LAS VEGAS — Set in Stone, Northwestern is.
Preston Stone, the Wildcats’ new starting quarterback.
The graduate transfer from SMU is still getting used to the transition to the Evanston lakefront, though, after four years at a school that’s right nextdoor to his hometown of Dallas. New places can feel a bit strange now and then.
“More like every day,” Stone said Wednesday, two hours after coach David Braun officially named him the Wildcats’ starter. “I’m not kidding, every day. I’m driving my car to the facility, and I’m like, ‘I live in Illinois?’ I couldn’t even tell you where Illinois was on a map a couple of years ago, and now it’s my home and I love it.”
It’s an almost typical college football experience nowadays. Stone had the starting job at SMU, then lost it. He stuck around for the rest of last season — watching the QB who took his job, Kevin Jennings, lead the Mustangs to the playoff — before throwing in with a new program, a new school, a new neck of the woods, a new you-name-it.
Even a new purple tie, which he knotted up expertly for Big Ten media days at the Mandalay Bay resort, where Braun also confirmed that last year’s QB1, Jack Lausch, has left the football program to focus on baseball.
“There’s no one else in the country I’d want as my starting quarterback,” Braun said of the 6-1, 214-pound Stone.
Stone should be an upgrade for the Wildcats. If he isn’t, there will be dark Saturdays ahead given last year’s 4-8 team had one of the least-productive passing attacks in the country.
Before Braun took charge, Northwestern whiffed with Clemson transfer QB Hunter Johnson and then hit with Indiana’s Peyton Ramsey; the difference that upgrade made was dramatic. Cincinnati transfer Ben Bryant also delivered at a high level in 2023, Braun’s first season, as significant a factor as there was in that team’s surprising success.
There’s a lot riding on Stone, whose talent is undeniable. As a high school star, he received offers from Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Michigan, among other major powers. At SMU in 2023, he threw for 3,197 yards with 28 touchdowns and six interceptions and led the American conference in yards per attempt, yards per completion and passer rating.
He also knows how it feels to be deemed not good enough. When it happens right down the road from home, it might be even rougher.
“Playing college football, I’ve come to find that adversity is a privilege,” Stone said. “And that can take many forms, whether it be an injury, losing a starting job or any other thing that happens in life, because life is crazy.
“Looking back on it, I’m incredibly grateful for how everything turned out because I’m more secure in my identity right now than I’ve ever been, as a person and as a quarterback. I have a chip on my shoulder for my own reasons, but at the same time, I know exactly who I am and I know exactly what I’m capable of. And I’m looking forward to showing that this fall.”
Hopefully, it’ll be even better than playing as Northwestern in EA Sports’ College Football 14 videogame, which Stone swears he did all the time a decade ago. Why in the world?
“Because they had really cool black uniforms,” he said, “and they had a really fast QB, Kain Colter.”
The real-life 2014 Wildcats went 5-7. Stone anticipates a better outcome than that is his final season of college football, largely because of the intensity of his new teammates. In light of last year’s losing record, he senses “a bit of a paradox.”
“Come from a team that made the playoff to Northwestern, I’ve had to elevate my work ethic to match these guys,” he said.
Braun first noticed Stone while prepping for last September’s Duke game. Duke’s new offensive coordinator had come from SMU, so Braun and his staff studied all of SMU’s 2023 games.
“Man, who is this quarterback?” Braun recalls thinking.
Diving into the portal after Stone was an automatic. Landing him was a major win, potentially.
“College football, for me, has been an absolute roller-coaster ride,” Stone said, “and I cannot say how grateful I am that I got to end up at a place like Northwestern.”