University of Hawai'i's season opener against Southern California is less than a month away, and with fall camp underway, HawaiiAthletics.com will breakdown the 2013 Rainbow Warrior football team, position-by-position, starting with today's first feature of the UH quarterbacks.
VIDEO: Coach Wynn on the Quarterbacks
Starter Returning: Sean Schroeder
Starter Lost: None
Letterman Returning: Jeremy Higgins
Redshirts: Taylor Graham, Ikaika Woolsey
Newcomers: Adonis Phillips
UH quarterbacks should be much improved in 2013 with one year of experience running Norm Chow's pro-set offense. Starter Sean Schroeder returns as well as top backup Jeremy Higgins. Add to the mix Ohio State-transfer Taylor Graham, who sat out last season due to NCAA transfer rules, and redshirt Ikaika Woolsey and the Rainbow Warriors have a solid group to lead the offense this season.
Schroeder, a senior who spent two years at Duke, earned the starting job last spring and started 11 of 12 games, throwing for 1,878 yards and 11 touchdowns. However, he completed just over 50 percent of his throws and was picked off 12 times. Schroeder ranked sixth in the Mountain West in passing yards per game (156.5) and passing efficiency (100.3) and threw for 200 or more yards five times, including a career-best 272 yards against New Mexico. He had at least one passing touchdown in eight of 12 games.
The Laguna Niguel, Calif., native missed spring ball due to off-season back surgery which paved the way for Graham, a junior from Wheaton, Ill., who spent his first two years of college at Ohio State.
Graham, whose father Kent was an NFL quarterback for more than a decade, has the prototypical size (6-5) for Chow's system and demonstrated his ability during the team's annual spring game, throwing for 157 yards and three touchdowns in leading his team to victory. Ranked as the No. 14 quarterback in the country coming out of Wheaton High School, Graham redshirted his first year in Columbus and served as a back-up in 2011, taking one collegiate snap.
Graham last threw a pass in a game during his senior year in high school. However, he enters fall camp as the No. 1 quarterback while Schroeder and Higgins are bracketed as No. 2. Higgins, a senior from Honolulu, started one game last season and finished the year completing 60.4 percent of his passes for 335 yards and one score. In the spring game, he threw for 153 yards and two touchdowns.
Woolsey, a redshirt freshman from Rodeo, Calif., will compete for a back-up spot. Adonis Phillips, a sophomore from Columbia, S.C., was brought into camp as a scout team quarterback. Born in Wahiawa, O'ahu, Phillips was a 2011 graduate of Irmo High School in South Carolina, where he was a two-sport athlete in football and track and field. He lined up at quarterback, linebacker, and safety and was part of a team that won back-to-back regional titles.
Graduate assistant Jordan Wynn, a four-year letterman at Utah, joined Chow's staff this season and will oversee the quarterbacks. Wynn played two full seasons and parts of two others with the Utes and finished his career throwing for 4,637 yards and 33 touchdowns. In 2009, he became only the third true freshman to start at quarterback for Utah and capped the season as the Poinsettia Bowl's Most Valuable Player, leading the Utes to a 37-27 victory over California and a 10-3 campaign.
