National Buzz is Growing Around New Virginia Tech QB Ethan Grunkemeyer

Virginia Tech’s quarterback play has had its ups and downs over the past decade with various quarterbacks having their moments but only two over the past decade+ have played at an All-ACC level in Jerod Evans and Hendon Hooker, who coincidentally led VT to two of its most successful seasons during the past 14 seasons.

However, the Hokies may have their next big thing at quarterback in Penn State transfer Ethan Grunkemeyer.

Grunkemeyer took a couple games to find his footing with the Nittany Lions after Drew Allar went down for the season, but the then redshirt freshman QB eventually got rolling and put up some impressive performances to help the Nittany Lions rally and reach a bowl game.

Grunkemeyer threw for 1,339 yards, eight touchdowns, and four interceptions with a 69.1% completion rate over the course of 11 games, though most of those numbers came from the seven starts he made after Allar’s injury.

One of the most encouraging things is that Grunkemeyer did show signs of growth as the season progressed with no interceptions over his final four starts. It did help that his final four opponents weren’t as tough as the three top 25 teams he faced initially in Iowa, Ohio State, and Indiana. Even with that Grunkemeyer, didn’t have a completion rate below 61% over his final six starts including completion rates above 67% in five of those games, two of which were Ohio State and Indiana.

His 69.1% completion rate is also better than the school record completion rate (minimum 150 pass attempts) set by Hendon Hooker at 65.3% during the 2020 season.

Grunkemeyer has also received a decent amount of praise over the course of the offseason as a young quarterback to watch. The beginning of that praise came with Grunkemeyer being ranked as a top 60 overall transfer by 247 Sports.

It grew this week when Fox Sports’ lead college football color commentator Joel Klatt shared his praise for Grunkemeyer during a segment where he had high praise for the hiring of James Franklin. Additionally, Klatt revealed that he wasn’t alone in being impressed by Grunkemeyer but that Bryant Haines, the Indiana DC who won the Broyles Award this past season, was impressed by Grunkemeyer after Penn State almost upset the national champion Hoosiers in State College.

Now none of this is a guarantee that Grunkemeyer will be able to translate that to massive success at Virginia Tech, especially since every defensive coordinator in America will now have film on him to scout accordingly. At the same time, Grunkemeyer will also have that film to watch and learn from himself while also having a familiar coaching apparatus around him with OC Ty Howle and QBs coach Danny O’Brien being part of Franklin’s PSU staff. Having the same QBs coach in particular should be a major benefit, though Allar’s at times disappointing progression does raise some questions that Grunkemeyer’s development may answer one way or the other.

Regardless, it’s clear that Virginia Tech has their best quarterback prospect in years with Ethan Grunkemeyer, someone who has shown the skill set to be the best QB since at least Hendon Hooker or Jerod Evans. If Grunkemeyer can be as good as those two guys, Virginia Tech will be winning a lot of football games in the coming seasons with Grunkemeyer at the helm of the offense.