Could Louisville land SMU grad transfer Ben Hicks?
Former SMU Mustang Ben Hicks will visit Louisville football this weekend.
Louisville football and coach Scott Satterfield will host SMU grad transfer Ben Hicks this weekend, as first reported by Jody Demling of Cardinal Authority.
Hicks is a 3 year starter for SMU who, through 37 career games and 33 starts, became the Mustangs’s all-time leading passer. He threw for 9,081 yards and 71 touchdowns to 34 interceptions.
Hicks was a 3-star QB out of high school, and committed to SMU over Texas Tech, Houston, and Indiana, among others. He is definitely a traditional pocket-style passer. Hicks has the ability to roll out and get away from trouble, but he has -110 career rushing yards. He brings to the table the ability to read defenses well and make throws on target downfield.
It is hard to tell at this juncture what Hicks would bring to the table for Louisville. He is clearly a highly-skilled player, but is not going to blow anyone away. Think of him as a Will Gardner or Kyle Bolin type of player who isn’t going to be a high completion percentage guy or be a do-everything guy, but he would have potential to battle for a starting quarterback spot. He would be coming to a team where everyone is competing for a starting spot under a new staff, and could use that to his advantage.
Louisville may not be what Hicks is looking for, though. In Louisville, he’d have the chance to compete for a spot and potentially play against Clemson, Notre Dame, Florida State, Miami, and a host of other schools that he wouldn’t have the chance to play at SMU. On the other hand, Hicks isn’t guaranteed a starting spot by any means.
Any quarterback deciding to take a graduate transfer year is probably looking for a place that he is almost certainly going to play immediately. For Hicks, Louisville still has Puma Pass, Malik Cunningham, freshman signee Evan Conley, and likely one more freshman or transfer. Hicks would be competing for a spot that will be earned, and not given.
Hicks seems determined to find a place that he knows he has job security. At SMU, although he leads the school in nearly every statistical passing category, he was supplanted by redshirt freshman William Brown after poor showings against North Texas, TCU, and Michigan in SMU’s first three games of 2017. When Hicks found out that there would again be an open competition for the QB spot this offseason, he appeared to see the writing on the wall that maybe Brown was catching closing the gap and that the coaches were looking forward to what the future could look like with Brown.
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Louisville would probably take Hicks in a heartbeat. He would have a bevvy of talented and starving wide receivers to throw to, which is what the Cards truly need. They need someone who can get the ball consistently in the right spots for Louisville’s stud wide outs and quick running backs out of the backfield. If he didn’t win the starting job, Hicks would serve as an experienced back up. However, this seems to be a matter of whether Hicks believes that he can win the job and finish his career the right way.
Regardless of his decision, it is positive to see that Louisville is getting recruits on campus who can make a difference right away. Having the potential to make it to a bowl game once again in 2019 would be a huge step forward for the Cards.