Brandon Peters was too good to sit, which is great news for Michigan’s QB room

Brandon Peters is transferring out of the University of Michigan after tumbling down the depth chart in the quarterback room. Regardless of what any grifter or fake insider will say on social media, it sort of seems like this has been coming for awhile now and it is not all that surprising, at least if you follow the program regularly.

It is a bummer any time a player chooses to move on, but it is bittersweet in that it means they may be able to fully realize their dreams elsewhere. For Peters, that was to be a starting quarterback. After Shea Patterson transferred to Ann Arbor in 2018 and an injury seemingly pushed him down the depth chart, opening the door fo Dylan McCaffrey and Joe Milton to rise, the writing was on the wall for Peters to eventually move on.

Fans quickly turned on Peters after the way the bowl game at the end of a disappointing 2017 season went, but he performed admirably during the run he got at the end of the year when John O’Korn simply could not hold down that job any more. One of Harbaugh’s biggest failings to this point at Michigan was his staff not having Peters ready sooner, which may have very well cost them a game or two that year. Once he suffered a concussion against Wisconsin in a game where the Wolverines looked like they had a chance to win, that was pretty much it for a promising career because things did not go well after that.

Peters, who was ridiculously compared to Andrew Luck by fans and because Harbaugh said there were aspects of his game that reminded him of his former star, did not wind up being the program-changer at quarterback that he was hyped up to be, but it never really was his fault. Often times there is a portion of the fan base that will kick a kid in the rear-end on his way out of the door, but that should not be the case with Peters. He showed enough in his time at Michigan to suggest he can be a good quarterback and start somewhere, but it just was not going to be here. That is a testament to how much the talent has improved at the position in such a short time.

It would be a hot take to say the pressure got to Peters, especially seeing as he is a pretty unflappable guy that does not seem to be bothered by much. To see fans scream from the mountaintops to see you play for two years and then to have it come crashing down as quickly as it did must have been at least a little bit overwhelming. There was a point in time where he did look like the future, but it all changed quickly when Patterson became available. That is not Peters’ fault in the slightest, nor is the injury that opened the door for McCaffrey to get backup snaps.

Patterson is an NFL talent and was before he even set foot on campus at Michigan and McCaffrey and Joe Milton are talented and competitive players that also factor into the future. Peters gave three years of his life and playing career to Michigan and simply got beat out by players that may wind up being better than him. There is no shame in that and that is why transfers make sense today.

So, in conclusion, I’ll never refer to Peters as a bust. He’s a good player that became a victim of circumstance. I will go to my grave saying that, injuries or not, he should have been made ready sooner by the staff in 2017, but we will never quite know what went on behind the scenes there.

Part of Harbaugh collecting quarterbacks like Infinity Stones is that guys are going to wind up moving on. Given that a player who has starting experience and a really nice skill-set at the quarterback position is moving on and it really is not going to hurt the outlook at the position, things are looking pretty okay for the coach and the program who “still can’t find a quarterback after all these years.”

What Harbaugh has been able to do to the quarterback room since he arrived is impressive, even with the program’s inability to achieve the peak results in terms of championships. Have they always done a great job putting their passers in positions to succeed? Hell no, but we will have to wait and see if or how that changes with Josh Gattis being handed the reigns to the offense. Few people can really dispute that there is talent there now, perhaps just a bit too much in a player like Peters’ case.

Both sides benefit from this. Peters gets his chance to play somewhere else and QB4 snaps can now be given in full to a true freshman in Cade McNamara, another talented passer who factors into the future. It all works out, but for me personally, Peters is now one of the bigger “what ifs” to discuss down the road depending on how his career pans out from here on out.