Scott Frost went into his second offseason back at UCF with a clearer plan, and the biggest piece of that plan was obvious: find a quarterback who could settle the whole operation down.
Last year’s competition never really gave the Knights that kind of answer. This time, Frost and his staff went shopping in the transfer portal and came away with one of the most accomplished quarterbacks available in James Madison’s Alonza Barnett III. For Frost, that changes everything.
“It’s going to be nice and refreshing to have a guy that everybody looks to and knows that he’s the guy,” Frost said at Big 12 media days.
Barnett arrives with a résumé that makes the move easy to understand. He helped lead James Madison to the College Football Playoff in a season that put the program on the FBS map after its jump from FCS only a few years ago.
The redshirt senior finished with 2,806 passing yards, 23 touchdown passes and eight interceptions, while also running for 589 yards and 15 scores on the ground. He was named Sun Belt Conference player of the year, first-team All-Sun Belt quarterback and a third-team Hero Sports all-American.
“Alonza has played a lot of football games,” Frost said. “He’s won a lot of football games. He’s a competitor, a guy that I’ve been really impressed with his presence on the field and in the huddle.”
That’s a sharp contrast to what UCF dealt with a year ago. Frost had a three-man battle for the starting job, and Tayven Jackson eventually won it.
Jackson threw for 2,151 yards, but he finished with just 10 touchdown passes and eight interceptions, adding three rushing scores. Cam Fancher also saw time, throwing 72 passes over three games for 333 yards without a touchdown or interception.
Four other Knights attempted at least one pass, and none of those quarterbacks are back.
Now the picture is much cleaner. Barnett is the starter, and the only other quarterback on the roster with game experience is FIU transfer Keyone Jenkins, who passed for 1,742 yards last season and ranked No. 3 in FIU history in career passing yards before transferring.
Frost didn’t dance around the comparison.
Jenkins is good. Barnett is better.
Barnett also brings something UCF lacked last season: a vocal presence in charge of the huddle.
“We didn’t really have that a year ago either, the vocal guy out in front,” Frost said. “I think guys like that are going to give us a little bit easier path to hopefully some success.”
UCF went 5-7 in Frost’s return season after he spent two years away from college football following his firing at Nebraska, where he went 16-31 in five seasons. Before that, he had gone 19-7 in two seasons at UCF, including a 13-0 2-17 campaign that ended with the Knights claiming a Colley Matrix national championship.
That earlier UCF team had McKenzie Milton running the offense. Milton is now Barnett’s position coach. If the Knights are going to make the kind of leap Frost is hoping for, Barnett will be the one steering it.
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UCF spent much of last season sorting through quarterback uncertainty, and that kind of week-to-week guesswork can wear on an offense in a hurry. This time, Scott Frost has taken the question off the table by settling on James Madison transfer Alonza Barnett as the Knights' starter, giving the program a defined direction heading into the new season.
Barnett arrives with real credibility after being named Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year, and Frost has pointed to his leadership and competitiveness as traits that can steady the offense. For a Knights team that finished 5-7, the hope is that a clearer pecking order under center can help the rest of the roster settle in, even if the bigger test still waits once the games begin. [Read more 🡒]