When you’re a veteran college quarterback transferring to your fourth school in six years, you know what to expect if you check the internet comments.

He’s still around? Geez.

Isn’t he like 30 years old?

He needs to move on with his life. He isn’t going to the league.

It’s time to hit LinkedIn and get a job.

And yet, despite the haters, we’ve reached a peak moment for journeyman quarterbacks across college football. Freshmen who began college in 2020 during the COVID pandemic were granted an extra year of eligibility by the NCAA. Now they’re still hanging around as sixth-year seniors. Nearly 40 quarterbacks from the 2020 class came back this year for one more season at the FBS level.

They’re 23- and 24-year-old grizzled veterans who feel even older inside their locker rooms. They have college degrees. Their partying days are done. They’re training and preparing like pros, trying to squeeze every last drop out of their college days.

College football today is in many ways unrecognizable compared to when they were high schoolers. The explosion of NIL and the transfer portal, big-name coach firings, conference realignment, the expanded College Football Playoff, the pandemic, collectives, agents, revenue sharing — you name it, these quarterbacks went through it.

“Not a lot of people have experienced this type of roller-coaster ride in college football,” SMU quarterback Tyler Van Dyke said.

The days of QBs bouncing from school to school for starting jobs aren’t going away. In this new era of unlimited transfers, 85% of top-50 quarterback recruits from 2018 to 2021 have transferred and more than 40% have switched schools multiple times. But we are nearing the end of the road for a historic fraternity of super seniors granted additional eligibility because of the pandemic.

This is the story of four journeyman quarterbacks — Chandler Morris, Robby Ashford, Drew Pyne and Van Dyke — still chasing glory in Year 6.

Jump to:
Chandler Morris | Robby Ashford
Drew Pyne | Tyler Van Dyke

Chandler Morris: Oklahoma | TCU | North Texas | Virginia

Chandler Morris was ready to retire from football. After four years of setbacks, he’d had enough.

“Football just wasn’t loving me back,” Morris said. “It’s kind of hard to love something if it’s not loving you back.”

He started fighting those thoughts two years ago at TCU. Midway through his first full season as a starter, Morris hurt his left knee and was sidelined for four games. Young backup Josh Hoover stepped in to replace him. Morris got healthy but never got his starting job back, and he couldn’t understand why.

By then, though, little had gone according to plan. Morris had initially committed to play for his father, Chad Morris, at Arkansas. Five months later, Arkansas fired his dad. The younger Morris responded to that gut punch by signing with Oklahoma. He arrived in Norman in the summer of 2020, amid the COVID outbreak, knowing nothing would seem normal.

There wasn’t much bonding time with his freshman class. Gathering outside the football facility was discouraged. Players were taking online courses in their dorms, masking up, testing for COVID daily and trying to get through a college football season played in empty stadiums.

“I don’t know if I was very happy there,” Morris said. “But I don’t know if there was a happy freshman anywhere in the country that year.”

After a season behind Spencer Rattler and with Caleb Williams on the way, Morris had a sense Oklahoma wasn’t the right fit. He transferred home to TCU to play for Gary Patterson. Eight games into the 2021 season, Patterson’s successful 21-year tenure ended abruptly when he was fired on Halloween. The next day, Morris learned he’d make his first career start.

The Horned Frogs had nothing to lose against No. 12-ranked rival Baylor, and that’s exactly how Morris played. He lit up one of the Big 12’s best defenses with 461 passing yards, 70 rushing yards and 3 touchdowns in a shocking 30-28 upset.

“I was probably too young for that success,” Morris said. “I probably thought I had arrived. I went out there and just dominated them. I was kind of like an overnight success.”

Morris was no less dominant the following August in his preseason competition with senior Max Duggan. TCU coaches still swear to this day it wasn’t a close call. Morris earned the right to be QB1 as the Frogs kicked off the Sonny Dykes era. But he didn’t make it through the season opener, exiting with an MCL sprain in his left knee after a Colorado defender landed on his leg.

