Combo steal: QB Devon Dampier and OC Jason Beck have Utes dreaming big after their tandem jump to Salt Lake City Ross DellengerSeptember 17, 2025 at 10:49 PM 0 Last November, as the New Mexico Lobos season came to an end, Jason Beck noticed something was off with his quarterback.
- - Combo steal: QB Devon Dampier and OC Jason Beck have Utes dreaming big after their tandem jump to Salt Lake City
Ross DellengerSeptember 17, 2025 at 10:49 PM
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Last November, as the New Mexico Lobos season came to an end, Jason Beck noticed something was off with his quarterback.
Soon afterward, Devon Dampier told his offensive coordinator the news: He'd be entering the transfer portal with the goal of turning his sensational sophomore season into a spot on a power conference program's roster.
This made Beck's own decision all the more easy. Courted by a host of power league schools himself, Beck decided he'd also leave for another coordinator gig.
"When Dev let me know he would be leaving, it at least solidified the idea," Beck said. "It was, 'Let me see if I can get a job elsewhere and take Dev with me!'"
Just a few years ago, a quarterback and coordinator actively in the transfer market as a packaged deal would be unusual. Now, in a new environment — relaxed transfer rules and the onset of athlete compensation — the quarterback-coordinator bundle is becoming all the more common.
In fact, it's all the rage.
Three weeks into the 2025 season, at least four power programs are each 3-0 after acquiring such a package this offseason or last offseason. No. 11 Oklahoma plucked OC Ben Arbuckle and QB John Mateer from Washington State this year; 20th-ranked Vanderbilt signed OC Tim Beck and QB Diego Pavia from New Mexico State after the 2023 season; Michigan State employs OC Brian Lindgren and QB Aidan Chiles, both having moved to East Lansing from Oregon State with head coach Jonathan Smith; and No. 16 Utah landed the New Mexico duo of Beck and Dampier.
Three of the four will be put to the test in high-profile matchups this weekend. The Sooners host No. 22 Auburn, the Utes welcome in No. 17 Texas Tech and Michigan State travels to No. 25 USC.
All of those places needed a quarterback and a coordinator. So, why not grab two with a connection to one another? The reasons are obvious: Ease the burden of an offensive transition and perhaps replicate the pair's success at the last stop.
While Vanderbilt's bundled acquisition was more unintentional, the others — most notably Utah — seemed purposeful: Get the coordinator and then get the quarterback.
"When Coach Beck was going to leave, he asked Devon, 'Of these schools, which one would I have the best chance of recruiting you to?'" said Curtis Dampier, Devon's father.
Six days after Utah hired Beck, Devon Dampier committed to the school following a two-week recruiting process that grew more intense than Beck would have liked. Big spending programs like Florida State and Auburn made the decision difficult for the quarterback (Vanderbilt, as it turns out, was in the mix too).
Ultimately, though, why wouldn't he join his old offensive coordinator, play behind one of the country's best offensive lines, across from a historically top-flight defense and at a school where his adopted brother played?
Utah made too much sense.
"There were other teams offering more money, but it all comes down to who's going to believe in you," Curtis said. "You can take the money today but where's that money going to get you tomorrow?"
Through three weeks of the season, the results are stunning. And no one should be surprised. Dampier, after all, is a season removed from accounting for the 10th-most points and fifth-most yards in the country in Albuquerque.
In three games in Salt Lake City, he's completed 73% of his passes — 12th-best in the nation — and he's one of just eight quarterbacks with at least seven touchdowns and no interceptions. He leads the team in rushing, passing and touchdowns. He's averaging 6 yards a run and has thrown only a few more incompletions (24) as he's played quarters of football (12).
If you haven't watched Devon Dampier play, you should search for highlights immediately.
What you'll see is a player resembling many of the great college dual-threat quarterbacks of this generation. At 5-foot-11, 210 pounds, he's not the burly, bullish runner of Tim Tebow or Cam Newton. And perhaps, so far, he hasn't shown the downfield air skills of guys like Lamar Jackson and Johnny Manziel.
