Ex-Husky Austin Mack's Complicated Quest for Football Greatness

Austin Mack is just 17 years old, wisely trying to plot his quarterback future, betting on football coaches like someone would stock market futures. He's made the ultimate sacrifices to be developed by the best and it still hasn't worked out for him.

This 6-foot-6, 226-pound kid passed up his senior year and graduated early from Folsom High School north of the Bay Area — he took nine classes in person and on line all at once —  to go to work with then-University of Washington offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb.

They basically had seven months together to confer, work out and watch film.

Over the past month, Mack followed Grubb to Alabama to maintain their connection when coach Kalen DeBoer uprooted his staff to take a new job.

Mack now sits in Tuscaloosa without an offensive coordinator or even a quarterbacks coach after Grubb returned to Seattle this week as the new offensive coordinator for the NFL Seahawks.

What's Mack's next move? Declare early for the NFL draft?

While it's hard to find fault with Mack or Grubb for each trying to maximize their football opportunities, the situation demonstrates how imperfect the college game has become with its transient nature and the shameless poaching of coaches and its ramifications on the college level that can set a program back months if not years.

According to Grubb, who has a reputation for telling it like it is, he prepared the Mack family for the inevitability that he could be on the move career-wise and it would impact the quarterback.

“Austin's unique in the sense that when I recruited Austin, it was under the premise talking to Brad and Lisa, his parents, that he knew that this was a possibility," Grubb told reporters on Thursday. "Whether it was this year, next year, at some point I told him that there's a good chance that I wouldn't get to see the end of his career. And so I think honest conversations like that, when you recruit kids, help when transitions like this happen.”

Mack could end up with former Husky tight-ends coach Nick Sheridan as his Alabama OC and quarterbacks coach, which, no offense to Sheridan, likely wouldn't have been a strong selling point in bringing the teenager to either Seattle or Tuscaloosa.

Sheridan last handled those coaching roles in 2021 at Indiana, which fired him following a 2-10 season and he's been rebuilding his reputation rather than advertising it.

DeBoer, as Alabama's pulled-in-every-direction leader, probably won't have a lot of extra time to offer his offensive expertise.

Clearly Mack has a huge upside with his size, arm strength and dedication in becoming a high-level quarterback. How he makes all that happen still hasn't been determined.