“Max took it over,” Morris said, “and the rest was history.”

A few weeks later, when Duggan led a 55-24 blowout win over Oklahoma, Morris went home and cried. He knew he’d missed his chance. TCU went on a surprising 13-1 run to the CFP national championship game, with Duggan finishing runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. Morris enjoyed going on that wild ride, but it wasn’t easy to set personal feelings aside. He badly wanted to be out there playing.

Everything finally seemed aligned for Morris entering 2023. The Horned Frogs got off to a nightmare start with a home loss to Colorado they never saw coming, but Morris settled in from there and was playing well until another MCL sprain shut him down. Dykes and his coaches went with Hoover to finish a rough 5-7 season. Morris felt he was being pushed out the door.

Chad Morris knew how frustrated and hurt his son was — and how seriously he was contemplating retirement — but urged him to give it one more shot. North Texas offered a fresh start. Chandler finished his degree at TCU in the spring of 2024, taking four classes as a regular student and staying away from football. He needed the time off to reset.

“I learned not to put my identity into football,” Morris said. “I think it’s easier said than done when that’s all you do. I had my identity wrapped up in that, and once it got stripped away from me, I was in a low place.”

North Texas coach Eric Morris (no relation) watched his QB get his swagger back last season. Chandler credits his coaches for fully tailoring the Mean Green offense to his strengths and preferences. “They poured so much confidence into me,” he said. Morris went in thinking 2024 would be his final college season. Then he put up 4,016 total yards, seventh most in FBS, and had $1 million offers coming in from Power 4 programs.

If Morris was going to move back up for his sixth year, he wanted to be around good people. He trusted Virginia coach Tony Elliott, who had worked with his dad at Clemson. He knew Virginia was loading up on transfers and going all-in for 2025. Once he got on campus and saw the personnel, he knew the team could compete.

“You can’t ask for much more than an opportunity to come to a place like this and try to get ’em back on the map,” he said.

Nothing about the Cavaliers’ 8-1 start and rise to No. 12 in the AP poll, their highest ranking since 2004, has surprised their QB. Their double-overtime triumph over then-No. 8 Florida State got everyone’s attention, and they’ve survived two more overtime thrillers since. When asked if this team is giving him 2022 TCU vibes, Morris didn’t hesitate.

“I really do compare it to that year, just based off our locker room and how close and how hungry we are,” Morris said. “They’ve lost quite a bit of games over the years. They’re ready to be done with that.”

Even on a seven-game win streak, nothing comes easy. Morris has battled a shoulder injury for most of the season. Elliott says he’s been a “warrior” throughout. After everything Morris has gone through, good luck convincing him to miss a single snap of this ACC title chase.

“I wouldn’t pick to be in college football for six years,” Morris said, “but here I am.”

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Robby Ashford: Oregon | Auburn | South Carolina | Wake Forest

For Wake Forest quarterback Robby Ashford, the trials of the past six years have felt beyond his control.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m trash, because I’ve been to four Power 4 schools,” Ashford joked. “I can’t be that bad. It’s just been situations I couldn’t handle. I went through a lot of things I couldn’t really do anything about.”

He was committed to Ole Miss back in 2019, the same year Elijah Moore pretended to urinate in the end zone during the Egg Bowl. Rebels coach Matt Luke was in Hoover, Alabama, visiting Ashford when he got the call and realized he was getting fired.

Ashford had little time to pick his next school and moved across the country to play both football and baseball at Oregon. If the 2020 MLB draft hadn’t been cut from 40 rounds down to five due to COVID, the former top-200 draft prospect might have picked pro baseball out of high school.

After two seasons as a backup QB in Eugene, Ashford was eager to play. But then Mario Cristobal left for Miami, Dan Lanning took over and his new offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham brought in Bo Nix. Ashford hit the portal and went home to Auburn. He found a coach who believed in him in Bryan Harsin, and he became a starter three games into the 2022 season.

