What Oregon Fans Need to Know About FCS Transfer QB Dakota Prukop

For the second straight year, Oregon landed a huge victory in the quarterback free-agent market—or, at least, the closest thing college football has to free agency. 

On Tuesday, Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports reported Montana State quarterback Dakota Prukop would transfer up a level to Oregon. Prukop chose the Ducks over Alabama, Michigan and Texas. Because Prukop graduated this month, he will be eligible to play immediately in 2016. If he wins the starting job, he will succeed another FCS transfer, Vernon Adams Jr., who started for Oregon in 2015 after finishing his career at Eastern Washington.

If Prukop does arrive on campus without hiccups and starts in '16, it'll be like Oregon traded in a Bentley (Marcus Mariota) for a Ferrari (Adams) and then traded that in for a Porsche.  

The thing is the Ferrari and Porsche were once considered Ford Fiestas. 

Similar to Adams, Prukop, out of Austin's Vandegrift High School, was basically unrecruited by FBS schools. As Feldman notes, he was slender in build and overlooked by prominent in-state programs: 

"

As FOX Sports detailed last year, Prukop was a late bloomer -- about 6-feet-2, 175 pounds coming out of high school. Prukop had toyed with the idea of trying to walk on at Texas Tech or SMU. He had come from a new school that just started up in Austin -- Vandegrift -- and said it didn't have any FBS recruiters come by. 

He said he went to Texas Tech's camp and ran a 4.5, but the Red Raiders' DC eventually stopped talking to him and then got fired. In retrospect, he believes going the FCS route was the right move for him. He didn't get lost on a crowded roster with scholarship guys, and it afforded him some time to develop. "I was way behind," Prukop said.

"

But there's a nice list of current and former quarterback studs who went under-recruited out of high school: Adams, Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield (who began his career as a walk-on at Texas Tech) and Aaron Rodgers. That's not to compare Prukop to any of those players, but he's another example of how recruiting is an inexact science. It also shows what a little body mass and development can do. Some quarterbacks peak physically when they're 17. Others won't until they're a few years older. 

It also helps when you put up big numbers like Prukop did. As a redshirt junior, he passed for 3,025 yards and 28 touchdowns while rushing for 797 yards and 11 scores. That's on top of the 2,559 passing yards, 966 rushing yards and 31 touchdowns he recorded as a first-year starter in 2014. 

Timothy J. Gonzalez/Associated Press

While Prukop has improved as a passer from Year 1 as a starter to Year 2, his legs are still perhaps his biggest weapon. Speaking to Andrew Nemec of the Oregonian, Montana State receivers coach Cody Kempt, who once transferred from Oregon to MSU, said Prukop is similar to "what a lot of past quarterbacks have brought at Oregon." 

"Dakota will get outside the pocket and a lot of times use his legs to get positive yardage. Where Vernon looks to throw the football when he broke contain in the pocket, Dakota looks to run it," Kempt told Nemec. "Something Dakota has done a really good job of is continuing to develop the ability to break contain, keep his eyes downfield and throw it."

The ability to extend plays with his arm and his legs not only makes Prukop hard to physically defend in space, but forces opposing defenses to account for him at all times. Like Adams, Mariota and the long list of dual-threat quarterbacks before him, Prukop commands enough attention that defenses have to focus on stopping him. That can leave more room for skill players to get open. 

If Prukop wins the job, he'll be surrounded by an excellent supporting cast. Running backs Royce Freeman, Thomas Tyner and Taj Griffin will be back, as should a bulk of an underrated receiving unit. 

Adams was college football's most efficient passer in 2015, so there are high expectations for Prukop as he comes in to the program. But unlike Adams, Prukop should have most of the offseason to learn the offense and gain the trust of his teammates. In the long run, that should make the "quick fix" addition stable enough for Oregon to pull it off twice, as Sports on Earth's Matt Brown noted: 

There are some other concerns about what Prukop's addition means for the guys on Oregon's roster, specifically as it relates to recruiting and development. That's another topic for another day. If the Ducks do have question marks at quarterback, it would be foolish not to pursue someone of Prukop's caliber. 

Adams showed the jump from the FCS to the FBS isn't insurmountable. Prukop will try to prove the same. 

Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football. All quotes cited unless obtained firsthand. All stats courtesy of cfbstats.com and NCAA.org.