A.J. Hill might be Memphis football‘s future, but he still isn’t old enough to vote.
Though he won’t turn 18 until the summer, he has already gotten his first taste of college football. He enrolled early at Memphis and was with the Tigers for spring practices, which wrapped up with the spring game on April 26. The four-star quarterback from Warner Robins, Georgia, is one of the highest-ranked recruits in program history, so there has been plenty of interest in his first couple of months in the Bluff City.
Hill is competing with Nevada transfer Brendon Lewis and redshirt freshman Arrington Maiden for the Tigers’ starting quarterback job. Maiden played only one snap last season and Hill has never played in college, so Lewis has the advantage heading into the summer.
Still, there’s precedent for coach Ryan Silverfield to throw a true freshman into the fire as a starter. Seth Henigan won the job as just that in 2021, then held it for the next four years. That’s one of the things that drew Hill to Memphis in the first place.
Hill was 10-for-18 for 54 yards in the spring game.
He was not made available to the media during spring practice. So here’s a rundown of what his coaches said about his development.
Coach Ryan Silverfield
“It was a true growth every single day. And that’s the key. You bring in a 17-year-old quarterback, you don’t expect him to have everything mastered when it’s all said and done. You expect him to make steps in the right direction every single day, and you did.
“He has a great grasp of this offense. He loves football. He’s an absolute football junkie.”
Offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey
“He’s very, very mature for his age. Incredible arm talent. There is some young stuff in there. The stuff that he makes mistakes on is stuff that he can learn from. But his skill set — his arm talent — is overly impressive. His football IQ, his work ethic toward learning the offense, his work ethic toward learning — he meets with every single coach on staff.
“Sometimes he’s meeting with the wide receivers coach talking pass game, he’s meeting with the O-line coach talking protections, he’s on my text messages all night long sending me questions on things that we’re going to work on the next day. That’s who he is. He’s a 6-6, 225-pound kid that can spin it, athletic enough, with a tremendous football IQ.”
Quarterbacks coach Mitch Stewart
“The biggest surprise and shock is just his maturity level. I know I was the same way, when you’re a young dude, the fact that you’re living by yourself, mom’s not there to do your laundry and all of it, that gets scary. And so you have all of these external factors that sometimes can filter in to your internal play. And that dude has not. I mean, he has been very mature for his age.
“Just the way that he approaches practice. The way that he’s approached studying. Some of the questions that he asks, the football questions, they’re not Chapter 1 intro to the book questions. You can tell that he’s kind of thinking forward and has a plan for what he’s doing. Very inquisitive. Wants to know. Watches a lot of tape. Watches a lot of tape that Seth had from last year and constantly is asking questions about those plays. ‘Why did he do that? Why did y’all call it this way last year?’ And those things. He’s been impressive, man.”
Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on X @thejonahdylan.
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