East Carolina isn't hiding from the moment. Per Pete Thamel, the Pirates are set to start veteran transfer Mitch Griffis when they walk into Bryant-Denny Stadium to open the season against No. 13 Alabama, and Miami transfer Emory Williams is also expected to play behind him.
Sources: East Carolina is set to start veteran transfer Mitch Griffis, and he’ll debut for ECU at No. 13 Alabama in the opener. Miami transfer Emory Williams will also play for ECU against Alabama.
This isn't a redshirt freshman getting thrown to the wolves. Griffis started his college career at Wake Forest back in 2020, and Thamel notes he's racked up 10 career starts across stops that also included a year at Texas Tech. He's a well-traveled arm who's seen a little bit of everything, which matters when your first game as ECU's starter is on the road against a top-15 SEC program.
The stat line backs up the resume, if not the ceiling: 2,314 career passing yards and 17 touchdowns, according to Thamel's reporting. Nobody's calling Griffis a star, but he's a known quantity in a system ECU actually needs him to run well right away.
Griffis is a veteran quarterback who started in college at Wake Forest in 2020. He has 10 career starts, and he brings a familiarity with the system that new OC Jordan Davis brought from North Texas. Griffis was at Texas Tech last year in a similar system and has compiled 2,314 career pass yards and 17 TDs.
That system matters as much as the quarterback running it. ECU brought in Jordan Davis as its new offensive coordinator this offseason after Davis ran the country's top-ranked scoring offense at North Texas last season. Griffis, notably, played in a similar scheme during his year at Texas Tech, which is exactly the kind of continuity a first-year OC wants from his QB1 on day one.
None of that changes the size of the task. Alabama opening at home against a Group of Five program in Week 1 is the kind of game the Tide are supposed to handle without much drama, and a transfer-heavy ECU quarterback room making its first start together on the road in Tuscaloosa is a real gauntlet. But for East Carolina, the calculus is less about pulling the upset than finding out fast what this offense actually is with Griffis and Williams both in the mix before conference play starts.
Expect Williams to get real reps too, not just mop-up duty — Thamel's report frames this as a two-quarterback plan against Alabama, not a one-man show with an emergency backup. How the Pirates split snaps between a steady veteran and a Miami transfer with something to prove will say a lot about what Jordan Davis's offense looks like the rest of the year.