No,sorry,we arent, we agree,and a Steve Young sighting behind center would be a welcome sight indeed. Or an Elway
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QB Richard Torres is N
- Thread starter Red Reign
- Start date
Well Elway was really good, but he had the touch of a colt 45 until he got older and beat up. lol and got a coach and realized it wasn't always on him and they built a running game to help him.
I mad. I’m going to stomp my feet and grind my axe any chance I get.
I said this in another thread but it’s quite possible if things go poorly this season that we never know if they could develop another QB. They might only get Martinez for their whole tenure. I can’t evaluate Smother, or Harberg. Hell even LM has a very small sample size and could grow and improve.
Just clarifying, the starter for the '91 season and the '92 Orange Bowl was Keithen McCant, who was an above average passer. Joseph was the starter for most of the '90 season, and Grant was the starter for the beginning of the '92 season until Tommie took over. Mickey and Grant were NOT good passers. Tom Haase was decent, but we only saw him briefly against Georgia Tech in the '91 bowl game.
Also, just to quibble, Frost struggled to pass in slippery conditions, most likely because he has relatively small hands. If you watch the '96 Colorado game, the ball kept slipping out of his hand as he was passing.
Finally, you simply can't judge the passing of an option QB by the same standards as the passing of a team in pass-first and/or pocket passing offense. Option QBs get hit ... a lot. Getting hit makes it harder to pass. Tommie Frazier was recruited by almost every major college program to be a pocket passer, but HE wanted to be an option QB, which was why his final choices were Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Clemson. Miami wanted him to be a pocket passer. He would have been a good one. If he could stand in the pocket and just throw, so much of the struggles of passing as an option QB disappear. Ask anybody who ever played option QB how it hurt their passing, and they'll probably tell you war stories for as long as you'll listen. It especially hurts QBs who aren't good at using their elusiveness to avoid direct contact. Jamelle Holieway and Turner Gill were excellent at avoiding hard hits when running the option. Although they weren't/aren't option QBs, Taylor Martinez and Adrian Martinez were/are NOT good at avoiding unnecessary contact when running the ball. I don't ever want to see a Nebraska QB landing on his helmet, shoulder pad, or back EVER again. A smart running QB will do some version of Marcus Allen, who could twist and contort his body to avoid ever taking on a direct shot. The best ones not only fall forward, but find a way to twist while falling to go down as slowly as possible.
The same concept works against pocket passers, fwiw. Go back and watch Jojo's strip-sack on Haskins in the 2018 Ohio State game. He landed hard, and he never fully recovered in that game or the next. He had a hitch in his passing from that point all of the way through the 2nd half and through the Maryland game the following week. It hurts to throw with a sore shoulder, and it's natural to adjust your throwing motion to limit the pain,... which screws up your passing.
I used to know some of the guys who were walk-on receivers when Mickey Joseph was the QB... he threw a mean knuckleball. They looked like they had arthritis in their fingers from so many dislocations right after college.
Also Keithen McCant is one of my all-time favorite QB's, just a solidly nice guy with good talent. I really wanted him to succeed (much like Gdowski).
One word, one man for avoiding hits
Sweetness
Fantastic example.
They always said he always got that extra yard, it was because rarely did anybody square upon him and drive through him, it was almost always to the side, where he could twist for that extra yard.
I remember him splitting d tackles and squeezing out the needed short yardage time after time.
H
Statistics you didn’t include:
Touchdown to pass ratio
Fumbles lost
Completed passes in excess of 20 yards.
While AM looked promising year 1, even then he had lots of turnovers.
Haarberg has a gun, but his completion percentage in the Spring Game was not good (less than 50% IIRC). I bet a dollar to donuts Cole Payton will have both a better college and pro career than Haarberg. But he has a gun so there is some hope he will look batter than a sub 60% Class C QB.
Haarberg,9-23 1 TD 1 Int
The point was, when AM walked into the program, he had a stellar first year as a QB. That suggests the evaluation of his abilities was pretty accurate. As a freshman, he had a better offense overall than he did in year 2 and 3. But if you want to bag on the coaches about something it wouldn’t be their evaluation of AM. It would be their development after he got here. But even then, reality is more complicated than that. The other 10 people lining up in the huddle are part of the equation as well.
I don’t believe anyone outside the program has seen enough data on Haarberg to make an evaluation. And if you are going to use Spring game completion percentage as your measuring stick, you should probably take into account the 30-40 mile an hour winds that day.
I am as prone as anyone to making rash and sometimes harsh judgments based on emotion. But sometimes it’s helpful to take a step back and take a more reasoned approach.
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I don't think evaluation is the issue. The issue is development after arriving on campus. Injuries haven't helped issue either.
If I had to take an uneducated wild guess, all that QB guru stuff we are putting them through may be counter-productive and may be getting in the way of natural talent.
This year will help tell the story. If your 4 year starter hasn’t learned what youre trying to teach by now, either you have suspect teachers or a suspect pupil. (Assuming an adequate o-line, an adequate RB, and some adequate players to throw to and you remain injury free - all open questions at this point.)
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