Most quarterbacks remember their first varsity pass because of the nerves. Will Grunnet remembers his because of what happened after it left his hand.

“My most memorable moment has been when my wide receiver took my first high school pass to a 90-plus yard touchdown,” the Edina High School freshman said.

It’s the kind of debut you don’t script, and for a Class of 2029 quarterback in Edina, Minnesota, it’s a useful introduction to what he’s after. Grunnet has been playing since 2016 — a decade of football at fourteen years old — and the reason he started is the same reason a lot of quarterbacks do. His dad put the idea in his head, and it stuck.

What kept him at the position is more specific. Ask what he enjoys about playing quarterback and he doesn’t say the throwing or the attention. He says the pressure.

“Some things I enjoy about playing quarterback are being able to handle pressure in certain situations.”

That answer lines up with everything else he says. Asked what separates a great quarterback from an average one, he names two things and stops: being a great leader, and being mentally tough. Asked who he watches, he picks Jalen Hurts, and the reasons are the same qualities in a professional uniform. “Some things I admire about him are how calm he is, and that he shows up in big moments.” There is a pattern in his answers, and it isn’t arm talent. It’s composure.

He has had reason to build it. The biggest obstacle of his career so far came when he broke his non-throwing shoulder — an injury that doesn’t touch the mechanics of the position but takes you off the field all the same, which for a young quarterback is its own kind of test. He got back to full strength, and he credits the people around him rather than anything he did alone.

“I overcame the injury by surrounding myself with my friends and family who helped me until I got back to 100 percent.”

His development work runs through QBMotionMW, the training program run by Tanner Morgan, the former University of Minnesota quarterback. Morgan is also the mentor Grunnet points to first when asked who has shaped him most, and the reason he gives is availability more than instruction.

“He’s a guy I can call whenever I have a question, and he’ll give me his best advice.”

Beyond that, Grunnet has taken his reps into camp settings, including a camp at the University of St. Thomas — early exposure for a player who has only just started high school.

The goals are laid out the same way he answers everything else: short, direct, no padding. In the near term he wants to improve his ability to extend plays and keep building mental toughness. Looking a little further out, the target for this season is simple — put up good numbers.

For a freshman in one of Minnesota’s largest programs, that’s the right size of ambition. The first pass already went 90 yards. Now he gets to find out what the next thousand do.

Follow Will: @will.grunnet on Instagram, @Will_Grunnet on X

Why a Membership Matters

There was a moment last season when the ball left Will Grunnet’s hand for the first time in a high school game, and a receiver caught it, and kept running, and didn’t stop for ninety yards.

Think about who was in that stadium. His dad — the reason any of this started back in 2016. The friends and family who sat with him through a broken shoulder and got him back to a hundred percent. The people who had already watched him earn it.

Now think about who wasn’t there. Everyone else.

That’s the part that’s hard to sit with. Will’s story is already good. A kid who’s played for a decade before he could drive. A quarterback who broke a bone and came back. A freshman who says the thing he loves most about the position is the pressure — and then went out and proved it on the first throw that ever counted. None of that is invented. All of it happened.

And right now, none of it exists anywhere a stranger can find.

Will doesn’t have a QB Magazine profile yet. So when a college coach, a camp director, or an evaluator sits down to look at 2029 quarterbacks in Minnesota, they don’t find a thin version of Will. They don’t find him at all. There’s no bad first impression to overcome — there’s no first impression, period. Ten years of work, and the search comes back empty.

Fixing that costs nothing. A free QB Magazine profile gives him a recruiting page, performance and academic stats, two film links, two featured photos, and consideration for the magazine. That’s the floor, and every quarterback should be standing on it. Will should sign up today.

But a profile is a place people can find you if they already know to look. What a membership does is make them look.

That’s what the paid tiers are actually buying: a monthly custom graphic that turns a name buried in a list of 2029 quarterbacks into something a thumb slows down for. Feature articles — one a year on Practice Squad, two on Starter, quarterly on All-Pro — so there’s a real story attached to the name instead of a stat line. And weekly story reposts on Instagram and X that carry all of it into a room Will’s own account will never reach on its own. His followers already believe in him; they were there for the throw. The magazine’s audience is the people who are actively hunting for quarterbacks and have never heard his name.

The Starter tier adds two things that matter for a player at his stage in particular: a spot in consideration for the Top 50 QB Mag Watchlist, and priority for the College Bus + Camps TOUR — the trip that puts him on college campuses, in front of college staffs, throwing. And there’s a practical piece parents notice immediately. Will is already going to camps; he’s been to St. Thomas. Starter cuts camp costs in half. All-Pro covers them entirely. For a family already writing those checks, the math tends to move in one direction.

Here’s why the timing matters more for Will than for a younger kid: he’s a freshman. The years that get evaluated are starting right now. Nobody gets discovered by one post — it happens when the same name keeps surfacing, month after month, season after season, until “some 2029 out of Minnesota” turns into that kid from Edina, said by people who’ve never met him. Starting as a freshman means three full seasons of that compounding. Starting as a junior means trying to make up ground with a clock running.

And there’s one more thing in it that has nothing to do with recruiting.

Will’s dad is the reason he plays. Tanner Morgan is the guy who picks up the phone whenever Will has a question. His friends and family are the ones he credits — by name, unprompted — for getting him through the injury. Every article and every graphic becomes a permanent record of that. Not a clip that disappears down a feed by Friday. Proof of what a fourteen-year-old was building, and who he was grateful for while he was building it.

He said what he admires about Jalen Hurts is that he shows up in big moments.

The big moments are already happening. This is how the rest of the world finds out.

Start free, then upgrade: quarterbackmagazine.com/memberships