College Football recruiting: Analyzing 4 2024 QB commitments

There has been a crazy run on quarterback commitments this week in the 2024 college football recruiting class and we offer our thoughts on all the action on Saturday. 

It’s been a wild 24 hours when it comes to college football recruiting and the quarterback position in particular with four new pledges on Saturday alone.

The dominos started to fall earlier this week when five-star quarterback in the 2024 college football recruiting class, Dylan Raiola, announced his commitment to Georgia.

It was expected, but it still led to some shakeups. The biggest came on Friday as Daniel Kaelin announced his commitment from Missouri. However, the quarterback from Nebraska wasn’t on the market long, as he announced his commitment to the Huskers and Matt Rhule on Saturday.

All of a sudden, Nebraska football went from desperate at quarterback in the 2024 class, to landing one of the two QBs it offered and the No. 4 player in the state. It’s a big win for Matt Rhule and even though Kaelin is a high three-star, he’s got future starter written all over him.

The highest-ranked quarterback to commit as part of the 2024 college football recruiting class on Saturday was Michael Van Buren. The four-star ranked 11th at the position according to the 247 Sports composite rankings, has been trending to Oregon, which is where he ended up.

Van Buren should be a perfect fit in Oregon, but it was a blow to Penn State, which was viewed as the favorite for the Maryland signal caller not that long ago.

Yet, the Nittany Lions rebounded with a commitment of their own in the 2024 college football recruiting class at quarterback, beating out Clemson and a slew of other big-name programs for the commitment of the three-star QB Ethan Grunkemeyer, who is ranked 575th overall and comes from the state of Ohio.

It’s a nice rebound for Penn State and another frustrating loss for Clemson, which has whiffed on Jadyn Davis, Walker White, DJ Lagaway, and now Ethan Grunkemeyer. It’s been a rough go.

However, another ACC landed a four-star quarterback on Saturday and it wasn’t Clemson, it was Duke as Tyler Cherry, who has been trending to the Blue Devils, made a verbal commitment.

Cherry is from the state of Indiana and ranked 360th overall in the 2024 college football recruiting class. He also chose Duke over Penn State, Michigan State, and Indiana.

The biggest winner from Saturday’s fireworks: Nebraska football

Oregon and Duke both have strong cases to make, but it’s not like Oregon didn’t just land a top-100 quarterback in the 2023 class or Luke Moga, a three-star in 2023.

The Ducks wanted Van Buren, but they didn’t need him as badly as Nebraska football needed to get Daniel Kaelin. If the Huskers weren’t able to flip him from Missouri, who knows where they would have gone at quarterback?

There was a big quality dropoff in my opinion between Kaelin and the next option. On top of that, Kaelin is an in-state kid and should improve Nebraska’s chances with his teammates and top-5 2024 recruits in the state of Nebraska — Isaiah McMorris and Dae’vonn Hall.

People questioned Matt Rhule’s recruiting ability but so far, he’s done an exceptional job with Nebraska football and this might be his most impressive recruiting win yet.