prestigious recruiting competition for quarterbacks and be named 2021 Elite 11 MVP when the competition concludes on July 3.

And Ewers is not just any five-star. He’s one of the best five-stars ever.

He is only the sixth recruit and second quarterback to earn a 1.000 rating, according to the Composite Player Rankings. The other five were Vince Young, Ernie Sims, Rashan Gary, Jadeveon Clowney and Robert Nkemdiche.

This means Ewers is rated higher coming out of high school than were Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Terrelle Pryor, Adrian Peterson, Joe McKnight, Leonard Fournette and USC true freshman Korey Foreman, among others. All of those players are ranked among the top 20 recruits of all time.

Ewers is from Southlake, Texas, and Southlake Carroll High School. He committed to Texas last summer before decommitting, which is only a word in the world of college sports recruiting. A couple of months later, he flipped his commitment to Ohio State, where it seems his commitment is going to stick.

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The 6-foot-3, 206-pound QB finished his junior season in the 6A-1 state title game, in which he and the Southlake Carroll Dragons lost to fellow Elite 11 finalist Cade Klubnik and Austin Westlake. Klubnik is committed to Clemson.

Given that he is a Texas native, Ewers' flipping his commitment and his subsequent explanation as to why reflects a branding problem for Texas football programs, including not just UT but also Texas A&M. That problem won’t get fixed until they can unseat Oklahoma or Alabama or LSU or Georgia or, for that matter, do what the reigning Big 12 champion has failed to do — until this year, it’s gonna happen, I believe — which is win a College Football Playoff national title.

In May, 247 Sports asked Ewers why he thought more highly regarded players weren’t committing to Texas programs.

"Probably because a Texas team hasn’t been in the running for a national championship in a little while. And I don’t know about other guys, but I just … want to compete at the highest, highest level."

He’s right, you know.

Texas hasn’t played for a national title since 2009 (when Ewers was 5 years old) and hasn’t won one since 2005 (when Ewers was 1 year old).

Ampersand U has won just one national title in its history — in 1939, during a World War, and more than 30 years before most predominantly white institutions integrated their football programs.

You simply cannot ask a teenager to recall your glory years and your history as a means of recruitment.

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It’s not incumbent upon them to know who you are, not when you’re doing the recruiting. It’s incumbent upon you to convince them your program is the place to be.

Now, Texas and Texas A&M aren’t exactly hurting in recruiting. They’ve got receipts on the trail.

Since 2018, the Longhorns have finished 15th or better each year and peaked at No. 3. A&M has finished 17th or better in that same stretch, though most would tell you it has become the kind of program that we expect to finish among the top 10 in the team rankings annually — just like Texas.

Both programs get exactly whom they should. But the receipts bear out differently in quarterback development, especially stacked against Ohio State.

Buckeyes coach Ryan Day has seen both of the quarterbacks he has chosen to start at Ohio State drafted in the first round: Dwayne Haskins and Fields.

Before Haskins was selected, the Buckeyes hadn’t produced a first-round quarterback since Art Schlichter in 1982.

Conversely, A&M hasn’t had a quarterback drafted in the first round since 2014, when Cleveland took Johnny Manziel. Ewers was 10 years old then.

Texas hasn’t had a QB drafted in the first round since Young in 2006. Ewers was 2 then.

In the end, it isn't a recruiting argument. It’s a question of development, as in, what teams are developing the recruits they sign?

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Star receiver Garrett Wilson famously told Rivals, as a recruit, that he didn’t choose Texas after finishing high school in Austin because "I want to be developed." And he has been — at Ohio State.

But the main reason Ewers is going to win Elite 11 MVP is based on the evaluation system for that competition.

The quarterback camp claims that 50% of the Elite 11 staff’s evaluation comes from watching junior film and performance on the field, and the other 50% comes from in-camp evaluations and "traits." Traits include the stuff we can’t teach, such as arm strength, height, weight, speed and vision.

But before we dispense with the Elite 11 — like, say the Heisman Trophy — consider that it is a good indicator of the player voters will pick to win the Heisman and which quarterbacks will be first-round picks.

Of the past 14 Heisman winners, 12 are camp alumni, and the competition has a large enough sample to be more than legit. In fact, Elite 11 has been around since 1999, almost as long as the internet’s recruiting rankings.

Ohio State's most recent Elite 11 MVP is C.J. Stroud, who won the award in 2019. He is the player who exemplifies what the contest is supposed to be about: rising through evaluation against other elite talents, not picking the consensus choice.

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I’m pointing this out because it's the part of the competition's evaluation that the haters try to discount the most, without pointing out how often Elite 11 evaluators get it right. Put down your "Haterade" for just a moment, peep this game, and take it back to the streets to put your homies on some.

Stroud began 2019 ranked outside the top 500 in the country, rode the Elite 11 circuit to a No. 42 overall ranking and won Elite 11 MVP as a three-star recruit. He is now the front-runner to start at quarterback for the Buckeyes in September.

Other Elite 11 Finals alumni include Andrew Luck, Trevor Lawrence, Matt Stafford, Jameis Winston, Matt Leinart, Geno Smith, Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow, Vince Young and Troy Smith.

And that’s before we get to Haskins, Fields, Buckeyes quarterback Kyle McCord and Oklahoma QBs Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams. There's a lot of talent on that list of names.

It’s not nothing to be an Elite 11 Finalist, let alone to win Elite 11 MVP.

For Quinn Ewers, it will be only the beginning.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The No. 1 Ranked Show with RJ Young." Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young, and subscribe to "The RJ Young Show" on YouTube. He is not on a StepMill.