During his first start against Missouri, Ashford seriously injured his throwing shoulder: second-degree AC joint sprain, bruised rotator cuff, sprained trap muscle. He played hurt for nine games, not saying a word about it publicly until the season ended.

“I was getting four shots a game in my shoulder and neck to be able to play,” he said. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody so teams wouldn’t hammer my shoulder. The only people who really know are with you every day. They can’t go out there and tell everybody, ‘Bro, y’all don’t understand, Robby is hurt. He’s playing with a messed-up shoulder.’ But that gave everybody a perception about me.”

After a four-game slide, Auburn fired Harsin. The backlash Ashford experienced during that 5-7 season was unlike anything he anticipated. He knew all about the passion in the SEC, but nothing prepares a 20-year-old for an inbox full of racial slurs and death threats after losses. Ashford said it wasn’t just direct messages on social media; he’d get texts from unknown numbers too.

“You try not to look at it, but sometimes it pops up while you’re scrolling,” he said. “It’s like you can’t get away from it, even when you’re not trying to search for it. That’s part of it that comes with being a Black quarterback.”

Ashford didn’t want to show his face on campus. He knows he played too timid, too nervous about making matters worse.

“It gets to the point where you almost have to start worrying about your personal safety,” he admitted. His father, Robert, encouraged him to keep his head up and keep trusting it would work out.

Ashford gave up baseball in the spring of 2023, a sacrifice he was willing to make to prove to new Auburn coach Hugh Freeze he was focused on leading the Tigers. He felt great about his performance in spring practice and was the spring game offensive MVP. Weeks later, Freeze landed transfer QB Payton Thorne from Michigan State.

“I got backdoored,” Ashford said. “I got my job taken without losing it. If I would’ve known I was going to lose my job without playing bad, I would’ve played baseball. You live and learn.”

Ashford hadn’t graduated and couldn’t leave. He backed up Thorne for a season before moving on and was glad to get out.

“It felt like a toxic environment,” Ashford said.

He moved on to South Carolina, believing it was important to stay in the SEC, but lost an offseason competition to LaNorris Sellers. Ashford remembers his first time meeting the redshirt freshman who wore glasses even with his helmet on.

“I was like, ‘You’re the kid that’s, like, really good?'” Ashford recalls with a laugh. “It just don’t seem like it when you meet him. Then he gets on that field and, yeah, you’re the kid that’s really good.”

Ashford mentored and pushed Sellers as he became a breakout star for the Gamecocks. He wasn’t thrilled about his backup role but had nothing but love for Sellers, whom he considers a little brother. With one season left, Ashford reentered the portal seeking an opportunity.

Wake Forest had a new coaching staff and needed a veteran starter. Ashford suspects he might be the lowest-paid QB1 in the Power 4, but he doesn’t care. He just wanted to play.

Ashford is right where he wanted to be, but it’s been a tough year. His father passed away suddenly at the age of 53 in April. He’s still working through the grief, and it hit him hard 15 minutes before his first Wake Forest start.

“He’d been there for me through the ups and downs,” Robby said. “I was hoping he got to see this year.”

Robby continues to tough it out without him. He’s trying to lead this 5-3 team despite an injured thumb on his throwing hand. Ashford and backup Deshawn Purdie pulled off a 13-12 upset of SMU in Week 9, but they had few answers for Florida State’s defense in a 42-7 loss Saturday.

Ashford hasn’t stopped believing, even in Year 6, that his best football is still ahead of him.

“There’s been a lot of days where it’s like, man, why is this going on?” he said. “But it’s kind of brought me a great sense of hope, just to know I can keep going. I’ve gotta keep going.”

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Drew Pyne: Notre Dame | Arizona State | Missouri | Bowling Green

Drew Pyne’s legendary Connecticut high school football coach, Lou Marinelli, had a saying that stuck with the quarterback: Football is just like life, but sped up.

