The 2025 Winter Transfer Portal consists of fewer household names than any winter portal before, giving the impression that this is the weakest portal ever. Except for Carson Beck, none of the top ten rated players in the 2025 portal move the needle with casual college football fans. Additionally, only four of the top 20 players were on teams that finished ranked in the top 25 in 2024. What does this mean? Is the transfer portal finally leveling out? Are rosters more comparable nationally to the point that the top players flirting with the portal have opted to stay put? Or is this year simply an anomaly?
By comparison, the 2024 transfer portal’s top ten boasted names like Caleb Downs, Isaiah Bond, Walter Nolen, and Quinshon Judkins. In 2023, fans followed the path of players like Travis Hunter and AD Mitchell. Caleb Williams, Quinn Ewers, Jordan Addison, Jahmyr Gibbs, and Jaxson Dart headlined the class of 2022. Of course, an argument can be made for hindsight being 20/20 in this analysis. However, every one of these players was transferring with massive expectations at the time of the transfer. Many of them were award winners or leaving teams that had high expectations themselves.
The Draw of the Portal
The allure of the transfer portal, since its 2018 inception, has been star power moving from brand to brand. The marketing to the average fan is targeted at household names, the lack of which makes this portal seem weaker than in years past. Sure, fans of individual schools have dug into the weeds of evaluating a Group of Five, or FCS, standout joining their Power Four team. Proven players have often moved to a team seemingly “one piece away” from national title contention.
This year, it’s Beck and the band of misfit toys. Even the argument for Beck as a proven player going to a title contender loses some of its appeal given what Cam Ward did for the Hurricanes in a year where they fell short of the playoff. Couple that with Beck’s performance at Georgia in 2024 and his elbow injury, and it just adds up to more questions and dreams for Miami.
Who’s It Going To Be?
So, who is the splash acquisition in the weak portal of 2025? John Mateer, Patrick Payton, and Eric Singleton Jr. are all moving from teams that did not factor into the national narrative in 2024 to the SEC. Payton has the most potential to immediately impact as a dynamic edge rusher in Baton Rouge. LSU has their defensive coordinator but has to improve from a personnel standpoint to return to a national championship-level defense. Edge players are the most coveted of any position, behind the quarterback, because of their ability to impact any game at any time in a massive way.
Mateer is moving from Pullman to Norman with his 29-year-old offensive coordinator, Ben Arbuckle. Sooners’ fans may believe he will save Brent Venables’s job in Oklahoma. Only time will tell given the offensive production, or lack thereof, of the offensive production over the first three years. The biggest question mark surrounding Mateer is the level of competition he faced at Washington State. Venables has yet to get the offense right. Mateer must prove it on the field before the rest of the college football world is bought in.
Finally, Singleton is the highest-rated receiver in the class. At Georgia Tech in 2023 and 2024, in run-focused offense, Singleton was a 50-catch, 700-plus-yard receiver on average. Now at Auburn, Hugh Freeze hopes that Singleton can make it three years in a row with those numbers. Oklahoma transfer quarterback Jackson Arnold will likely throw the ball to Singleton on the Plains. Again, Auburn’s offense was a struggling one in 2024 and looks to rebound with a stellar high school and portal class heading into 2025. The difference between Singleton at Auburn and Mateer at Oklahoma is that Freeze has years of proven success as an offensive coach. Given the skill position talent the Tigers have for 2025, there are no excuses for the offense production not to increase.
It’s Still About Development
The myth of the transfer portal among casual fans remains that plug-and-play talent is the answer to changing a team’s wins and losses from the previous year. The grace extended to coaches concerning flipping rosters and winning games does not often exceed two years due to this myth. Billy Napier is proof that keeping a coach for more than two or three years is still necessary, even with the rapid opportunities for change in the portal.
The development of players is still the underlying foundation of success at the college level. A high school player, theoretically, has three to five years to develop under their coaching staff and grow into the player he wants to be and needs to be to advance to the NFL. Portal players are typically more developed when entering the program, but that does not mean they are ready-made position fillers who do not need to grow. Coaches still need to develop portal players over the one to four years that they can remain with the program. There is still no quick fix or “just add water” formula.
Development has caused the movement in the portal to slow down. Players who showed immense potential and talent at one program were transferred to “more prominent” programs and underperformed many times. So, donors and coaches have pumped the brakes on the splash move with a huge price tag. Instead, funds are being more strategically used to build a roster that wins together.
The Prime of the Portal
This may seem like the weakest portal in years in terms of names. However, rosters nationwide are stronger because roster building has improved since the portal’s inception. Now, fans can zoom in and focus on the backup linebacker who may have to save the season when the starter goes down. The portal is in its prime.
The post The Weakest Portal Ever appeared first on Last Word on College Football.