Ole Miss had a top-15 recruiting class on National Signing Day but there was one glaring omission: No quarterback.
It was not from lack of trying.
Coach Lane Kiffin and his staff did everything to flip Auburn high four-star quarterback commit Deuce Knight down the stretch and after multiple visits to Oxford – including for the Egg Bowl – there was some optimism that Knight might flip.
Kiffin had visited with him. The Lucedale (Miss.) George County standout had been committed to Notre Dame for more than a year but flipped to Auburn in early October. It was then that Ole Miss got even more heavily involved and tried to flip him again.
It didn’t happen.
MORE OLE MISS: Full 2025 recruiting class | Breaking down Rebels’ No. 14 recruiting class
At his signing day press conference, Kiffin talked about the quarterback market and the brave new world of NIL payments. Not mentioning Knight or any other quarterback name, the Rebels are taking a unique approach to paying up for high school quarterbacks – essentially deciding to not pay top dollar.
Kiffin feels his analytics and history are on his side. With so many quarterbacks hitting the portal, is throwing a high percentage of your money at a high school quarterback always the right move? He doesn’t seem to think so.
“I’ve said now for two years you have to be really careful with that, with high school quarterbacks,” Kiffin said. “Sometimes we’re on a guy and the price gets too high. That’s the world we live in now and you have salary caps.
“When you put a ton of money into that, it’s such a transfer position that usually doesn’t play in Year 1 and look around the country, what you’re about to see coming up here, you’re going to see a lot of these high-priced guys from a year ago go in the portal.
“So they just blew all that money. A guy we’re recruiting, when the price gets too high and the other school wants to pay him it doesn’t really fit in the salary cap model of retention over time.”
Kiffin might be on to something.
There are already rumors swirling around Nebraska QB Dylan Raiola and the portal and even though the family denies any movement, there are definitely programs reaching out. Julian Sayin signed with Alabama but left before he could unpack his bags for Ohio State once coach Nick Saban retired. Does anyone think Air Noland will stay with the Buckeyes if Sayin wins the starting job next season after former high four-star Devin Brown already announced he’s hitting the transfer portal?
At the top of the 2023 class, three of the five five-stars have transferred. Dante Moore has gone from UCLA to Oregon, Malachi Nelson is the backup at Boise State and after being benched early in the season only to be brought back in as the starter, Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold is off to the portal as well.
Also in 2023, Eli Holstein has left Alabama and is the starter at Pitt and Jaden Rashada has already gone from Florida to Arizona State to Georgia.
In 2022, former five-star Walker Howard has already bounced around a bunch, Brown is leaving Ohio State after the bowl game and then Tayven Jackson, Maalik Murphy and Brady Allen are other big names to go into portal. The top dual-threat quarterback in that cycle, Conner Weigman, plans to leave Texas A&M.
“We’re kind of new-age in analytics and salary cap and roster management,” Kiffin said. “A lot of people still do the same thing – we have to sign this many people and this position and pay them whatever it takes.”
Kiffin won’t do that.
Of course, a star transfer quarterback Jaxson Dart has been leading the Rebels’ offense and Ole Miss did have Howard on the roster until he announced he’d be going back to the portal but this looks now like Austin Simmons’ team.
Simmons signed with the Rebels as a traditional high school recruit in 2023, and surely is receiving some kind of NIL compensation, but what the 2025 five-stars were getting was pretty insane.
Oracle’s billionaire founder Larry Ellison came in to get Bryce Underwood for Michigan. Colorado flipped Julian Lewis from USC and some of those rumored NIL details are pretty striking. Kiffin hinted that Knight got a pretty fat check from Auburn.
The Ole Miss coach got out-bid for Knight, maybe, and didn’t seem totally clear on whether the Rebels would get back in the portal market for another quarterback.
Either way, quarterbacks are getting paid – high school or portal – and Ole Miss needs to figure out a way to play that game or not.
“These portal (quarterbacks) are going to make unbelievable amounts of money,” Kiffin said. “What’s already being floated out there to these kids, what I know is already being floated out there.”