Devon Dampier and the Utes are undefeated with a marquee showdown against Texas Tech (3-0) on Saturday. (Chris Gardner via Getty Images)
But he's accurate enough with tackle-breaking moves, nasty ball fakes, sideline speed and, most importantly, the ability to audible after he diagnoses the defense pre-snap — a freedom bestowed on him by his coordinator, Beck.
If he wants to change the play, he changes the play. There is a trust between the two, a relationship even among the two families — Beck's wife and children, and Dampier's parents and siblings.
"The biggest thing is how comfortable we are with one another — OC to quarterback," Devon said Monday in an interview after practice. "Me and Coach Beck, even outside of football, we're close."
Beck, 25 years older than Devon, knew nothing of the QB just 20 months ago, when Bronco Mendenhall returned from his coaching hiatus to hire Beck as his offensive coordinator in Albuquerque. He took the job under the impression that the staff needed to mine the portal for a quarterback.
Surely, there's no one on the current roster.
Then Beck began watching high school clips of a freshman quarterback on New Mexico's roster. He called Mendenhall, "I think we have the quarterback of the future already there."
Sure enough, Dampier exploded onto the scene last year in an offense that Beck suited precisely for his skill set: more than 2,700 passing yards, 1,100 rushing and 31 touchdowns.
For Jason Mohns, Dampier's high school coach who is now an assistant at Arizona State, it was anything but surprising. Dampier put up similar gaudy statistics at Saguaro High in Scottsdale, was MaxPreps' Arizona Player of the Year, a first-team all-state selection and led the Sabercats to the state championship game.
Despite all of that, most college coaches were too distracted by one thing to offer him a scholarship.
"A lot of them told me I was too short," Dampier said.
This has been an ongoing criticism from the time he began playing youth football after dad moved the family from Minnesota to Arizona more than a decade ago.
"First couple of teams I tried to play on, it was, 'The short guy has to prove himself,'" Devon said.
For the record, Devon says he's 5 feet, 10-and-a-half inches tall.
In his 11 years as coach at Saguaro, Mohns won seven state championships and churned out a ton of college stars and NFL players, including Christian Kirk, Byron Murphy, D.J. Foster and Kelee Ringo. The school is a magnet for major college recruiters.
That's why he describes Dampier's recruitment as "one of the most frustrating" in his tenure. As a college coach now himself, he sees how recruiters can "talk themselves out of" offering a good player, nitpicking data points, measurables and so on.
Thirteen Division I schools offered Dampier, just one from a power conference program (Arizona) and that offer, Mohns says, wasn't truly "committable."
"I had a coach one time — it kind of bothered me — say that 'Devon is really good at everything and not great at any one thing,'" Mohns said. "He's an unreal processor, the way he sees the game and how fast he processes."
That's been on display plenty, including just last week, when Dampier, back to pass during a win over Wyoming, dropped the ball while pump faking. Under pressure, the pocket crashing in around him, he calmly picked up the ball, took a couple of steps forward and hummed a pass to a covered receiver in the corner of the end zone for a touchdown.
Devon Dampier having the poise to turn an absolute disaster of a play into a DOT of a TD pass is special man.Dampier might be a legit Heisman contender!pic.twitter.com/SFTwXiZJjH
— Wilson F. Ball, CFB Analyst (@WillyFoosball) September 14, 2025
It was sort of a play you might see from Aaron Rodgers, who just so happens to be Dampier's childhood idol.
Dampier's moves often launch television broadcasters into an audible frenzy of descriptions.
"What a jitterbug!" one said last year as Dampier side stepped two would-be tacklers and spun away from a third.
"Dancing and prancing!"
"What a fake!"
"Oh my goodness!"
"He's dangerous!"
Get ready for more of that Saturday, when the Utes host Texas Tech in a Big 12 collision that's attracted the likes of Fox's "Big Noon Kickoff." The game begins at 10 a.m. Mountain Time.
The Red Raiders, stacked defensively after an offseason of big-time NIL spending, will face an underrecruited kid from Arizona who left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table and several SEC offers to play in Salt Lake with his coordinator.
