January 1, 2018 marked an inflection point in modern college football. The day saw two very different College Football Playoff semifinals take place with Georgia’s dominant run game taking down Oklahoma in an overtime thriller and Alabama beating No. 1 seed Clemson in a defensive struggle.

To call that Alabama-Clemson game a defensive struggle may be too kind. The offensive play was pungent. Just two touchdowns were scored on offense with quarterbacks Jalen Hurts and Kelly Bryant combining to pass for 244 yards on 60 attempts. Despite advancing to the finals, the game marked the second consecutive contest Alabama had struggled to move the ball and scored 14 points on offense.

In the game’s aftermath I tweeted, “Will be interesting to watch QB situations at Bama, Clemson and UGA next year and moving forward. Incumbent starters on winning teams with more talented backups looming.”

The three incumbent starters in question were Jalen Hurts (Alabama), Kelly Bryant (Clemson) and Jake Fromm (Georgia). The looming backups were then-freshman Tua Tagovailoa and the two highest-rated high school quarterback prospects in 247Sports’ existence – Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields.

A similar storyline was brewing at Ohio State that season with J.T. Barrett entrenched as the starter for the Buckeyes despite backups Dwayne Haskins and Joe Burrow being perceived as talent upgrades in real time.

We all know what happened next. It’s the story of college football’s last three seasons.

- A week later, Tagovailoa replaced Hurts and led Alabama to a miraculous comeback win over Fromm and Georgia in the championship game. Tagovailoa led Alabama back to the College Football Playoff Final as a sophomore. In his time as a starter at Alabama, he posted two of the three most efficient quarterback seasons in the sport’s history en route to leading the Crimson Tide to a 22-2 record those years.

- Lawrence took over for Bryant in the first month of the 2018 season and led the Tigers to one title and to tonight, where they’re on the brink of another. He has yet to lose a game as the Tigers’ starter (25-0). Even if Clemson loses to LSU tonight, Lawrence has a very real shot of ending his Clemson career with the best win percentage among quarterbacks in college football history, breaking Kellen Moore’s record.

- Barrett graduated at Ohio State, giving way to Haskins, which prompted Burrow’s transfer to LSU. Haskins was a Heisman finalist and first round pick after just one season as a starter in Columbus. Burrow’s second season at LSU has been one for the ages, as he and the Tigers have shattered records en route to a title game berth and Heisman Trophy. His 77.6 completion percentage, 5,208 passing yards, 55 touchdowns and 204.6 passer efficiency rating are among the best ever and he’s the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.

- Georgia missed the 2018 playoffs after losing to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. With Fromm maintaining his grip on the Bulldogs’ starting job, Fields sought a transfer to Ohio State to fill the void left by Haskins early entry to the NFL. Fields was a finalist for the Heisman Trophy and led the Buckeyes to a playoff berth during his first season in Columbus. Like Lawrence, he’ll be back in 2020 for what should be his final college season. Fromm finished his collegiate career by helping Georgia to a Sugar Bowl win over Baylor before opting to forgo his senior season and enter the NFL Draft.

There’s at least one overarching lesson to be taken from the musical chairs among these top collegiate passer: You cannot wait to play a top talent at quarterback regardless of an incumbent starter, especially at a program where the mandate is to win championships. If you do, there’s a good chance the more talented backup will end up playing (and possibly winning championships) for someone else.

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Opting to go with the less experienced signal caller is antithetical to most coaches’ natural instincts.

It took 10 consecutive quarters of bad offense and a two-score title game deficit for Nick Saban to replace Hurts with Tagovailoa. Urban Meyer stuck with Barrett over Haskins or Burrow in 2017 after scoring zero points against Clemson in the prior season’s semifinal and an early season loss to Oklahoma. The Buckeyes would go on to get blown out by Iowa in November. They ended 2017 with two losses and outside the playoff. Kirby Smart stood pat with Fromm – a year later, Fields is at Ohio State and Fromm is off to the NFL. On the flipside, Dabo Swinney seemed to learn from being shut out of the endzone against Alabama in 2018, making the move to Lawrence fairly early. He hasn’t lost a game since.

When these programs get their hands on an elite quarterback, they should seek to maximize that window, particularly during his seasons as an underclassman.

If recent history is any indication, high school quarterbacks are coming into college more prepared than ever before. Spread offenses have placed more value on the position and make for an easier learning curve. The excuse of not being able to use a full playbook early on falls flat and is much more of a coaching problem than a personnel issue. True freshman quarterbacks have won the last two titles, with both being former five-star prospects. If a freshman quarterback hits in that fashion, you also have to operate under the assumption they’ll likely go pro at the first opportunity.

This is compounded by the preponderance and success of quarterback transfers in the last decade and only exacerbated by the recent emergence of the NCAA’s Transfer Portal. The last three Heisman Trophy Winners – Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Joe Burrow – were all transfers who spent multiple seasons at their second school. Five of the last eight Heisman finalist quarterbacks were transfers. The transfer market has given quarterbacks agency to run back their recruitment and seek out a better situation.

As we turn the page on this cycle of quarterback shuffling, it will be interesting to see if coaches learn and adjust their mentality in handling transitions at the position.

One of the big-picture storylines of the 2020 recruiting cycle has been the further emergence of a top tier of five programs – Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and LSU have the best recruiting classes by a fair margin. This is a reflection of what we’ve seen on the field from these teams over the past few seasons. And when it comes to on-field play and ultimate success, the primary differentiator between these programs is the quarterback. The talent gap is such that these programs aren’t often put to the test until the end of the season. They can roll up wins during the regular season with a less talented incumbent starter before losing to a more talented quarterback in crunch time. It’s unlikely we see a scenario where an undrafted Jacob Coker beats a team helmed by a future first-rounder in Deshaun Watson replicated any time in the foreseeable future.

The most analogous situation on the horizon may be at Alabama, where incoming five-star Bryce Young should compete with Mac Jones for the starting job in 2020. As a three-game starter, Jones doesn’t have near the on-field bonafides of a Jalen Hurts, JT Barrett, Jake Fromm or Kelly Bryant. Young enrolled at Alabama last week as the most ready-to-play quarterback in the 2020 recruiting cycle. Nick Saban has seen the benefits from going with the inexperienced talent first-hand and at this point it would be an upset to not see Young as the starter in Tuscaloosa.

Hopefully other coaches who seek to win championships will do the same when faced with similar circumstances, for their own sake.