Chad Voytik headed to Eastern Kentucky after transfer from Pitt

Former Pitt quarterback Chad Voytik announced his decision to transfer from Pitt back in January. This week, he decided on a new home.

Voytik is headed to Eastern Kentucky in the FCS ranks, as announced on Wednesday.

The move to Eastern Kentucky is sort of an interesting one when you consider where Voytik came from. He was once a four-star recruit and also put together a decent year at Pitt as the starter before being replaced by Nathan Peterman. It's a move that puts him closer to his Tennessee home, but also one that requires him to drop down a level. Many players choose to drop down to the FCS ranks so they can play immediately but in Voytik's case, he was a grad transfer and could have played immediately anywhere, anyway.

Voytik has said that he wanted to play this year as a senior - that's no surprise, obviously. With that in mind, it's a move that makes you wonder how much interest there was by other FBS schools. For the record, he also reportedly visited Indiana and Memphis.

On paper, ironically, it looks like Voytik may not even be guaranteed to be the starter even at the lower level. Eastern Kentucky returns their starter Bennie Coney, who will be a senior and who had a pretty good year (2,471 yards, 23 touchdowns, eight interceptions). And before you dismiss him as an FCS guy, Coney was a three-star recruit in Voytik's 2012 class with offers from Auburn, LSU, Michigan State, Michigan, Virginia Tech, as well as many others. He settled on Cincinnati where he couldn't get playing time and ultimately left.

Now, all of that isn't to indicate Voytik can't beat him out. But it's interesting that he chose to drop to the FCS only to go to a school where he will likely face some strong competition to play. It seems like a big part of this was to get closer to home. You have to imagine that he could have gone to other places in the FCS where the quarterback position was murkier.

The thing I'll say, though, is what I said last year when Nathan Peterman came here. If you're a transferring quarterback, I think you go to a place where you believe you will play based on what the coaches tell you. It seems completely unreasonable to think Voytik will transfer there only to sit out his last year and lose his eligibility - it just doesn't make much sense. He's already redshirted so this is it for him, barring an injury. We have no idea what Voytik's new coaches told him in terms of playing time, but personally, I would be very surprised if he didn't play there. And also of note is that Eastern Kentucky's new offensive coordinator, who had some experience recruiting him at Mississippi State, was the one who reached out to him.

One final thing to remember here is that this is a kid that has taken advantage of his education. The NFL doesn't look like a strong possibility for him and while other players transfer to the FCS to showcase their ability to play in the pros, Voytik has a clear plan for the future. He graduated from Pitt and, as that Trib article linked at the top indicates, he has been accepted into Eastern Kentucky's MBA program with plans to go into finance whenever his football days end.

Whatever happens to him, hopefully he falls into a good situation for him.

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