NC State football quarterback enters NCAA transfer portal amid logjam at position
Quarterback Ben Finley is leaving N.C. State, but will always be remembered for one game and a big Wolfpack victory.
Finley will enter the NCAA transfer portal, it was learned Tuesday. The decision comes three days after the Wolfpack played its spring game on a soggy day at Carter-Finley Stadium.
Finley, who has three years of college eligibility remaining, would have entered fall camp as the No. 3 quarterback for the Pack. Brennan Armstrong, a graduate transfer from Virginia, and sophomore MJ Morris are expected to compete for the No. 1 spot on the depth chart.
Finley, the younger brother of former Wolfpack quarterback Ryan Finley, began the 2022 season as the scout team QB. Devin Leary was the Pack’s returning starter, backed up by Jack Chambers, a graduate transfer into the program.
After Leary was lost of the season with a pectoral injury and Chambers proved to be ineffective, Morris took over as the starter. But an injury to Morris allowed Finley to make the improbable leap from scout-team QB to QB1 against North Carolina in the final regular-season game.
In his first career start, Finley passed for 271 yards and two scores as the Pack won a 30-27 double-overtime thriller in Chapel Hill. After the game, Finley was among a handful of players who gleefully paraded about the Kenan Stadium field with a large N.C. State flag.
Finley later called it the “greatest feeling ever,” and added, “To be able to persevere in the biggest thing in life.”
With Morris unable to play in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl game in Charlotte on Dec. 30, Finley again started against Maryland. The Pack was unable to score a touchdown against the Terrapins in a 16-12 loss at Bank of America Stadium — Finley was 22-of-48 passing for 269 yards and two interceptions.
“I obviously didn’t do what it took to win that game,” a dejected Finley said after the loss, now his final N.C. State game.
Finley committed to NCSU in December 2019. Playing at Paradise Valley High in Phoenix, Arizona, he passed for more than 8,000 yards, was a 3-star recruit and had offers from Arizona State and Arizona.
Enrolling at NCSU in January 2020, Finley played as a freshman against UNC in the 2020 season and had his first TD pass. He had just 16 snaps in three games in 2021.
This story was originally published April 11, 2023 at 12:45 PM.
