BC's first four-star QB is finally here. How much can he grow?

It wasn’t until Steve Addazio arrived at Boston College that the former Florida offensive coordinator truly realized the value of depth at the quarterback position.

In 2014, Addazio brought in Tyler Murphy, a dual-threat transfer who he had previously recruited to the Gators, to carry his offense before disaster struck the following year. Darius Wade was supposed to be the answer under center, but the signal caller suffered a season-ending ankle injury in the third game of the season. Shuffling between a carousel of quarterbacks ranging from wide receivers to walk-ons to Doug Flutie’s nephew, the Eagles finished 3-9 and spoiled the nation’s No. 1 defense.

“Take 15 quarterbacks if you have to,” Addazio now advises new head coaches, “because you are in a footrace as a head football coach to get the right quarterback for your job security.”

After relying on another graduate transfer to patch up his quarterback problem in 2015, Addazio finally settled on his signal caller of the future: Anthony Brown. At worst, he’s a mediocre game manager. At his best, Brown is BC’s most effective deep-ball threat since Matt Ryan. Either way, his success as an underclassman was enough to earn Addazio a contract extension through 2022.

But as Addazio knows better than most, the “right quarterback” -- just like job security -- is never guaranteed to last.

With Brown’s departure on the horizon, Addazio is hoping that the future is already here. Next in line to take over the Eagles’ offense is Sam Johnson III, a 6-foot-5 freshman who enrolled early in January as the first four-star quarterback recruit in program history.

Fortunately, this isn’t Johnson III’s first time dealing with lofty expectations.

Before he even started high school, Johnson III’s dad, Sam Jr., posted his highlights of the 6-foot-3, 170-pounder towering above the eighth-grade competition and slinging bullets for seven minutes. The video caught the eyes of recruiters in the nearby Mid-American Conference and quickly racked up thousands of views on YouTube.

“I was at school and I get a call from my dad,” Johnson III recalled. “He’s like, ‘This coach wants you to give him a call after school.’”

It was Akron. Johnson III didn’t even know his dad had compiled clips for the coaching staff.

“I called the coach and he’s like, ‘We liked your film. We liked what we saw. We want to be the first to offer you.’”

The Akron offer set off a domino effect, with Ohio offering days later. By the time he finished middle school, he had half of the MAC waiting in line for his services.

“After that first offer, a lot of attention was put on me at a young age,” Johnson III said.

As a freshman in high school, he attended Michigan’s Barbeque at the Big House, where head coach Jim Harbaugh welcomed him by yelling, “The Freak is here!” During their conversation, Harbaugh arranged for a nutritionist to interrupt with a half-joking presentation on how the lanky 14-year-old could gain weight. Michigan and BC offered in the same week, leaving Johnson III with a difficult decision that was made even tougher by late pushes from Ohio State and Michigan State.

Ultimately, his visit to Chestnut Hill stood out from the rest.

“When I visited here, me and my family just felt it, the connection here,” Johnson III said. “When we got in the car, me and my dad talked about it. ‘That’s a nice place, I could see you there.’”

And now he’s here, an early enrollee tasked with studying a new offense on top of his first semester of college classes. The Eagles wrapped up spring practices last month at their annual Spring Game, where Johnson III finished 2-of-7 passing for 25 yards and took a sack for a seven-yard loss.

There’s plenty of room for growth, both physically and mentally, for the 200-pounder as he adjusts to the college game and bulks up his lanky frame. Luckily, he has a mentor in Brown, a fellow early enrollee who spent a year behind Patrick Towles before taking over the starting job in 2018.

“I heard it from AB,” Johnson III said. “My first week here, he’s like, ‘It’s hard. You come from getting all the reps to getting minimal. You’re not going to get a lot of reps on the field so you gotta take a lot of mental reps and make sure you’re doing your job.’”

Brown is the latest in a long line of guides who have helped pave the path for Johnson III. Growing up in Detroit, he spent his childhood on the sidelines as a ball boy for future NFL talents. Yet Johnson III also saw how quickly those opportunities can vanish.

“That’s why the moment is never too big for Sam. He’s been around Jordan Lewis, Desmond King, all those guys. He was the ball boy for those guys.”

One of Johnson III’s peer mentors, Jayru Campbell, was somewhat of a hometown hero in the Detroit football scene. After leading Cass Tech to back-to-back state titles as an underclassman, Campbell committed to Michigan State.

“He definitely took Sam under his wing and kind of groomed him into the player he is today,” Sam Jr. said. “He took Sam everywhere with him.

But everything changed when Campbell slammed a security guard to the ground in the halls of Cass Tech, an exchange captured on a grainy video viewed over a million times on Worldstar.

Campbell spent the summer after his junior year serving a 60-day jail sentence. On the day of his release, he returned to Cass Tech and tossed his ex-girlfriend to the floor in footage taken by the school’s surveillance cameras. Campbell was free for just three hours before he was arrested again and sentenced to seven months in jail for violating his probation.

“He just tells me stay focused, maintain the course,” Johnson III said. “It can happen that quick.”

Division-I football in East Lansing was no longer an option. Instead, Campbell headed to one of the last places that would still take a chance on him after a pair of arrests: Garden City Community College, the “Last Chance U” of Kansas. Switching to wide receiver, Campbell dominated secondaries en route to a national championship in 2016. This past fall, he did more of the same under center at Ferris State, winning a Division II national title as well as the Harlon Hill Trophy awarded to the top player in the country.

“People can say a lot of things about him,” Johnson III said, “but you can’t deny the fact that he’s a winner.”

It would have been tempting for Johnson III to let all those big-time offers get to his head if not for the fact that he saw firsthand how suddenly they can all disappear. But the bigger lesson he learned from Campbell was how to bounce back, a resiliency that will come in handy if he takes command of the starting role in the future.

“I love this guy,” Addazio said. “I think he’s got a tremendous arm. He’s got unbelievable character. I mean, he is the kind of guy that you want as a quarterback leading your team with his mindset and his mentality.”

In seven years at BC, Addazio has only locked down two other recruits ranked inside ESPN’s Top 300: running back Jon Hilliman, who transferred after three injury-ridden seasons, and offensive lineman Wyatt Knopfke, who isn’t returning for his redshirt senior season after failing to crack the starting lineup.

For the sake of his job security, Addazio is hoping Johnson III is less like his elite recruits and more like the unheralded two- and three-stars who he has regularly developed into professional prospects on the Heights.

“I think the upside with Sam is just incredible,” Addazio said. “I think we’ve got a special guy there.”