Jerry Mack stuck to his stock answer on the quarterback situation on the first day of Kennesaw State’s camp, letting us know that the competition to replace Amari Odom is still even.
“We have a two-headed race right now between Rickie Collins and Landon Varnes. Both of those guys have been doing a really good job.
We talked about some of the things that they need to to get better at in the summertime, and so far, what we've seen after the first day, they have taken those steps. Now we got 15, 16, whatever more practices left. It'll be interesting to see just kind of how that continues to develop and how that continues to grow. We feel very good about both of those guys, how they’re attacking the playbook and their leadership right now.
They just got to keep growing and really giving us some information to see how they're going to handle certain situations as far from a decision-making standpoint. That's what we're really trying to evaluate. The talent is the talent. Both of those guys can throw the ball. I mean - Ricky was a big-time prospect coming out of high school. He's played in the ACC, landing you know through almost 4000 yards in junior college. So throwers off the ball, passers off the football - that's not the problem. The thing we try and evaluate is exactly how they're going to take our information and then make the best decisions based off what they see every day.”
That’s been essentially the exact public message since spring ball ended. Mack talked about the QB competition with Phil Steele back in April, then hit the same two-man race, they attacked their deficiencies notes at CUSA Kickoff, a recent KSU alumni event, and on the radio in middle Georgia. To this point nobody on the KSU beat - if you could call it that - has asked Mack a follow-up on the specific areas where each candidate needs to improve. The media stuff is a conversation for another day, but I enjoy the fact that KSU has cultivated a “beat” - if you could call it that - with absolutely zero interest in this year’s team.
If you want to decode Mack’s talking points, I think we have a little bit of preventative maintenance to elevate both the Syracuse transfer and the up-and-coming JUCO prospect onto the same level until they can see a couple preseason scrimmages with live bullets flying. Collins appears to be the favorite, though, and I think there’s a few reasons for optimism if the Syracuse transfer does win the job.
I will buy that the race is incomplete, since the obvious reasons to bring in Collins will have been on display throughout the offseason, tempting Mack to name him QB1 like a siren song. Mack’s “the talent is the talent” line from his QB assessment leads us in that direction. What would KSU learn about Collins during summertime 7-on-7 and routes on air that they didn’t already know when Mack signed him in January? The dude was four-star recruit and an Elite 11 finalist who impressed during the pro day-style workout and won the target competition in a class that included Oregon’s Dante Moore. He’s always going to look good spinning the ball outside live environments. Varnes is in a somewhat similar boat, coming off two JUCO seasons where he lit up the scoreboard (58 passing TDs) but also threw 24 picks.
Mack’s patience also makes a ton of sense when you factor how Kennesaw’s QB situation played out in the early stages of last season. He waited to publicly discuss Odom’s summertime growth until much later, after Williams was all but anointed as the starter with a day-in-the-life documentary, uniform launch, and more. DWII was the guy…until he misfired a few times against Wake and then was pulled after two snaps in his return to Indiana. That early public push made sense: KSU’s 2025 squad likely needed Williams to be the summertime center of gravity coming out of the offensive disaster in the first FBS season. Let’s throw a QB out there as the main character to signal to fans that things can improve. This year, there’s enough leadership - and proof of concept - elsewhere in the building that the staff can get away with taking some extra time to settle on the starter.
Collins’ own experience last season could also factor in how Mack’s evaluating and discussing the battle. He’s coming off a year at Syracuse where he was announced as QB1 during spring ball, attended ACC media day, then lost the starting job to Steve Angeli after the Notre Dame transfer enrolled during the summer. Collins replaced Angeli after injury and put up a handful of infamous box scores that led to some brutal online treatment from Orange fans.
By the time there was a public quarterback battle at both locations, the perception was that the expected starters lost - Williams in Kennesaw and Collins in Syracuse. By framing this year’s QB race as a dead heat, Mack sets up KSU’s eventual starter as somebody who actually won, while also elevating the eventual backup if the staff does need to make a midseason change. We can check back in after a couple weeks to see if there’s cause for concern.
