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Nevada Football: Previewing The Quarterback Position
Looking at the battle to see who will start at quarterback for the Nevada Wolf Pack in 2019.
Contact/Follow @BrandonGBlake & @MWCwire
Who Is Going To Start At Quarterback For Nevada?
With the 2019 football season fast approaching, we will take a look at the position groups for the Nevada Wolf Pack. The next position group we will look for the Wolf Pack is the quarterback position.
The quarterback position for Nevada is the most interesting position to watch for heading into the 2019 season. At the start of fall camp, three quarterbacks were competing for the starting job but now it is down to two quarterbacks. News broke on Saturday per Chris Murray of Nevada Sports Net, that Cristian Solano, the perceived favorite to be the starting quarterback for the Wolf Pack, suffered a broken hand and will require surgery.
Wolf Pack head coach Jay Norvell said in a statement on Saturday that they hope Solano can return in time for Nevada to open Mountain West conference play. Now, the race for the starting quarterback job for Nevada is down to two players who have thrown a combined one pass at FBS level and those players are Malik Henry and Carson Strong.
Strong is the quarterback who has completed a pass at the FBS level as he completed a four yard pass in the Wolf Pack’s blowout victory over Portland State last season. Strong possess a nice throwing arm and has the ability to be an accurate passer as he completed over 69 percent of his passes during his playing career at Wood High School in Vacaville, California.
Malik Henry is also challenging for the starting QB job for the Wolf Pack. Henry’s collegiate journey has been well documented. Henry was a highly touted quarterback prospect coming out of Long Beach, California when he committed to Florida State back in 2016. At Florida State, he was suspended for violating team rules and eventually transferred out of Florida State to Independence Community College in Kansas. Independence Community College was the location for the popular Netflix show “Last Chance U” where Henry was one of the players on the team that was featured on the show .
During his time at Independence, Henry was seen as a moody malcontent who got into arguments with the coaching staff and his own teammates before eventually getting dismissed from the team. Henry eventually walked on to Nevada and while at first he looked like a longshot to be the starter, he now has a chance to become the starter if he can beat out Carson Strong during Fall camp.
Outside of Henry and Carson Strong, the other quarterbacks for Nevada are also very short on FBS experience. Hamish McClure, the son of Nevada’s offensive line coach Angus McClure, is a redshirt freshman who transferred from Sacramento State and Austin Kirksey is a true freshman from Marietta, Georgia where in high school, he threw for almost 5,000 yards and tallied 54 career touchdowns.
At the start of fall camp for the Wolf Pack, it was a three person race to see who would be the starting quarterback with Cristian Solano being seen as the favorite to win the starting job. Now with Solano out with a broken hand, it is down to two quarterbacks with minimal FBS experience. Carson has the arm strength while Henry has the talent to become the starter but a serious question in regards to his maturity looms over his head.
Whoever is named the starting quarterback for Nevada will be leading potentially one of the more explosive offenses in the Mountain West and it is up to whoever that starter is to see that the Wolf Pack can live up to that potential in 2019.
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