For Pyne, the college football journey began incredibly early. He received scholarship offers as an eighth grader back in 2016, thanks to a highlight tape of his mom’s Pop Warner footage cut together on iMovie. Pyne threw at an Alabama camp and suddenly had an offer from Nick Saban.

“I kinda stopped being a kid in eighth grade after that,” Pyne said.

The kid who grew up quickly in a Catholic family committed to his dream school, Notre Dame, as a high school sophomore. Ian Book took Pyne under his wing during Pyne’s freshman year in 2020 as the Fighting Irish rolled through a bizarre season in the ACC to the College Football Playoff and a Rose Bowl semifinal played in Texas.

Pyne went in for two snaps against No. 1 Alabama and saw eight future NFL draft picks on the other side of the ball. He couldn’t wait to lead the Irish back to that big stage.

After another year of waiting behind Jack Coan, Pyne felt ready. Tyler Buchner won the starting job entering 2022 but suffered a shoulder injury. In the first quarter of his first start in South Bend, Pyne accidentally went viral. The NBC broadcast captured offensive coordinator Tommy Rees cursing out his QB from the coaches’ box after three poor drives. Welcome to the big leagues.

Pyne’s run as the starting quarterback of the Fighting Irish, the goal he’d chased his whole life, lasted just 10 games. A four-loss season in Year 1 under Marcus Freeman wasn’t the goal for a team with preseason top-five expectations. But Pyne did go 8-2 as a starter with victories over Clemson, North Carolina, Syracuse and BYU.

“I’m real proud of my time there,” Pyne said. “I still root for Notre Dame and Coach Freeman, who was great to me. I’m still best friends with a lot of those guys. It’s a great place. I loved it there.”

So why leave? By the end of the season, it was clear Freeman and Rees wanted a transfer QB to push or replace Pyne and Buchner. Pyne was one semester away from graduating and hoped to become a captain in 2023, but he was informed there’d be a competition. He sensed the odds were stacked against him and exited before the bowl game to hunt for his next home.

Pyne transferred to Arizona State. And then Missouri. And now Bowling Green. He didn’t expect this many twists and turns.

“Going in, I never wanted to transfer or do any of that,” Pyne said. “But that’s just the way the tide flows in today’s game. I love football and I want to play football. That’s why I’ve done what I’ve done.”

At Arizona State, he teamed up with Dillingham to try to lead a revival. A pulled hamstring during a preseason scrimmage was the first setback. Pyne came back several weeks early — refusing to miss a rematch with Caleb Williams after losing to USC in his Notre Dame finale — with the help of daily sessions in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

“All I wanted to do was to play Caleb again and try to beat him,” Pyne said. “So I said screw it, I don’t care if my leg falls off, I’m going to play in that USC game.”

And how’d that go?

“I popped my left groin, separated my AC joint, got a pinched nerve in my neck and got sacked eight times — but we took ’em to the fourth quarter,” he said. “Let me tell you, the next morning was pretty tough.”

Pyne’s season was over. He’d wake up at 4:30 a.m. each day to go in for physical therapy. He’d get down on himself as doubt crept in. And he didn’t know what to do next.

He returned to Notre Dame, reenrolling for the spring to take the final classes needed for his degree. Pyne worked out with a local trainer and hoped someone would take a chance on him.

Missouri brought in Pyne to back up senior Brady Cook. He had to relieve an injured Cook against Alabama and threw three interceptions in a 34-0 loss. What stuck with him, though, was the way Luther Burden III and fellow teammates kept encouraging him. “They know I try as hard as I can,” Pyne said. “Those guys had my back.”

He rewarded their faith the following week against Oklahoma, guiding a 75-yard touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter to tie it up. Less than a minute later, Missouri defensive end Zion Young scooped up a fumble and scored to stun the Sooners.

“I was on the bench saying a prayer,” Pyne said. “I go, ‘God, I feel like things don’t go my way all the time. Can you please let something go my way?’ And then, boom, I look up and Zion’s running in for the touchdown.”

