Evan Watkins Switches from QB to Superback

Evan Watkins' days as a quarterback are over, according to both Lou Vaccher and Chris Emma.

Position changes happen all the time in college football: this year saw Tim Riley become a fullback and little was made of it on this site. You'd wonder why we're posting about Northwestern's current fourth-string quarterback switching to become a fullback or tight end.

Well, this isn't any fourth-string quarterback. This is Evan Watkins, the 6-foot-6 guy who once stole my heart in the spring game, boldly led Northwestern into Wrigley Field as a freshman in the wake of Dan Persa's injury, and of course, randomly became an internet celebrity due to no fault of his own.

Who knows what impact Watkins will have as a boom-badoom-boom boom badoom-boom back (its the superback), but this is the end of an era. Realizing he had Kain Colter and Trevor Siemien, both of whom will be at NU for the rest of Watkins' entire career, ahead of him on the depth chart, Watkins purportedly asked to switch positions. (Glad he didn't transfer.) The days of him as Northwestern's tall prince are over.

We eagerly await the Siemien backwards pass to Watkins on a weird tight end screen followed by the pass to Kain Colter out of the seam on a fly route. The future of the Northwestern QB position, it seems, has gone in strange directions.