ROAD TO GLORY
RTG-01 · Underdog Run · Week 0
ROAD TO GLORY
RTG-01 · Underdog Run · Week 0
Second wave · August 22–26, 2026
Sent Saturday, August 22, 9:12 a.m. — to Craig Harmon, Offensive Pass Game Coordinator / Quarterbacks Coach. Ball State's first email, sent August 14 to the general recruiting address, was never opened.
Coach Harmon,
My name is Nick Mansour. I'm a 2027 quarterback at Fenton High School in Michigan. I sent something to your program's recruiting address last week and I think it went into a folder, which is fine — I'd like to try this a different way.
I watched four of your games from last season. I want to ask you about something specific rather than tell you about myself, because you've read a thousand of those.
You run a lot of quick game with a built-in tag to the single receiver side, and against two-high teams you seem to want the quarterback taking the backside hitch or slant almost pre-snap — the read looks like it's the leverage of the corner more than the safety. But against the teams that played quarters and squatted that corner, I saw the ball go to the field side three-receiver surface instead, into the seam window behind the second-level defender.
My question: is that the quarterback's decision at the line, or is that tagged from the sideline based on what the corner did the previous series?
The reason I ask is that we run something structurally similar and we do it the second way, from the sideline, and I've been trying to make a case to my coordinator that I could do it at the line. I'd rather learn how a college staff handles it than keep arguing from nothing.
Film is below if you want it. Last year: 35 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, 75%, 850 rushing yards, 9–0. I'm 6-1, 182, and I'll tell you up front that I've never been to a camp, I play in a league nobody scouts, and I got hurt before the playoffs so there's no postseason tape. I'm not asking you to ignore any of that.
Thank you for the time either way.
Nick —
I've been doing this a while and that is the first recruiting email I've ever gotten that asked me a coaching question. So you got your answer to the real question, which is whether I'd open it.
To your actual question: it's both, and the split is the whole point. Early in a game it's tagged. We want to see how they're playing that corner before we put it on a 19-year-old. By the second half, if we've got a rhythm, it's his — he can kill the backside and go to the field surface on his own. What we don't do is give a young quarterback that freedom in the first quarter, because being right and being early are different problems and one of them costs you the football.
You caught the pattern from four games without anybody telling you the rule. That's not nothing.
Watched about twelve minutes of your stuff. Two things.
One. The throw I keep going back to is the one at 4:38 of the Linden cut, off the scramble to your left, no base at all, and it's a strike to the far hash. I don't teach that. I couldn't. Whatever that is, you have it.
Two, and this is the honest part: I don't know what I'm looking at, competition-wise. I have no reference for the league you're in, there's no camp number on you, and the frame is what it is. That's not me being negative, that's me telling you what I'd have to walk into a staff meeting and defend.
Send me a full game — the whole thing, both halves, no cutting. And tell me one more thing while you're at it, since you like this part: on the field-side seam throw we were talking about, what tells you it's there before the receiver gets to the window? Give me the specific thing you look at.
CH
Coach,
Full game attached — Linden, October 10. Both halves, unedited, including a series in the third quarter where I take a sack I should not take. I left it in on purpose.
On the seam throw. It isn't the safety for me. Everybody says watch the safety and I think that's a half-second too late, because by the time the safety declares, the window is already closing.
The thing I look at is the second-level defender's shoulders on the third step — the hook/curl player to the trips side. In quarters, his rule is usually to carry the number two receiver vertical until the safety takes over. So if he opens his shoulders and turns to run with two, the safety is coming down over the top, and the seam is going to be squeezed from above. Kill it, take the backside.
But if his shoulders stay square and he widens flat-footed — if he's reading me instead of carrying the route — then nobody is passing that seam off. He's playing zone eyes and the safety is playing depth over the top of the outside receiver. That's the window, and it's there for about four-tenths of a second, and I have to be throwing it while the receiver is still two yards from it.
Two things I'll add so I'm not overselling it.
First, I've only had this be wrong on me twice, and both times it was because the defense was pattern-matching and the hook player was allowed to sit — so his shoulders told me the truth about him and nothing about the safety. I don't have a great answer for that yet. Against a team that does it well, I'd probably need to see it once and eat the incompletion.
Second, I know what my league is. When I say I've only been wrong twice, that's twelve games against defenses that mostly aren't disguising anything. I'd expect to be wrong a lot more against people who are trying to make me wrong. I'd rather be wrong in a place where somebody can fix it than be right here forever.
On the frame — I'm 182 now, I was 175 in June. I'm not going to promise you I'll be 210, because I don't know that. What I can tell you is I lifted at six in the morning four days a week all summer and I didn't miss.
Thank you for watching twelve minutes. That's twelve more than anyone else has.
Nick
The hook player's shoulders is the right answer and it's the answer I'd give. Most of the quarterbacks I've coached in college get there in year two.
You're also right that pattern-match breaks it, and the fact that you already know that's a hole instead of thinking your rule is bulletproof tells me more than the answer did.
