Top QB with West Coast Ties Could be an Option for Stanford in Portal

Following four straight 3-9 seasons, Stanford football looked as if their rebuild was far from being complete. But after a successful 4-8 interim year under head coach Frank Reich, the Cardinal hired Tavita Pritchard to be the next head football coach, hoping to bring Stanford back to glory.

Stanford is now currently in a pivotal offseason, where they need tons of pieces to compete for the 2026 season. One of the most interesting positions of need is quarterback.

This past season, the Cardinal struggled at QB. Ben Gulbranson had his moments, but overall had a bit of an underwhelming year. Elijah Brown then came in, looking solid in spurts, but not much better overall. Now, the Cardinal have interesting options at the QB position for 2025.

Stanford could keep Elijah Brown for his redshirt sophomore season, hoping he takes a leap with Pritchard on board. His new coach spent the past three seasons as the quarterbacks coach with the Washington Commanders, after all.

They could elect to start Dylan Rizk, who has starting experience with UCF but hasn’t played at Stanford thus far. They could also start true freshman Michael Mitchell Jr., who has immensely impressed in Bay Area high school football for Archbishop Riordan.

But the likely option is that the Cardinal elect to look in the transfer portal for a big-time quarterback. With lots of NIL money and mentors with ties to the NFL to help QB’s specifically, they could be in the mix for a big name.

There have already been some big-time quarterback transfers entering their names (or intentions) into the portal, which could cause many massive changes at the position around college football.

The biggest names are Dylan Raiola from Nebraska, DJ Lagway from Florida, Brendan Sorsby from Cincinnati, Kenny Minchey, a young backup at Notre Dame, or Aidan Chiles from Michigan State. But a name that could be immensely interesting to the Cardinal is Old Dominion’s Colton Joseph.

On3 mentioned that Stanford could be in the mix here, too. "With his West Coast ties, we’ve seen schools like Stanford and Arizona State mentioned. His dual-threat ability should get him looks from programs like Florida State, Tennessee and LSU as well as Lane Kiffin’s former program, Ole Miss."

Joseph spent two years at Old Dominion early in his career where he made a massive name for himself. He started in seven games as a freshman, going 3-4 with a few great performances against Georgia State and Coastal Carolina. Then, as a sophomore, he broke out.

Joseph put up 2,624 yards, throwing for 21 touchdowns with 10 interceptions. On the ground, he racked up 1,007 more, as well as 13 more touchdowns. While he struggled against Indiana, he practically dominated almost every other game. He also had three 100+ yard rushing games, including the one against Indiana where he went for 179 yards on the ground.

When he has those off passing games, he makes up for it on the ground. He is elusive, and runs the ball successfully often. Sometimes he can even win a game by dominating on the ground, which you don’t see often for quarterbacks. When he’s not playing the best team in the nation, it seems almost impossible for him to have an all-around bad game.

In addition, he led Old Dominion to have an immensely underrated season. While they didn’t qualify for the conference championship game, it was due to divisions, not record. In other words, the Monarchs were a top team in the Sun Belt, and much of their success was due to Joseph’s firepower.

He would be the perfect option for Stanford football next season, and could help the Cardinal continue to build the program back to the top.

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