Fresno State lands lightly recruited QB recruit. It could be a big deal for Bulldogs

Fresno State needed a quarterback in its 2022 recruiting class with just three on scholarship including senior Jake Haener, and it might have scored big with a commitment on Monday from Joshua Wood from Kapowsin High in Graham, Wash.

Wood had been committed to FCS Eastern Washington and was lightly recruited at the FBS level, with offers from the Bulldogs and Nevada. But Brandon Huffman, the national recruiting editor for 247Sports, said that until Wood decommitted he was the highest-rated FCS quarterback commit in the country.

“This dude is a dude,” Huffman said. “I would say he has definitely been one of the most talked-about prospects from the state in years, for multiple reasons, the biggest one being obviously, ‘Why didn’t he have any Pac-12 offers? Why was his recruitment so slow?’

“But he’s a very interesting case study in the effects of the pandemic. His freshman year, Dylan Morris (now at Washington) was the starter, so he didn’t play varsity. His sophomore year they had a kid who waited for three years to take over for Dylan Morris and he ends up starting, so the first game that Josh Wood started at Graham Kapowsin, it was in February, a spring season, and when he took his first varsity snap half the Pac-12 already had a quarterback committed in the 2022 class.”

Wood (6-foot-3, 185 pounds), the prep player of the year in Washington, also was a basketball player with Division I offers as a point guard, didn’t have years of private quarterback training and didn’t spend a lot of time at camps in the summer. But this season he led Graham Kapowsin to its first state championship, and then a startling victory over Georgia 7A state champion Collins Hill in a national bowl game played in Las Vegas.

Collins Hill had scored with 28 seconds remaining to go up by three, but Wood led the Eagles back and threw a 32-yard touchdown pass with just one second remaining to pull out a 40-36 victory. Wood hit 15 of 24 passes for 273 yards in that game and also rushed for 86 yards as Graham Kapowsin finished off a 15-0 season.

The Georgia school was 15-0, ranked No. 3 in the nation and featured the No. 1 prospect in the nation in cornerback Travis Hunter, who made headlines at the start of the early signing period in December by spurning Florida State and signing with Jackson State and coach Deion Sanders.

Wood rated higher than some Pac-12 QB commits

“He drives them down the field and throws the game-winning touchdown on an absolute dime,” Huffman said. “The kid is 31-0 as a starter in high school including his underclass years. He is just as cool as ice.”

The Bulldogs, who have redshirt freshman Logan Fife and freshman Jaylen Henderson returning in 2022 along with Haener, have recruiting ties to Washington through offensive coordinator Kirby Moore and receivers coach Pat McCann, who was hired away from Eastern Washington.

McCann had recruited Wood to the FCS school, which this season ranked second in the nation in scoring offense and third in passing offense.

“We had him rated ahead of a number of quarterbacks going to the Pac-12 schools that didn’t recruit him,” Huffman said. “That’s how high we are on him. I think Fresno State got an absolute steal here. … He’s a point guard. He played for Seattle Rotary and if you follow much AAU hoops, that’s the premier AAU basketball team in Seattle. He thought basketball was going to be his sport at the next level, but he stayed the course. Instead of transferring schools like a lot of quarterbacks do, he stayed the course, waited his turn and ended up in a really good situation with a guy who knows a thing or two about quarterback development.

“I don’t know why some of these schools didn’t offer him, but I’m going with Jeff Tedford on this one.”

Graham-Kapowsin QB Joshua Wood is TNT’s All-Area player of the year