BREAKING: Vic Viramontes to Transfer Out of Minnesota and Switch Positions

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CARLOS GONZALEZ – STAR TRIBUNE

CARLOS GONZALEZ – STAR TRIBUNE

Wow, this isn’t what I was expecting to do this morning but sometimes plans change, right?

They have for Vic Viramontes. The 6-2 230 lb. dual-threat quarterback, according to Ryan Burns of GopherIllustrated.com, Vic Viramontes is transferring from the University of Minnesota. He will be heading back to Riverside Community College, where he played quarterback last season.

However, he will not be playing quarterback in 2018. Viramontes will be playing linebacker for the California Community College, before looking to transfer back to a D1 program in January. He will then have 2 seasons to prove himself as a linebacker capable of playing high-level division 1 football. Vic has also expressed an urge to be closer to home. (All of this came from Ryan Burns and GopherIllustrated.com between both his report and the message boards. It’s the best subscription for Minnesota news that I pay every month. You can subscribe here.

Now that we have all the details so far, how do we feel about this?

via GIPHY

Early on, it looks like this is something we should be positive about. There doesn’t seem to be any reports of Viramontes disliking Fleck or his culture. It looks a lot more likely that Viramontes didn’t see himself beating out either Tanner Morgan or Zack Annexstad, both of whom were higher than he was on the depth chart for the spring game. Both kids are Freshman (Morgan a RS). I wrote about how good Annexstad looked after that spring game. And, others wrote about how much they liked Tanner Morgan.

Nonetheless, the depth at quarterback now for the Gophers is quite concerning. The two Freshman mentioned earlier are now the only two quarterbacks on the roster after Demry Croft transferred last year and Seth Green moved to WR/TE. Burns also confirmed that Minnesota is NOT allowed to use Viramontes’ now-open scholarship to find another quarterback until January, per NCAA rules. That means any quarterback they do find will have to be a walk-on. Speaking of walk-on, Zack Annexstad also agreed to come on as a walk-on (although he had other D1 scholarship offers), and will not be able to pick up that dead scholarship either.

So, does Fleck really go into the season with two quarterbacks with failed QB project/turned pass-catcher, in Seth Green, as the third option? Getting a viable grad-transfer that’s willing to walk-on will be tough. It’ll be interesting to see where Fleck and the Gophers goes from here at the most important position on the field.

Before you go blaming PJ Fleck, just remember that the last regime (Kill/Claeys) spent 5 years shunning the QB position to make sure this guy felt comfortable in his starting role…

Eric Strack
MinnesotaSportsFan.com (@RealMNSportsFan)

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