Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Maybe it’s time to reassess the chase for the almighty 5-star.

Stetson Bennett vs. Max Duggan isn’t exactly the way recruiting experts drew it up.

“Quarterback is a unique position, and it takes a unique person,” TCU coach Sonny Dykes said.

There’s something oddly comforting about it all. In an age of quarterback is everything, backup plans and castoffs rule the most important position on the field.

Joe Burrow. Mac Jones. Stetson Bennett.

All castoffs and/or backup plans, all national champions over the past 3 seasons.

So it should come as no surprise that the 2 quarterbacks playing in Monday’s national championship game fit perfectly in the new order of college quarterbacks.

While there are clear instances where 5-star quarterback recruits impact programs at the championship level — Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence, Deshaun Watson (by several recruiting services) — the majority of Playoff national championships have been won with quarterbacks eventually finding their way through the maze of 5-stars who didn’t make it.

Cardale Jones was a 3-star recruit at Ohio State playing for injured starter JT Barrett, and won the Big Ten Championship and 2 Playoff games in the 1st CFP season. Jake Coker, a 3-star who transferred from Florida State, won a national title a year later with Alabama.

After a 3-year run of championships won by elite quarterbacks, Burrow, Jones and Bennett won titles. Burrow was a recruiting backup plan at Ohio State, couldn’t get on the field and transferred to LSU, where he won it all after 2 years in Baton Rouge.

Jones, a 3-star recruit, spent his career backing up Jalen Hurts and Tagovailoa — and then got his chance in 2020 and had a season for the ages. Bennett’s story from walk-on to national champion unfolded last season, and now here we are with Bennett and Duggan — a former 4-star left for scraps at the end of his career.

Georgia did everything it could to not play Bennett, and he kept coming back. After it was clear he wasn’t beating out the 5- and 4-star star recruit on the roster (Jacob Eason, Jake Fromm), he left for junior college and came back to another 5-star ahead of him (JT Daniels).

Even after Bennett led Georgia to the national title last season — after 2 years of proving his worth to the program — Georgia coach Kirby Smart tried this offseason to get coveted former 5-star transfer Caleb Williams.

“He has overcome us when we didn’t want him out there,” Smart said.

Which is eerily similar to the obstacle Duggan faced when Dykes arrived for his first season at TCU with new offensive coordinator Garrett Riley.

After spring practice and fall camp, Dykes and Riley named Chandler Morris the starter, leaving Duggan, in his final season at TCU, to sit and watch.

“Never pouted, not one time,” Dykes said. “Kept working, kept competing and wanted to be ready.”

It took all of 3 quarters in the season opener for Duggan to get his opportunity, after Morris sustained a knee injury in the win at Colorado. Duggan has played at an elite level since, and 3 months later, was in New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist.

That’s a long haul from 2 years ago, when prior to the 2020 season and during a routine exam, he found out he was born with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. He went through 9 hours of surgery to fix an electrical pathway that causes a rapid heartbeat, and 2 days later a blood clot formed and forced another surgery.

So 4 years after signing as a Top 250 4-star recruit — after 3 years of serviceable success with a struggling program, and dealing with significant medical problems off the field — Duggan is playing in the biggest game of the season against another reclamation project.

After they both beat teams led by higher-ranked QBs (Michigan’s JJ McCarthy, Ohio State’s CJ Stroud) in the Playoff semifinals.

“His whole approach and laying it on the line every single day,” Riley said. “Those are the things we feed off.”

Sounds like another overachiever who won last year’s national championship.

Bennett played well at times in 2020 while Daniels was still recovering from offseason knee surgery. So well, in fact, that Smart played him probably longer than he should — after a loss to Florida cost Georgia the SEC East Division title.

Daniels started the following game and won 4 straight to finish the season, including a Peach Bowl win over Cincinnati. He began 2021 with offseason Heisman hype, and signed 1 of the first NIL deals for college football players.

Everything was set up for a huge season for the former 5-star, who then sustained an oblique injury in fall camp — one that flared up in a season opening win over Clemson. He sat out Week 2, and started 2 more games until sustaining another injury (to his lat) that put Bennett in for good.

And the storybook season began.

“Max is an awesome dude,” Bennett said. “Works hard, all those things. Heart and soul of that team. And there’s something to be said for both his story and my story and the fact that we’re here in the end.”

Maybe it’s time to start reassessing the chase for the almighty 5-star.