FSU football coaches haven't secured a commitment at the quarterback position in the 2026 class since Brady Smigiel de-committed in January.
FSU coaches issued several new offers nearly immediately after Smigiel's departure from the class, and the top two targets to emerge were Landon Duckworth and Bowe Bentley.
The latter was more of the longshot of the two, considering he was from Texas and had never visited FSU before. I wrote a few weeks back about FSU's quarterback recruiting and Bentley hadn't set up a visit to FSU yet, although he had visited some schools this spring already.
Bentley finally made it to FSU last weekend for its Legacy recruiting weekend. However, he announced his final three schools on Sunday, eliminating FSU from the list.
His list consists of LSU, Georgia, and Oklahoma. Oklahoma has always seemed to be the favorite, but it's interesting that LSU has the last visit (so far).
NEWS: Elite 2026 QB Bowe Bentley is down to 3️⃣ Schools, he tells me for @on3recruits
— Hayes Fawcett (@Hayesfawcett3) March 30, 2025
The No. 5 QB in ‘26 has locked in OVs to each of his finalists:
•Georgia: June 6-8
•Oklahoma: June 13-15
•LSU: June 20-22https://t.co/Fqjz8UXcFV pic.twitter.com/rUdogsLQjE
It's disappointing that FSU doesn't get an official visit from Bentley, but that means they can either dump all of their resources into Duckworth or wait to see if another option emerges. Duckworth has an official visit set to FSU in June but got a crystal ball prediction to Ole Miss on Sunday.
The prediction is from an Ole Miss homer that's been wrong several times in his career, so I take that prediction with a grain of salt. If Duckworth cancels the FSU visit, then that's a different story.
The other consideration is not taking a quarterback in this recruiting cycle. FSU has guys on the roster with multiple years of eligibility remaining, and freshman Kevin Sperry seems ahead of schedule in spring camp.
Most teams use the transfer portal for quarterbacks nowadays anyway, and the number of big-time programs developing high school quarterbacks is minuscule. It might be worth using those resources on the offensive or defensive lines if FSU falls off the scene with Duckworth.
Whatever happens, FSU has to win games this fall to get last year's 2-10 record out of everyone's mind. If they can show promise during the season, that would likely change the narrative around the program quite a bit.