Maalik Murphy: From California to Durham

Maalik Murphy has done some traveling in his young career. The 6’5” 230 lb QB played his high school ball for Junipero Serra in Gardena, California. He blew out his ankle in his school's state championship game but was still heavily recruited. He ended up signing with Texas. He was still recovering from the serious injury and redshirted the 2022 campaign.

Not sure you know this, but Texas has a couple of quarterbacks who are pretty good. Battling Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning is pretty hard. Trying to get reps in practice was hard enough, let alone seeing the field in games. In the transfer portal day and age, it became pretty clear that Murphy was going to transfer out. The question was, where?

When Manny Diaz was hired at Duke, the program was in a good spot. Mike Elko had bolted to Texas A&M, but the cupboard was pretty full. The Blue Devils, however, needed a QB1 to lead them to contention. Enter Maalik Murphy to the Devils, and he has put together a solid season.

Currently, Murphy ranks sixth in the ACC in passing yards with 2,366. To put that into perspective, Kyron Drones is at 14th with 1,562 yards. Murphy has thrown for an impressive 22 touchdowns versus only 8 picks. The Duke offense wants to run the ball, but Murphy is more than serviceable to air it out. This concerns me quite a bit.

Virginia Tech is fourth in the conference against the pass. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Hokies like to give up huge explosive plays at opportune times. Trying to protect a lead: huge play. Trying to claw back in a game: huge play. I really hope it’s not another press conference with Brent Pry explaining a busted coverage or an ill-timed blitz.