Where we are, honestly: I'm not in a position to tell you anything about an offer. That's not my call alone and we're going to be deep into our own board before we get to Michigan quarterbacks who nobody's laid eyes on. I don't want to be the guy who gets a kid's hopes up in August.
What I will do is watch this Linden game this weekend and I'll keep your name in my folder. Send me a game after every three you play. Not highlights. Games.
Go win Friday.
CH
Sent Monday, August 24, 4:02 p.m. — recruiting questionnaire plus a follow-up email to the program's football recruiting address.
To whoever reads these,
I filled out the questionnaire. I'm sending this too because I assume the questionnaire goes into a database and I'd rather a person saw it.
I'm a 2027 quarterback at Fenton High School, an hour and five minutes from your building. Last year I threw for 35 touchdowns with no interceptions at 75 percent and ran for 850 yards and we went 9–0. I'm 6-1, 182. I've never been to a camp and my league doesn't get scouted and I know exactly how this reads next to the quarterbacks you're actually recruiting.
I'm not going to pretend I think you're going to offer me. I'd like somebody on your staff to watch eight minutes and, if the answer is no, I'd genuinely rather have a no than nothing. A no is information. I could use some information.
Film below. Thank you.
Sent Monday, August 24, 8:55 p.m. — to Christian Taylor, Offensive Coordinator / Quarterbacks.
Coach Taylor,
I'm a 2027 quarterback at Fenton High School in Michigan and I'm aware that's not where you recruit. I'm writing anyway because of what I saw on your third-down tape.
You ask your quarterback to solve more at the line than almost anybody I watched this summer — the protection identification is clearly his, and there were at least six snaps where the front moved late and the ball still came out on time to the correct side. Wherever I end up, that is the job I want. It's the part of playing quarterback I'm best at and I'd rather be at a place that demands it than a place that protects me from it.
Last year: 35 TD, 0 INT, 75%, 850 rushing, 9–0 regular season. First season of organized football I've ever played — I was a student personnel assistant on my own team the year before that. 6-1, 182. No camps, no verified numbers, no postseason film. All of that is true and I'm not going to bury it at the bottom.
Film below.
Nick,
Watched it. You're right that it's the job here. Let me find out if you actually want it or if you just like the sound of it.
Five questions. Don't look anything up, don't ask your coordinator, and don't give me an answer you're not sure about — I'd rather have "I don't know" than a guess dressed up. Reply tonight.
1. Third and seven. They mug both A-gaps, six defenders on the line, you've got five linemen and a back. Who do you declare, and where's your ball if they bring all six?
2. Cover 2 to the field, you've got a smash concept out there — corner route over a hitch. Who's your read and what specifically is he telling you?
3. What's the difference to you, as a passer, between Tampa 2 and regular Cover 2?
4. Two-high shell, ball on the left hash. At the snap the boundary safety drops his hips and rolls down late. What is the coverage most likely becoming and what does it do to your backside?
5. Easiest one. Why zero interceptions? And don't tell me you were careful.
CT
Five for five.
Number three is the one that got me. Every high school kid can recite Tampa 2. You told me the trap in it and you told me it's how you'd get picked. That's a different thing.
Number one you actually answered better than I asked it — I wanted the declaration and the hot. You gave me the declaration, the hot, and then told me most of them are bluffing, which is the thing I spend all of August trying to get an 18-year-old to believe.
Now the part you're not going to like, and I'm going to give it to you straight because you gave me straight answers.
I'm not offering you anything today. You're 182 pounds, I have no verified numbers on you, you're in a league I've got no read on, and you're a plane ride from here. Our 2027 board has names on it already. If I walked into our staff room tomorrow and said I want to take a quarterback from Flint, Michigan off a Hudl link, I'd get laughed out of the room and I'd deserve it.
Here's what's real. You're now a name I know. That's worth more than you think and less than you want.
Two things I want from you.
One. Get to a camp. Any camp with a stopwatch and a tape measure. I don't care whose. The single thing standing between you and somebody being able to argue for you is that nobody can prove how tall you are or how fast you are. That's not an evaluation problem, that's a paperwork problem, and it's fixable.
Two. Send me your games. Not cutups. And send me the losses when you have one, because what I actually want to see is what you do the series after something goes wrong. Everybody looks like this when it's 9–0.
Good luck Friday.
CT
Two coaches at the FBS level now know his name and have watched film. One asked for games on a standing schedule. One told him precisely what is blocking him and that it is fixable. Neither of those existed on Friday.
An offer. A visit. A phone call. A camp invitation. Any indication that either program will still be thinking about him in December. Interest from a coordinator is not interest from a program.
"Get to a camp. Any camp with a stopwatch." Camp season ended in June. The next one that matters is nine months away, unless somebody finds a winter or spring event — and somebody would have to pay for it and drive him there.
Nick. Ari, because she updates the spreadsheet. Nobody else. He has not told Shaffer, who has been emailing his own contacts for a month and getting nothing, and the reason he hasn't is not one he'd say out loud.