As the old saying goes: If you have two quarterbacks — maybe even three — you have none.
Jason Eck doesn't quite agree.
"I don't think this is a bad thing," New Mexico 's second-year head coach said last week, "or something you wanna try to fix as soon as you can."
Cliches aside, UNM is set to find out soon.
Saturday, the Lobos will debut a multi-quarterback offense against Central Michigan (8 p.m.) after a weeks-long competition between sixth-year senior James Laubstein , junior Luke Moga and sophomore Toa Fa'avae yielded no clear winner.
The three competed for the starting job after Jack Layne, UNM's starter last season, missed all of fall camp with an elbow injury. The fifth-year senior underwent season-ending surgery Monday, leaving Laubstein, Moga and Fa'avae to take the reins on perhaps the most anticipated season in program history .
And while not much is known about how UNM's multi-quarterback system will look – Eck has left the exact details purposely vague – it's possible this could be the program's new normal, especially if it goes well.
"Some people have asked, 'is this just the competition (is still) going on?'" Eck said. "I wouldn't say that. This could be how it is all year."
Why?
If nothing else, Eck has done this before — as a first-time offensive coordinator at a Division II power in Minnesota State .
"(UNM wide receivers coach Carson Walch) mentioned, '(the) NFL's kinda best practice — you don't see any NFL teams doing this at this point,'" Eck said. "I said, 'I look through (my) personal history and the most games I ever won as a coach (in a single season) was 14, and we played two quarterbacks.'"
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Todd Hoffner has been the head coach at Minnesota State-Mankato for 17 seasons. In that span, the 60-year-old coaching veteran has won 153 games, seven league titles and made two runs to the Division II national championship game over 11 playoff appearances.
In no small part because he's played two quarterbacks, in more years than most.
"(Hoffner) didn't look at the quarterback position any different than any other position," said Luke Schleusner, UNM's offensive coordinator and a former Hoffner assistant. "He looked at it like, if you have two good left guards, they're going to rotate some. Or if you have two safeties that are really close in a competition, they're going to rotate some.
"He just kind of looked at it the same way with the quarterback position, and he wanted blue collar, tough guys at that position."
Entering the 2014 season, Hoffner had two: Nick Pieruccini and Ricky Lloyd. A Chicago native, the 6-foot-1, 210-pound Pieruccini backed up multi-year starter Jon Wolf the year before, rushing for 22 yards over two games.
But with Wolf gone, the program decided to bring in another quarterback for competition's sake. Eck, the Mavericks' second-year offensive coordinator and line coach, sent out a tweet advertising as much – Minnesota State is looking for a quarterback, serious inquiries only.
Lloyd's high school quarterbacks coach sent it to him. At the time, the 6-3, 210-pound Concord, Calif. native was looking for something new after weathering three coaching changes in as many seasons at Southern Miss .
A few weeks later, Lloyd was a Maverick.
"(That was) back when Twitter recruiting was fairly new," he chuckled.
By the end of fall camp, Pieruccini and Lloyd were deadlocked in a two-man competition. Eck remembers that both had played well, and both had given Minnesota State something a little different — Pieruccini could run it a little better than Lloyd, and Lloyd could throw it a little better than Pieruccini.
When it was announced that Minnesota State planned to split reps between the two in its season opener, Pieruccini and Lloyd admitted their reactions were mixed. A little disappointed, but, hey, at least both would play.
After that? Lloyd said they were just curious to see how it would even function.
"We were both like, 'how are you guys going to plan to do this the whole year?'" he added. "We honestly thought maybe halfway through the year, after a few games, one would take over (and) become the number one guy."
The way it worked: Depending on the game, one of Minnesota State's two quarterbacks would start the first two drives and the other would get the next two. Lloyd said they had slightly different packages to fit each other's skill sets while Pieruccini said little was truly exclusive: "There was nothing that Ricky was running that I wasn't."
Pieruccini remembered the opening drive was where Eck's "insane" preparation really showed up.
"He'd be like, 'all right, we're gonna run this one, it's gonna be like a 15-yard chunk play to the right,'" he said. "'We're gonna run this to get 20 yards, we're gonna be on the left-middle hash and then we're gonna score on the third play, and then we're gonna come out and they're gonna punt to us.'