After one of the proudest nights of his life, Pyne wanted to chase that feeling in 2025. He joined Bowling Green because he was sold on new coach Eddie George and the culture he’s building. Pyne knows a thing or two about winning over a new team by now, but this group embraced its 24-year-old captain.

When Pyne made his fifth trip to the Manning Passing Academy this summer, Archie Manning named him captain of the college QBs. After all, he’d roomed with Brock Purdy in his first year.

“Now I’m the old head,” he said.

Pyne is going through more trying times this season. He just returned to action Saturday in a loss to Buffalo after missing three games with a leg injury. The Falcons are 3-6 and trying to get back on track to chasing bowl eligibility in November.

Believe it or not, thanks to the Arizona State injury, Pyne has one more season of eligibility in 2026 if he wants it. He hasn’t decided, saying his life could go in a million directions after this year. At the moment, he’s just grateful for what he found at Bowling Green.

“It’s really all you could ask for, especially for a guy like me at the tail end of my career, being a starter, a leader and a captain,” Pyne said. “It’s like playing Road to Glory, but in real life.”

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Tyler Van Dyke: Miami | Wisconsin | SMU

Entering the 2022 season, some were calling Tyler Van Dyke, the reigning ACC Rookie of the Year, a first-round NFL draft talent alongside Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud.

“It was a lot of praise, but I believed it,” Van Dyke said, “I thought I was that good. And I know I’m that good when I’m healthy and playing my best.”

Young and Stroud are now third-year NFL starters. Van Dyke is still fighting to get back on their level. He’s off the national radar for now, a backup at SMU recovering from a significant leg injury and preparing for one more chance.

Van Dyke reunited with Rhett Lashlee, the coach who gave him so much confidence as a redshirt freshman subbing for injured starter D’Eriq King at Miami. Now King is his position coach. They went on a good run together in 2021, but it wasn’t enough to save Manny Diaz’s job. New coach Mario Cristobal offered effusive praise for the quarterback he inherited, comparing Van Dyke to Justin Herbert and declaring there wasn’t a better QB in the country.

But at the end of 2022, Van Dyke wasn’t ready for the NFL. He got a wake-up call four games in when Cristobal benched him during an ugly loss to Middle Tennessee. “Everything’s not rainbows and butterflies like 2021,” Van Dyke said. In the moment, he felt like the fan base was flipping on him from love to hate.

Van Dyke started meeting with a sports psychologist to talk it out and clear his head. He threw for 496 yards in his next start, a close loss to Drake Maye and North Carolina, and felt back on track after a road win at Virginia Tech. Then he suffered a third-degree AC joint sprain in his throwing shoulder, forcing him to sit out most of the final five games. After a disappointing 5-7 season, Van Dyke considered leaving Miami.

In the spring of 2023, Alabama tried to persuade Van Dyke to transfer. And he was listening.

“To be honest, I was pretty much all-in on going there,” Van Dyke said.

The Crimson Tide had lost Young to the NFL and were unsure of what they had in Jalen Milroe. Van Dyke said Rees, then the OC at Alabama, tried to recruit him to Notre Dame to replace Pyne. Now he was circling back. For Van Dyke, it wasn’t a financial decision. The NIL money back then was nothing like it is today. This was about his future. A great year at Alabama could get him back to first-round status.

But he didn’t transfer. Cristobal found out about the Alabama talks and convinced him to stay. Van Dyke doesn’t know how that leaked out, but he was in a tough spot and ultimately preferred to stick with his team.

“I felt good about it at the end of the day,” Van Dyke said. “I didn’t want to move. I had a lot of friends on that team. I was the leader of the team. Everybody loved me and I loved the team. I wanted to stay at Miami.”

