Bennie Coney, a three or four star (depending on which service you ask) dual threat quarterback from Plant City, Florida, has committed to the Cincinnati Bearcats. According to Rivals, Coney is a four star QB and the 7th best dual threat QB in the 2012 class. Scout was not as high on Coney and rated him a three star quarterback. In any event, Coney is listed at 6-2, 210 lbs by both Scout and Rivals.
While he is listed as a dual threat, his statistics from high school as well as his scouting videos indicate that he spends plenty of time in the pocket. Matt Opper at Down the Drive believes that Coney matches up with the things that the ideal QB in Butch Jones' system (Dan LeFevour) can do skill wise. That's great news if you are a Bearcat fan. While many people thought of LeFevour as the "Rust Belt Tebow", the truth is that Tebow ran 13% more over the course of his career than LeFevour. While the running element was important to LeFevour's game at Central Michigan, he still was still attempting a throw almost 75% of the time. Coney is already in that range in high school. The one big issue for me (and one that Cincinnati fans don't want to hear after last year) is ball security. Jones will have to clean that up in Coney's case as his stats on Max Preps show that he has fumbled 21 times on 132 high school carries.
The Bearcats were able to beat out a large number of suitors for Coney. Check out his offer list: Arkansas, Auburn, Boston College, Louisville, LSU, Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, South Florida, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.
You might recall that Mengus felt that Cincy had a good chance of picking up Coney. Ultimately, it looks like the Bearcats beat out Virginia Tech for the quarterback.