"I mean, his first 10 plays of the game, he was calling them with, like, 80% accuracy of the outcome of the plays."
From there, it was all by feel: If Lloyd was playing well, Eck wasn't quick to pull him, and vice versa for Pieruccini. And amid a strong start to the year – Minnesota State outscored opponents 192-29 in its first four games – the two started to notice a pattern from opposing defenses.
"When Ricky was in, he would have almost better boxes to run against," Pieruccini said, "and when I was in, I would almost have better boxes to throw against. I think it would get defenses like, over-game planning and over-scheming."
The system only paid off further when either Lloyd or Pieruccini was hurt. In the only game Lloyd missed all season, Pieruccini led the top-ranked Mavericks to a 27-14 win over No. 10 Sioux Falls with 213 yards of total offense and two touchdowns, one passing and one rushing.
Minnesota State ended the season 14-1 and averaged 40 points per game, losing only in the Division II national championship to Colorado State-Pueblo. Pieuccini and Lloyd played the whole way, with Eck steering the ship from the sidelines.
At the time, Eck said he didn't have any real opinions about running a multi-quarterback offense.
Fourteen wins in one season didn't hurt, though.
"I do think your past experiences in life certainly sway your opinion going forward," Eck said. "And coming away from that year, I thought it was definitely not a negative to have a multi-quarterback system, or that it was something you should try to remedy as soon as possible."
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On its face, there's some obvious parallels between what the Mavericks did in 2014 and what the Lobos are trying to do now.
Similar to Lloyd, Moga transferred from Oregon to UNM as an "insurance policy" in case Layne had more elbow issues, Eck said, but also as somebody that could add to the quarterback competition.
Like Pieruccini, Laubstein was a backup who had been in the system the year prior. And Eck believes Laubstein, Moga and Fa'avae all complement each other's skill sets in the same day Pieruccini and Lloyd did.
There's some obvious benefits, too. If Laubstein, Moga or Fa'avae deal with injuries this season? One of the other two quarterbacks should have enough reps to step in without a major dropoff.
Splitting reps among the three should also help a room that's light on real FBS game experience, Schleusner said.
"We went live with them a couple times during fall camp, but even that, we went live (and) each quarterback got 15 plays or so," he added. "This will be a good test for them."
Creating extra work for opposing defenses doesn't hurt either. Since first mentioning that UNM might play multiple quarterbacks, Eck has extolled the value of giving a defense more than just one QB to plan for.
On the other hand? Putting a gameplan in place for two or more quarterbacks isn't as simple as doing it for one.
"I told (UNM's offensive staff), I thought sometimes when one of those guys was out for a week, it made game planning easier," Eck said, " … You really have to have a couple different game plans (to) put the guys in the right position."
Will UNM's multi-quarterback system work as well as it did for Eck, Pieruccini and Lloyd at Minnesota State?
Saturday will provide a glimpse into whether it will or won't.
"We'll truly play it as it lies," Eck said. "That year, we kept playing two quarterbacks all the way to the national championship game. But I think you're always evaluating. Obviously, if one guy plays great and the other guy doesn't play well, you know – I think you always have to be constantly evaluating it."
Nearly 12 years after Eck coached his last game at Minnesota State, Hoffner has continued to play multiple quarterbacks. In 2019, the Mavericks finished 14-1 and made it back to the national championship game with JD Ekowa and Ryan Schlichte rotating the same way Pieruccini and Lloyd did.
If you have two quarterbacks – or more – do you have none? Hoffner vehemently disagrees.
"(In) the pros, that is their quote, and I think they get paid a lot of money to have a starter and have expectations of a starter and they cater everything to that starter," he said. "And I think it's a good scapegoat for them and an easy way out to say, 'well, we're playing our backup and he doesn't have a lot of experience,' and he doesn't have this and he doesn't have that.
"Well, we don't have those issues when you play two quarterbacks. You're always gonna have somebody playing at a very high level, or they shouldn't be playing."
Sean Reider covers college football and other sports for the Journal. You can reach him at sreider@abqjournal.com or via X at @lenaweereider.