The Hurricanes started 4-0 in 2023 before a baffling loss to Georgia Tech, eschewing victory formation to close out a win and fumbling away the game. Van Dyke got hurt the following week against North Carolina, a bruise on his knee that spread to his quad. He tried to play through the rare leg ailment, called a Morel-Lavallée lesion, but wasn’t close to his best and finished with 14 turnovers. It was clearly time to move on.

The weekly unpredictability of those last two Miami seasons wore him out. The Canes would win and feel like contenders. They’d lose and, to Van Dyke, it felt like the end of the world. He says he has a lot of respect for Cristobal, but the situation deteriorated over time.

“It ended up not working out for both of us,” Van Dyke said.

Miami replaced him with a future No. 1 pick in Cam Ward. For Van Dyke, it stung to see all the effusive praise for Ward’s leadership last year come with unsubtle digs at the previous QB.

“Leadership is easy when everything’s going well,” he said. “It’s easy to blame someone, it’s easy to put that scapegoat on someone, when things go wrong. It was a tough year. I felt like that was a narrative on me that was so unnecessary and ridiculous. Even some coaches who recruited me in the portal were questioning my leadership.

“I remember Cristobal, when the Alabama situation came up, saying to me: ‘You mean more than you know to this team. You’re the guy. Everybody looks up to you.’ He said that to my face. After that, for all them to question my leadership? That one hurt a little bit.”

Van Dyke was relieved to have a dozen offers in the portal, and he called Lashlee for advice. Wisconsin felt like the right fit for 2024, a Big Ten program where he could win and revive his draft stock. Three games in, Van Dyke got to face Alabama.

He tried scrambling on a third down to extend the Badgers’ opening drive. His right foot got stuck in turf as a defender slammed him down along the sideline. Had he known officials threw a flag for defensive holding, Van Dyke would’ve walked out of bounds. Instead, he fought for extra yards and it cost him the season.

Van Dyke didn’t just tear the ACL in his right knee and his meniscus. He also damaged cartilage at the bottom of his femur, which required three allograft plugs. The injuries meant a more than 12-month recovery timeline. He spent two long months on crutches watching the Badgers stumble to 5-7, wondering if he’d ever play another snap.

Van Dyke went back in the portal. Lashlee and King offered what he needed most: a place to rehabilitate with the people he trusts most. Lashlee didn’t bring him to Dallas to be SMU’s starter or backup for 2025. He was giving his former QB an opportunity to recover with full support and no pressure.

“Some guys on the team when they first met me, they were like, ‘Oh my god, you were at Miami. You were good at Miami,'” Van Dyke says with a chuckle. “I’d say, ‘Yeah…'”

It’s an odd experience, taking a backseat when you’ve been a starter for four years. Van Dyke is suiting up for games and is close to being cleared, but he’s there to support starter Kevin Jennings. He’s offering tips in film sessions and charting plays during games as he ponders getting into coaching after he’s done playing.

Van Dyke is working toward his big comeback and returning for a seventh year in 2026. He’s determined to start again, whether that’s at SMU or elsewhere, but he’s happy where he is these days. He’ll turn 25 in March. He’s getting married next summer. That’s all he knows for now.

“In the past, I would always look at my future like if I don’t do this, this and this, it’s not going to work out for me,” Van Dyke said. “Now I’m taking it one day at a time.”

The book on his career isn’t closed yet. The veteran passer grins when he considers what people will say about his journey extending into Year 7.

“It’s going to surprise a lot of people that I’m still in college,” Van Dyke. “But everyone has a different story to tell.”

Israel’s former top military lawyer has been arrested after admitting leaking a video of soldiers allegedly abusing a Palestinian prisoner.

The growing scandal comes as Israel handed over the bodies of 45 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza.

An Israeli official said ex-military advocate Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was taken into custody overnight on Sunday – just a few days after resigning from her post, reported the Associated Press news agency.

She was arrested when a search was carried out along the Tel Aviv beach after concerns for her safety were raised by her family, reported Israel’s Channel 12.

Former chief military prosecutor Colonel Matan Solomesh was also arrested overnight as part of the investigation into the leaked video, reported Israel’s Army Radio.

