In the transfer portal era, coaching searches, at least in the short-term view, are about more than just the head coach you’re bringing to town. When Curt Cignetti went to Indiana, he brought much of his roster from James Madison with him and immediately had a College Football Playoff team. The same goes for the most important position on the field.
Last offseason, we saw multiple teams, Oklahoma and Utah most notably, add an offensive coordinator and bring their quarterback with them through the transfer portal. It shouldn’t be the deciding factor in the decision-making process for Penn State, but it wouldn’t hurt to know a top QB is coming with whoever you hire this offseason.
So, rather than just ranking the head coaching candidates for the Penn State job, let’s rank the four most intriguing head coach-QB combos that the Nittany Lions could bring to Happy Valley.
Entering the season, Sam Leavitt was my No. 4 quarterback in a hypothetical 2026 NFL Draft class. However, with a shaky offensive line at Arizona State and no Cam Skattebo to take the pressure off, Leavitt has been much more erratic than he was in 2024.
Still, Leavitt is a high-level creator, leaning into his ability as a scrambler much more in his second season in Tempe with Kenny Dillingham. He’s now likely to return for another year in school and needs to get back to playing more in structure next season, either for Arizona State or wherever Dillingham, one of the hottest names on the market, ends up.
Dillingham is at his alma-mater and it may take a job like LSU to pry him away. He hasn’t quite been on Penn State’s radar throughout its coaching search, but if he’s interested, he’d be a home run hire and bring a great quarterback with him.
There are quite a few Penn State fans who would happily sign up for Beau Pribula’s triumphant return to Happy Valley. Heck, there are plenty who thought that he should’ve been given the starting job over Drew Allar and never left. That’s a bridge too far for me, but he’s proven to be a capable Power 4 quarterback in half a season at Missouri.
The unfortunate thing is that Pribula’s season is over after suffering a gruesome lower-leg injury in the Tigers’ Week 9 loss to Vanderbilt. Still, if he gets healthy, he’d be a nice package deal with Eli Drinkwitz, who is my favorite candidate for the Penn State job.
Pribula leaves a lot to be desired as a dropback passer, but with a high-level run game, he can be a quality RPO thrower and has the mobility to create as a scrambler. A bonus would be if 2025 four-star Matt Zollers, another PA kid, came with Drinkwitz and Pribula to Penn State; that trio could be No. 1 on this list, especially if Zollers plays well as a true freshman in Pribula’s absence.
This is a situation where the quarterback is more interesting than the head coach. Manny Diaz was an impressive defensive coordinator in his two seasons at Penn State, impressive enough to land him another Power Conference head coaching gig. However, he seems like a much better fit for a plucky underdog like Duke than a powerhouse like Miami, where he failed to activate the boosters as Mario Cristobal has.
Mensah, however, is one of the better quarterbacks in the country, ranking 13th in EPA/dropback, eighth in passing success rate, and 20th in yards per attempt. He pushed the ball downfield with a 10.0 average depth of target and a 5.6 percent big-time throw rate per PFF. Yet, he’s only thrown two interceptions.
Mensah has good mobility to create out of structure and avoid sacks, and he’s been even better with a step up in competition, going from Tulane to Duke. Diaz paid a lot to get him to come to Durham, and so far, it’s been money well spent.
Matt Rhule is the most likely candidate to take over in Happy Valley. The former Nittany Lion is a proven program builder with ties to Pat Kraft from their time together at Temple. He also has a former five-star quarterback who will have two years of eligibility left, who may follow him from Lincoln in Dylan Raiola. However, despite Raiola’s billing as a top recruit, he’s the least enticing QB on this list.
Raiola is an accurate passer who has undeniably raised the ceiling on the Nebraska offense in his second season. However, he has a fatal flaw that has held him back from a true breakout.
Raiola simply works too slowly. His 2.81-second time to throw is not disastrous, but it’s held in check by the number of screens that Dana Holgorsen asks him to throw. He holds onto the ball too long and isn’t athletic enough to escape pressure, resulting in a pressure-to-sack rate of 34.6 percent, the highest in the country. That’s not an offensive line problem; sacks are a quarterback stat, and Raiola takes too many and knocks his offense off schedule too often to overlook.