Utah's coordinator-quarterback duo is the latest in a long line of them. Don't you remember the originals? Play-calling coach Lincoln Riley took with him from Oklahoma to USC future Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams; Cam Ward followed coach Eric Morris from Incarnate Word to Washington State; and record-setting quarterback Bailey Zappe moved with coordinator Zach Kittley from Houston Baptist to Western Kentucky, in what many believe, in this era, to be the first such package deal.
Is he a trendsetter? During an interview this week, Kittley, now the head coach at FAU, chuckles and reveals the truth of that double transfer in December of 2020: For a while, he didn't think Zappe would follow him to WKU.
"Tennessee was recruiting him hard," he says. "They had Peyton Manning FaceTiming him and all."
It took a month of recruiting him, but Kittley finally got Zappe to be a Hilltopper.
Nearly six years later, Vanderbilt has made the most of its own OC-QB package with Tim Beck and Pavia (and Jerry Kill, the former New Mexico State coach who now serves as an advisor to head coach Clark Lea in Nashville). But it was never meant to be a package, says Lea.
"The intent was Tim Beck," Lea said. "I'd seen Diego play. I knew he was a dynamic player, but I was going to lean on Tim for what respect to the direction we'd go."
The Pavia-Beck combination transformed the Vanderbilt program and moved Lea off the hot seat and onto coach-of-the-year lists. The Commodores recorded their first winning season since 2013 last year and have more wins (10) in the last 16 games than Lea won (9) in his first three years there.
"Programs that need to change direction, philosophically, on offense, that's a reason to look for that [OC-QB] package," Lea said. "It makes a lot of sense. From a quarterback's perspective, familiarity in the system is helpful. There's a relationship there, an understanding there."
With Utah, Dampier's connection went beyond his coordinator.
Utah QB Devon Dampier celebrates with teammates after running for a touchdown against UCLA. Dampier has thrown for seven touchdowns and run for another in three games this season. (Sean M. Haffey via Getty Images)
His brother, Dorian Singer, played his final season of eligibility last year at Utah, catching 53 passes. Last season, during New Mexico's bye week, Devon got to see big brother play at Rice-Eccles Stadium and turned to dad, "I'd love to play in a place like this," he told his dad.
A year later on Saturday morning, he'll be slinging passes and busting big runs (he hopes) in front of a sold-out crowd on national television.
"I have a chip on my shoulder," Dampier said. "You dream for these top matchups and these ranked games. This is where games matter."
The Dampier family will all be there too: Curtis, Curtis Jr., Dorian, mom Kesha and Devon's younger brother, Dominic, who was diagnosed with autism and was mute until age 7.
"He's come a long way," Devon said of Dominic. "You can't tell he has it anymore."
In fact, Devon was present for Dominic's sort-of coming out party, bursting free of the disorder while on a school bus 10 years ago. Curtis tells the story as if it was an unexpected miracle: Dominic suddenly began to talk, screaming and shouting with friends on the bus en route home from school one day.
As a talking Dominic emerged from the bus, the family began weeping tears of joy.
"It was the craziest thing ever. Ever since that day, he hasn't shut it up!" Curtis said with a laugh.
They'll all be there, at Rice-Eccles Stadium, on Saturday as the latest trend in college football — the coordinator-quarterback bundle — is tested against a program that's spent more money on its roster than virtually any other in the sport.
It's a fascinating matchup and, for Beck, the next step in Utah's first offensive overhaul since 2019. The fact that his quarterback is with him has made the transition all the more seamless.
But Beck knows how close it was to not happening.
Last December, Beck turned down coordinator jobs with returning starting quarterbacks on the roster — all with the intent to land Dampier.
It wasn't that easy though.
"Dev had a lot of opportunities," Beck said. "There were a couple weeks we were actively recruiting him and you got to make the NIL thing work as well. The family was a little torn. Do we want to go to the SEC? Or go back with coach?"
They chose the latter.
And, now, their first real challenge awaits.
Source: "AOL AOL Sports"
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