The leaked footage was aired last year purporting to show an incident involving soldiers and a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel.

The developments came as the bodies of the Palestinians were received at Nasser Hospital, in Gaza, on Monday morning, a Gaza health ministry spokesperson told the Associated Press.

The release of the bodies came a day after Israel said Hamas had handed over the remains of three Israeli troops taken hostage on 7 October 2023.

Israel said the troops were killed in the attack on southern Israel before their bodies were dragged by militants back to Gaza.

A Hamas statement said the remains were found on Sunday in a tunnel in southern Gaza.

The three troops have been identified as Captain Omer Neutra, an American-Israeli, Staff Sergeant Oz Daniel and Colonel Assaf Hamami, according to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since the ceasefire started on 10 October, Palestinian militants have released the remains of 20 hostages, with eight now remaining in Gaza.

Hamas has released one or two bodies every few days.

Israel has demanded faster progress and, in some cases, has said the remains were not those of any hostage.

Hamas has said the work to return the bodies has been complicated by the widespread devastation in Gaza.

Israel has been releasing the remains of 15 Palestinians for each hostage returned.

Health officials in Gaza have struggled to identify bodies without access to DNA kits.

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Only 75 of the 225 Palestinian bodies returned since the ceasefire began have been identified, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

About 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped in the Hamas terror attack that sparked the war two years ago.

Officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 68,600 Palestinians have died.

The only survivor of the Air India crash has told Sky News he has been “broken down” by the trauma.

Air India Flight 171 crashed into a building, killing 241 people on board, just after take-off in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on 12 June, with Briton Viswashkumar Ramesh the only passenger who walked away from the wreckage.

In an interview with Sophy Ridge on the new Mornings with Ridge and Frost programme, Mr Ramesh faltered, stumbled and regularly lapsed into long silence as he tried to recall the day.

Warning: This article contains details some may find distressing

Mr Ramesh, 40, was in the now-fabled seat 11a, which was located next to an emergency door that he managed to climb out of after the Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed.

His younger brother, Ajaykumar, seated in a different row on the plane, could not escape.

Months on, Mr Ramesh wanted to share the impact of that day in an attempt to try to regain control of his life – and to pressure Air India into addressing the catastrophic effect of the crash on him and his family.

But it is clearly traumatic to talk about.

“It’s very painful talking about the plane,” he says softly.

Asked by Ridge if he can speak about what happened on board, he falls silent.

Just after the crash, from his hospital bed, Mr Ramesh told cable news channel DD India “there were bodies all around me” when he stood up after the crash. A further 19 people had been killed on the ground.

In hospital, he was still pleading for help in finding his brother.

“How is your life now?” Ridge asks.

He says the crash has left him feeling “very broke down”, adding it’s much the same for the rest of his family.

He does not leave the house, he says, instead sitting alone in his bedroom, doing “nothing”.

“I just think about my brother,” he adds. “For me, he was everything.”

He says he still cannot believe Ajaykumar is dead – but that’s as much as he can bring himself to say about him.

Ridge acknowledges the contrast between Mr Ramesh’s own survival – “a miracle” – and the “nightmare” of losing his brother.

It echoes the sentiment of Mr Ramesh’s other brother, Nayankumar, who told Sky News in June: “I’ve got no words to describe it. It’s a miracle that he [Viswashkumar] survived – but what about the other miracle for my other brother?”

Mr Ramesh says he is still suffering physical discomfort too, dealing with knee, shoulder and back pain, along with burns to his left arm. His wife, he says, has to help him shower.

He and his wife live in Leicester with their four-year-old son, Divang.

“I have a four-year-old, so I know what four-year-olds are like,” Ridge says. “They’re a handful but they can bring a lot joy as well. How has he been since the tragedy happened?”

Mr Ramesh says Divang is “okay” but, with his eyes lowered, adds: “I’m not talking properly with my son.”

