Nick Marshall another JUCO QB under consideration by Texas

When Texas Longhorns co-offensive coordinator traveled out to Arizona on Monday, it wasn't the first trip a member of the Texas staff made to evaluate a junior college quarterback, as news broke Tuesday from multiple outlets that the Longhorns had gone to Mississippi on Sunday to evaluate Garden City CC's Nick Marshall.

Like Tanner McEvoy, the 6-2, 215-pound Marshall (different services list him between 185 and 215 pounds) received conference player of the year honors after throwing for over 2,800 yards and rushing for 949 more. Rated as a three-star prospect in the 247Sports composite rankings, Marshall spent a year at Georgia, where he recorded five tackles in 13 games at cornerback before being dismissed from the team last February for an undisclosed violation of team rules.

The successful year in Kansas has earned Marshall offers from Baylor, Kansas State, Indiana, Texas Tech, and others. Towards the end of November, the Georgia native named a top two ($) of Kansas State and Indiana and has official visits planned to both schools over the next several weeks.

Is Marshall interested in Texas?

The Longhorns haven't offered yet, but he did say that he's interested in taking a January visit to Austin ($).

Garden City recruiting coordinator Eric Gibson had this to say about Marshall as a player:

He has vision, athleticism, a great pocket presence -- he gets out of things and his athleticism is amazing. Some of the things I've seen him do are just unreal. He's got a very accurate arm. People don't give him credit for what kind of arm he's got.

The problem isn't really athleticism for Marshall -- the problem is decision-making. In the 2011 season, he threw 19 interceptions and only 18 touchdown passes, hardly the ratio that coaches prefer when evaluating prospects. And despite that so-called accurate arm, he completed only 57% of his passes this season.

Basically, Marshall is a more dynamic athlete than McEvoy, who is a strong athlete himself, but is less refined and probably more of a risk, especially since he has three years to play two seasons instead of the three years to play three seasons like McEvoy.

Also unlike McEvoy, Marshall will not be able to enroll in January to participate in spring practice, which would hurt his development at the quarterback position, but would also provide more reps for the other five quarterbacks currently set to be on scholarship at Texas this spring.

Of course, there's also a chance that Texas could be recruiting Marshall as a safety, a position he certainly has the athleticism to excel at.