The domino effect of Jake Fromm on the 2019 season and beyond

The 2019 college football season will be filled with many storylines — plenty of which will involve the great quarterbacks from all over the country. Is Clemson's Trevor Lawrence really this good? Will Tua Tagovailoa return Alabama to a championship game? Can Justin Herbert get Oregon back among the elite programs in the nation?

There is one quarterback who tends to be forgotten, and he already may have had more of an impact on this season than anyone else. He not only may have put his team in the mix for a national championship, but by his mere existence he has created a ripple effect throughout college football that has helped set lofty goals for other programs. That quarterback?

Georgia's Jake Fromm.

Fromm is seemingly nondescript. He just goes out and does a solid job. He's not looked at as an NFL savior nor is he just some guy tagging along because he's all the Bulldogs have. He has nearly won one national championship and has the Dawgs in line to challenge for one this year. In his short career, he's won an SEC championship, has gone toe-to-toe with a Heisman winner in a College Football Playoff game and has kept his starting job despite higher-profile prospects coming in to take the gig.

And that's where the ripple effect begins. Fromm's ability to hang on to the starting quarterback job at Georgia has forced a flurry of transfers that has spread from Seattle to Miami and will influence this season as well as upcoming years.

Here's how.

Jacob Eason, Washington

Eason was one of the top recruits when he entered Georgia in 2016 and would get his first start in the Bulldogs' second game of the season. Even as Fromm entered the program as a freshman in 2017, Eason was named the starter for the season opener against Appalachian State. In that game, Eason suffered a knee injury which forced Fromm into action. Eason wouldn't get his job back, as Fromm led the Bulldogs to an SEC championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff championship game. Eason would announce his transfer from Georgia after its loss to Alabama in that title tilt. He committed to Washington soon after and sat out the 2018 season due to transfer rules. Now he is set to be the starter in Seattle for a team that has goals of reaching another Rose Bowl or getting back to the playoff.

Jake Haener, unknown

When Eason was named the starter, Haener announced he would be transferring from Washington. Since this is a new development, he hasn't yet announced where he will be heading to further his football career. (Fresno State is among the rumored choices.) Haener, a redshirt sophomore, threw just 13 passes in his freshman season while backing up Jake Browning (a lot of Jakes we've been discussing thus far). When Eason announced his intention to go to Washington, Haener decided against immediately leaving and instead battled him for the starting job...which he ultimately lost.

Colson Yankoff, UCLA

Yankoff decided early on to transfer from Washington and made a somewhat controversial move to head to UCLA. The Pac-12 conference changed a rule that wouldn't penalize someone transferring within the league by forcing the player to sit for two seasons, and Yankoff was quick to test the rule. After Washington shot down any immediate eligibility, Yankoff will have to sit out the 2019 season but will be eligible to play for the Bruins in 2020.

Yankoff is a dual-threat quarterback who redshirted his freshman season last year and will lose a year of eligibility as he sits out this season. UCLA is actually the third Pac-12 school he's committed to, as he originally selected Oregon before head coach Mark Helfrich was fired. Now he will play for former Ducks head coach Chip Kelly at UCLA.

Justin Fields, Ohio State

With Eason transferring after Fromm's magical run to the title game in 2017, many thought Fields was in line to take over the starting job at Georgia. Fields was rated the No. 2 quarterback prospect in 2018 (behind Clemson's Trevor Lawrence), and many felt his talent would be too much to keep on the bench behind Fromm's more conservative play. Despite the coaching staff's willingness to find ways to get him on the field, Fields couldn't pass Fromm on the depth chart. After Georgia's loss to Alabama in the SEC championship game, Fields announced he would be transferring and would eventually pick Ohio State. Fields avoided sitting out a season due to transfer rules by stating in their waiver a racial slur used by another University of Georgia athlete constituted a "mitigating circumstance" that impacted Fields' "safety and well-being" in Athens.

Fields is the starter at Ohio State in Ryan Day's first season as head coach and a year after Dwayne Haskins' record-setting season.

Tate Martell, Miami

As a redshirt freshman in 2018, Martell lost the starting quarterback battle to Dwayne Haskins during spring camp. As Haskins was putting up a record-setting season, Martell felt that Haskins would be leaving for the NFL and the job would be his. That was until Fields transferred into the Buckeyes program. Even as one of the top prospects was coming into the program, Martell planned to stick it out and fight for the starting job and sent a cryptic tweet at Fields to not "swing and miss...especially not your second time." Just a few weeks later Martell would announce his transfer from Ohio State to Miami.

Martell applied for a hardship waiver, using the coaching change at Ohio State as the focus, to gain immediate eligibility at Miami. There he battled and eventually lost to redshirt freshman Jarren Williams for the starting quarterback gig, and his tweets at Fields came back to haunt him. Buckeye fans were quick to point out that he swung and missed twice at becoming a starter.

Matthew Baldwin, TCU

Baldwin stuck around Ohio State a little bit longer to attempt to beat out Fields for the job but failed to do so. While he redshirted his freshman season, Baldwin felt he had an advantage over Fields as he already knew Ryan Day's system. In May, he announced he would be going back home to Texas and play for TCU. As of now, Baldwin will have to sit out the 2019 season, as his application for an immediate eligibility waiver was denied by the NCAA. (He has since appealed.)

Baldwin was a late bloomer of sorts in high school, as he sat behind Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield and Baylor's Charlie Brewer but had a fantastic senior season that netted a scholarship offer from Ohio State. He is an accurate passer with a great arm and should be a boon for the Horned Frogs when he is eligible to play in 2020.

So the transfer domino effect falls like this: Fields and Eason leave Georgia for Ohio State and Washington, respectively; Martell and Baldwin leave Ohio State; Yankoff and Haener leave Washington. All that because Fromm couldn't be usurped as Georgia's starting quarterback. However, if you want to dig a bit deeper (or stretch a bit), there are other quarterbacks from Fromm's orbit whose careers also were greatly impacted.

Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama

We all know the story of how Tua got to where he is today. He was brought in after halftime of the 2017-2018 College Football Playoff championship game and pulled off one of the best comebacks in championship game history. If it wasn't for Fromm's ability to take the lead in the first half of that game — or his inability to close the game out in the second half — would Tagovailoa even still be in Tuscaloosa? He admitted that he asked his dad if an offer to go to USC was still available and that he felt he needed to leave Alabama for a fresh start. Of course, that all changed in one half of football.

Jalen Hurts, Oklahoma

It also changed Hurts' career. Hurts was the guy who was benched at halftime of the championship game against Georgia and wouldn't start another game for the Crimson Tide. Hurts went 26-2 for Alabama in his first two seasons before permanently losing his job to Tagovailoa last season. He took an extremely mature approach of quietly backing off Tua for the season (even coming up big in relief in the SEC championship game against, ironically, Georgia). After the season ended, Hurts would become a graduate transfer to Oklahoma where he narrowly earned the starting job.

Austin Kendall, West Virginia

When Hurts transferred to Oklahoma, Kendall decided to leave the Sooners and fill in the void created by Will Grier's graduation at West Virginia. Grier played sparingly with Oklahoma — which will happen when backing up two Heisman Trophy winners — completing just 28 of his 39 passes in two seasons in Norman. Kendall beat out Jack Allison (who started in the Mountaineers' bowl game) and Bowling Green transfer Jarret Doege for the starting spot.