This battle for the position of full-time quarterback at Northwestern just got a lot more interesting.
Former South Carolina defender Ryan Hilinski is going to Evanston, Illinois, to challenge for a place that is at stake, with the departure of Peyton Ramsey, who helped the Wildcats win a Big Ten West title during their only season on the show.
Ramsey went through 1,733 yards and 12 touchdowns with eight interceptions after moving to Northwestern, Indiana. He won his initial job in 2020 instead of another quarterback who was transferred from another Power 5 program in South Carolina.
Former Clemson quarterback Hunter Johnson completed 46 percent of his passes for 432 yards with a touchdown and four interceptions in six games in 2019, four of which he started. He appeared in two games last season, but recorded no statistics.
Johnson, a five-star recruit from Brownsburg, Indiana, in the class of 2017, lasted only one season at Clemson. He completed 21 of 27 passes for 234 yards with two touchdowns and a freshman interception, and left five months later Trevor Lawrence registered.
Former NCAA transfer rules required Johnson to stay out in 2018, when Hilinski was finishing his senior year at Orange Lutheran High School in California. He committed in April of that year, just over a month before Johnson left Clemson.
Over 11 matches in 2019, Hilinski pitched for 2,357 yards with 11 touchdowns and five interceptions. He only tried six passes in two games last season, before joining the NCAA Transfer Portal.
Now, Hilinski is competing to take on an attack that has not ended a season with more than 24.1 points per game since 2017. The Wildcats’ 4.79 yards per play in 2020 was 110th in the country, but it was the best average finish in the season since 2017.
The third name in the battle is Andrew Marty, a former three-star recruit from Cincinnati, Ohio, who ran for more yards (225) and scored more touchdowns on the ground (four) than he spent at Northwestern. Over the course of two seasons, Marty completed 14 of 22 passes for 150 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions. He did not attempt a pass in any of the three games he played last season.
Northwest coach Pat Fitzgerald, whose teams have a 19-16 record in the past three seasons, are not afraid to win with a good save. The quarterback’s play, however, is better to look like what Ramsey set up in 2020, at least that’s what the pattern looks like.
People on both sides of the state of Palmetto now have a root interest. For the state of South Carolina, the most significant brand of northwest football is still located on Rock Hill, but everyone here will have to start paying a little more attention to what’s going on with the Big Ten version.