“Does he come to your room?” Ridge asks.

He shakes his head.

Mr Ramesh was joined by Leicester community leader Sanjiv Patel and his adviser and spokesperson Radd Seiger for support as he spoke to Ridge.

“Sophy… this is an important question that you’re asking,” says Mr Seiger.

“You’re a parent, I’m a parent, and we all know that being a parent is a privilege, isn’t it? But it takes a lot of energy… you need to be in a good place to be a good parent, to have that from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed.

“You need to be in a good place and we can all see… he’s [Mr Ramesh] been robbed of that and I think it’s just a chore for him to just get through the day, let alone be a husband, be a father.”

What’s next for the crash’s sole survivor?

Mr Seiger and Mr Patel say the list of what he needs to get his life back on track is “endless” but that it starts with “practical things” such as financial support.

Mr Ramesh and Ajaykumar used “all their savings” to set up a fishing business in India, which saw them frequently flying there together from the UK.

The business has stopped running since the crash, meaning Mr Ramesh’s extended family in both the UK and India has no income, according to Mr Patel.

For them, it amounts to an “existential threat”, he adds.

They say Air India has offered Mr Ramesh a flat interim payment of £21,500 – a one-off sum given to a claimant in advance of reaching the end of a personal injury claim.

A spokesperson for Tata Group, Air India’s parent company, told Sky News that Mr Ramesh had accepted the payment and that it had been transferred to him.

But Mr Seiger says the sum “doesn’t even touch the sides” when it comes to everything Mr Ramesh needs while he is unable to work or leave his home – from help with transporting his son to school, to food, to medical and psychiatric support.

They are petitioning for more than just cash payments, which they suggest reduces Mr Ramesh to “a number on a spreadsheet”.

Rather, they want Air India’s chief executive Campbell Wilson to meet with him, his family and the families of other victims in the crash, to hear about their struggles and “talk as humans”.

Mr Patel said: “Meet the people. Understand what they’re going through. Relying on bureaucratic machinery to deal with real lives [of people] who are going through real trauma – the pain of that, the financial consequences – that is the day-to-day – how lives have been destroyed, and not just the immediate family, but extended families too.”

A spokesperson for Air India told Sky News: “We are deeply conscious of our responsibility to provide Mr Ramesh with support through what must have been an unimaginable period. Care for him – and indeed all families affected by the tragedy – remains our absolute priority.

“Senior leaders from across Tata Group continue to visit families to express their deepest condolences. An offer has been made to Mr Ramesh’s representatives to arrange such a meeting, we will continue to reach out and we very much hope to receive a positive response.

“We are keenly aware this continues to be an incredibly difficult time for all affected and continue to offer the support, compassion, and care we can in the circumstances.”

Mr Patel also claims the UK government took away Mr Ramesh’s family’s Universal Credit after they went to India following the disaster.

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According to the government’s website, those receiving Universal Credit can continue to do so if they go abroad for one month. This can be extended to two months if “a close relative dies while you’re abroad and it would not be reasonable for you to come back to the UK”, it states.

They are calling on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to look into the family’s circumstances and pressure Air India into doing more to help.

Mr Patel appeals to him, saying: “Take action today. If this was your family, what would you do? And if you understand that, you’ll know what to do.”

He suggests the UK government can also be doing more directly to help families in Britain who have been “devastated” by the crash.

“So while we wait for Air India to do what’s right, there’s what the UK authorities and the system can do as being right to serve the citizens in support during this tragic time,” he adds.

The Department for Work and Pensions told Sky News: “Our thoughts remain with the loved ones affected by this devastating tragedy.

“Our policy ensures people travelling abroad due to a bereavement can continue receiving Universal Credit for up to two months, rather than the standard one-month limit. Those who are abroad for longer periods would not be able to continue receiving the benefit.

“People can make a new claim once they return to the UK. This approach strikes a balance between our commitment to ensuring people get the support they need and our duty to the taxpayer.”

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