EVANSTON-You should know it by now: ask Northwestern head coach David Braun a question about a quarterback – any quarterback – and he is sure to mention Ryan Boe. It’s almost Pavlovian.
That was the case on Tuesday at Northwestern’s Pro Day, when I asked the Wildcats’ second-year head man about his impression of new quarterback Preston Stone. The grad transfer from SMU figures to be the starting quarterback this fall, but Braun, as is his custom, mentioned the whole room and named three of them, including his favorite redshirt freshman who saw action in just one game last season.
“What I will say is I'm really excited about the entire quarterback room,” said Braun earnestly. “I think there's really good competitive depth right now between Preston, between Jack Lausch, between Ryan Boe.”
He went on to state that Preston’s name isn’t etched in Stone as the starter quite yet. At least not publicly.
“We haven't named a starter and we won't, but Preston and Jack are getting reps with the ones, Ryan's getting a bunch of reps with the twos,” he said.
While Braun’s egalitarianism is admirable, everyone knows that just about all of the money is on Stone to start for the Wildcats at the end of August (even if he is not yet listed on NUSports.com’s roster while other players, some of whom have graduated or even transferred, still are). This is a guy who has thrown for more than 4,000 yards in his career, with 35 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He was a Rivals four-star prospect in the Class of 2021. He went 13-3 as a starter at SMU.
In terms of resume, this position battle is no contest.
Lausch did the best he could last season with a shaky offensive line in his first real taste of playing quarterback, but he wound up with the lowest quarterback rating and the lowest completion percentage (53.7%) in the Big Ten. Most importantly, the Wildcats finished 128th out of 133 FBS teams in scoring at 17.8 points per game.
As for Boe, he has thrown 13 passes in his career, completing four of them for 42 yards, with one interception. It’s safe to say he has a ways to go.
Braun likes to keep his cards close to the vest when talking about his quarterbacks – or about players at any position, for that matter. But he did disclose some encouraging news when comparing Stone to another recent Northwestern grad transfer quarterback.
“I've been very impressed with Preston's ability to come in and pick up a new offense and seem comfortable,” said Braun. “Anytime that a quarterback transitions into a new offense, there tends to just be a time of adjustment.
“Ben Bryant maybe even experienced that a little bit when he came in prior to the 2023 season. But Preston's ability to come in and feel comfortable within the offense and process, and get the ball out of his hands quickly has been something that's really stood out to me.”
That’s high praise. Bryant did quite well in his lone season with the Wildcats in 2023, leading a team that was predicted to finish in the Big Ten basement to eight wins and a bowl game.
Later, Braun said that Stone could have the talent to play on Sundays.
"Some of the things I'm seeing out of Preston Stone right now would tell me that he's got a chance to play football beyond his college years."
That's good news for a program that lives and dies with quarterback play.
Since all-time leading passer Clayton Thorson ran out of eligibility after the 2018 season, Northwestern’s football fortunes have followed a very familiar pattern. When they have an experienced veteran quarterback behind center, they win. When they don’t – well, it’s going to be a long year.
In 2020, Peyton Ramsey came to NU after three years at Indiana, almost all of them as a starter. He led the Wildcats to a 7-2 mark, the Big Ten West title, a victory in the Citrus Bowl and a No. 10 final AP ranking, the program’s highest since 1995.
In 2023, Bryant came in after five years of college ball, with a year as a starter at both Eastern Michigan and Cincinnati. He led the Wildcats to a 8-5 record, was named the MVP of the Las Vegas Bowl after beating Utah and helped Braun win the Big Ten Coach of the Year award.
In the other four years during that stretch, when the Wildcats didn’t have a savvy QB at the controls, they went a combined 11-37. They never won more than four games in any single season, including a 1-11 disaster in 2022 in previous head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s final season. The difference is night and day.
Those results aren’t all on the quarterback’s play, of course; Northwestern’s defense also had a severe downturn in two of those seasons (2021 and 2022). But the bottom line is that when there was a young, less experienced quarterback in the huddle, the offense struggled to score the Wildcats were difficult to watch.
Stone doesn’t have quite as much starting experience as Ramsey or Bryant did, but he started 16 college games over four years and has 450 pass attempts and nearly 100 rushes in his career. That’s a lot of football.
Still, if you take Braun at his word – and, without any open practices, what choice do we have? – Stone hasn’t nailed down the starting job yet. It's only March, of course, but you can bet that Stone will be taking the first snap against Tulane for the season opener on Aug. 30 in New Orleans.
There isn’t much doubt that Lausch will wind up as the No. 2 quarterback, either. Braun and offensive coordinator Zach Lujan probably wouldn’t have risked allowing him to play baseball for Northwestern this spring if they really thought he might start. (Lausch is the starting centerfielder and is hitting .231 for the Cats so far this spring.)
But Lausch does have a year in Lujan’s offense under his belt, and you have to figure that there will be a spot for him as the team’s Wildcat quarterback, like he was during his first two years on campus. He is still a dynamite runner.
Braun, as usual, had nothing but positive things to say about the junior from Chicago Brother Rice.
“Jack Lausch right now, he's balancing baseball, he's balancing football. I don't know if there's anyone else in the country that could be doing what Jack Lausch is doing right now,” Braun said. “But Jack Lausch is playing his best football that I've ever seen him play. And I think some of it is, Jack's just showing up and having fun and playing the game that he enjoys.”
As for Boe, Braun said he’s “going through some ups and downs right now, as any young quarterback would. But some of the flashes that we've seen out of Ryan Boe gives us a lot of excitement about where that quarterback room is going to be in good hands for the long haul.”
That may be true for the distant future, but Braun’s focus needs to be a lot shorter term. He’s coming off of a 4-8 season and has a new boss in athletic director Mark Jackson that didn’t hire him and no doubt wants to make sure there’s a good product on the field in 2026, when the new, $850 million Ryan Field opens.
Braun was also given a big NIL budget and a streamlined admissions process this offseason to help lure transfers. He’s been able to land 12 of them so far, and, for the first time ever, many of them enrolled in January and were on the field in March for the start of spring ball.
The program is also committed to fully funding revenue sharing this summer to pay athletes, to the tune of an expected $20.5 million. A lot of major donors have pumped major dollars into the Northwestern program and, as the saying goes, to whom much is given, much is expected.
We don’t know if Braun is feeling pressure to win this season, but it certainly would behoove him. And while he doesn’t have to name in a starter in the spring, he knows that Stone gives the Wildcats their best chance of putting more wins on the board in the fall.
