Ferd Lewis: UH QB Moussa’s leaving was a matter of when, not if

The question probably wasn’t whether or not quarterback Jeremy Moussa was going to transfer from the University of Hawaii.

Rather, it was more a matter of when he would do it.

And, now, we know the answer.

After a year — and all of nine pass attempts — Moussa is leaving to attend a junior college where he hopes to get enough playing time to showcase his talents and earn a scholarship at another four-year school.

While you hate to see someone of his potential leave Manoa, it is also a sign of the times and hardly surprising given both the depth chart at UH and the fluid environment in college football.

The shock would have been if he had returned in 2019 knowing full well that Cole McDonald and Chevan Cordeiro were already coming back for another year and, quite likely, even more.

Cordeiro has four seasons of eligibility remaining and McDonald, two. So, the handwriting was on the wall if not in flashing neon for Moussa.

Moussa played in just two of the Rainbow Warriors’ 14 games this season and, thus, under the new redshirt policy that was adopted in 2018, he can retain four years of eligibility.

So this is an advantageous time to take what he has learned here and move on, playing a year or two of JC ball before heading on to a place that might portend more opportunity to get on the field.

The hope is that he finds and capitalizes on that opportunity some day, somewhere, just not on the other side against UH.

These are transient times in college athletics in general and football in particular where athletes, long treated like chattel, are winning and enjoying a degree of freedom of movement long afforded their coaches and administrators.

No position has embraced that more than quarterback, which is understandable for several reasons. One of them being it is one of the few positions where only one of them gets on the field at a time. Another is that quarterbacks get more of the acclaim — and blame — than the others and many of them transfer to chase one or escape the other.

With every Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray, to name two of the most prominent Heisman Trophy-winning examples, that has found success by hitting the road, more and more are encouraged to follow.

The ones that stick around, biding their time and slowly working their way up the depth chart over a period of years are prized but now the rarity.

At UH, Moussa’s arm strength quickly opened eyes upon his arrival last January. But with McDonald coming back and seizing the starting job and closely contested by Cordeiro, that left few openings for Moussa.

While he was much lauded by head coach Nick Rolovich when the others were mentioned, there was scant playing time available.

His performance in mop-up duty at Fresno State, where he completed three of six passes for 61 yards and a 27-yard touchdown pass to Devan Stubblefield, showed promise, as did the short appearance against Utah State.

But unless he was willing to be content with similar roles for the long haul as long as McDonald and Cordeiro remained healthy, there didn’t figure to be much action that Moussa could realistically look forward to in the immediate or even intermediate terms.

The surprise would have been if he had still been here in the spring.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.