With the official start of the 2023 college football season, all eyes will be on the transfer site until the College Football Playoffs begin. Teams utilise the site to restructure and revitalise their rosters, while players use it to make the best decisions for their careers. UCLA football is one team that has to take such action. While 7–5 is a respectable season, it falls short of the expectations the Bruins had for themselves. With Dante Moore accessing the transfer portal, they are in a transitional phase, but if they sign the right players and make the correct decisions on the portal, they could recover. So, the issue is: Which guys should UCLA target.
Although he was added to the transfer site later than expected, Maalik Murphy makes sense. Quinn Ewers, who may return to Austin for a second season after this one, used him as his backup quarterback this season. In the 2023 recruiting class, Arch Manning, who ranks fifth overall, is another prospect waiting in the wings. Manning appears to be the Longhorns’ next best option if Ewers were to depart after this season.
Murphy finds himself in an unpleasant scenario where he must quit his team and transfer before they can play in the College Football Playoffs, but it’s the best course of action for him to play quarterback going forward. Murphy, a four-star and ESPN Top 300 recruit, will catch the attention of other programmes. He started both of the Longhorns’ games this season to replace Ewers and helped Texas win both. Murphy makes sense for UCLA football, who has already expressed interest in him, for a couple reasons.
Murphy is a native of Inglewood, California, to start. It would be ideal for all players to play nearby, and maybe Murphy would find that enticing too. But with Moore leaving, UCLA needs a quarterback as well. The other quarterback for UCLA is Ethan Garbers, but his main contribution was to humiliate some of the worst defences in the country in his games against Stanford, Colorado, and USC. Murphy might be able to play in his hometown of Los Angeles and get started straight away at UCLA. There aren’t many circumstances more alluring than that one.
Since joining Notre Dame as a Top 300 prospect, Tobias Merriweather has been overlooked. Merriweather has only 15 receptions for 325 yards and three touchdowns in his two seasons at South Bend. But it doesn’t imply that in those two seasons, he hasn’t shown off elite skill. Merriweather has tallied scores on receptions of at least 35 yards in all but one instance (a 75-yarder versus Central Michigan early in the 2023 season).
