Football Athan Kaliakmanis Named QB1, Gavin Entering Portal
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Greg was asked about QB comp and he said it was hard to be solid about anything after just a few spring practices and a game that was "just an exhibition for fans". There was nothing in the vid to show some huge gap for an easy decision. Vs National Champ GW was much better than most B1G QBs and the Gopher was the worst. Hating W is one thing but thinking some huge upgrade took place is funny, We better hope the WRs are a big improvement.
Ritchie, who attended the practices, just mentioned in today's podcast that the QB competition throughtout this spring wasn't even close. Congrats to Athan for winning the job.Greg was asked about QB comp and he said it was hard to be solid about anything after just a few spring practices and a game that was "just an exhibition for fans". There was nothing in the vid to show some huge gap for an easy decision. Vs National Champ GW was much better than most B1G QBs and the Gopher was the worst. Hating W is one thing but thinking some huge upgrade took place is funny, We better hope the WRs are a big improvement.
you and I usually agree but you are wrong hereGreg was asked about QB comp and he said it was hard to be solid about anything after just a few spring practices and a game that was "just an exhibition for fans". There was nothing in the vid to show some huge gap for an easy decision. Vs National Champ GW was much better than most B1G QBs and the Gopher was the worst. Hating W is one thing but thinking some huge upgrade took place is funny, We better hope the WRs are a big improvement.
first, there was plenty to see which would lead one to believe who was a better qb. AK could deliver strikes in stride and Gav still couldn't hit a rb at 5yds
secondly, coach's mind was mostly, if not already, made up and he's talking to the media to avoide a shitstorm
thirdly, we know from practices that Athan pulled away even before the announcement and things coming out cause there was more than enough smoke but people were not listening or paying attention
lastly, color me shocked that Greg did this and didn't wait longer
we've already destroyed the qbr narrative, it's a flawed view bigly
Well Ritchie is a smart guy but I still don't take 15 spring practices seriously one way or another. If GS said Wimsatt was amazing I wouldn't have cared. I learned that hard lesson watching Army many times. I also don't compare Dual Threat QBs tp Pro Set as if they are the same. The Dual had 3 TDs to the Pro Set's 2 (who had all day to throw medium passes to wide open WRs).
Personally I was waiting to see how Dymere Miller would be able to help GW in time. Guys who overthrow short passes (like Eli M) usually do better with long passes (like Eli M). Some huge lineman do poorly on bench press because they have long arms. They aren't weak - they just wont get 35 reps out. The leverage is poor for the bench but it helps on the field.
QBs are the same in that some throw one sort of pass better than another and RU has been crippled at long passing for a long time. Not just the OL blocking (a problem highlighted by GS) but some WRs are just not cut out for going deep where they need to be fast, athletic and tenacious with DBs. Around here people will say "WRs" dont matter for completion %. Many distinctions between player types just elude detection when fans get angry. Many angry fans thought GW was Trevor Lawrence coming in. "Highest QB rated in Rutgers History!" Alas Trevor Lawrence on Greg's recent offenses would have been a waste
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Spring practice and the game are not used to select starters. There is no pressure, the QBs know they can't be hit, everyone is just working to get back into the groove. For example if Kyle Monangai had a bad spring practice they wouldn't name him the 2nd RB for the first game. Another example is the other QBs were not named their part after the spring 'competition' for their roles, nor got a chance to be named the starter based on their spring workouts. There's a ton of intense practices before the season starts to hash out who the starters will be.
The coaches making the decision after spring supports the idea that the coaches already wanted AK to start. And it seems that Schiano wanted to give GW the chance to transfer so he didn't waste a year. Ciarrocca was probably the driver about who he wanted the starting QB to be and Schiano put his trust in him.
Anywho, it's time to embrace AK and put this behind us.
The coaches making the decision after spring supports the idea that the coaches already wanted AK to start. And it seems that Schiano wanted to give GW the chance to transfer so he didn't waste a year. Ciarrocca was probably the driver about who he wanted the starting QB to be and Schiano put his trust in him.
Anywho, it's time to embrace AK and put this behind us.
It seems to me a lot of posters are making this too complicated. (I'm not sure whether you are or not.) The coaches aren't terribly happy with the QB. They bring in a transfer QB to compete with him. After spring practice, the coaches decide they prefer the transfer. (The spring game enters into their decision, but what happened in spring practice is much more important to them.) They tell the "incumbent" in time for him to transfer that they think the transfer is QB better and that the incumbent has the choice either to try to win the job back in the summer or to transfer. The incumbent decides to transfer. End of story. No need for complex theories about whether the coaches had made their choice before spring practice (IMHO, they'd have to be idiots to make a choice before practice) or about anything else. No need to accuse the incumbent of being soft --he is just making a decision about whether he wants to be here if it turns out he doesn't win the job back.
Nice to include the full post from X. Vince Marrow is the Associate Head Coach of University of Kentucky.
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Well if he’s going to ride the bench, may as well go home to be the back up.
If a healthy Noah Vedral hadn’t run out of eligibility, he would’ve been the starter last year. We could’ve really made a splash with a game manager. That’s all we needed and likely the metric the staff careds about most. We won 7 games with a QB that couldn’t complete any form of a short pass. The coaches want to plug that gap. To do this, they assessed whether Gavin’s bunny throws seemed more accurate all spring. We all saw in the spring game they look the same. This made beating him out pretty easy. Not being able to make those throws is a rate limiting flaw.
"Kentucky wants to get back to running the football. New offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan has talked about how important it is for the quarterback to provide some value as a rusher. There is no doubt that Gavin Wimsatt can provide that, but a ton of development as a passer in the pocket will be needed for the transfer.
Wimsatt projects as a power conference backup who can provide a short window high floor to the offense thanks to his running ability. The redshirt junior has starter-level tools as a passer but must develop better accuracy quickly as constant misfires can make him turnover-prone and prevent an offense from playing on schedule."
Transfer Bio Blast: Gavin Wimsatt
Kentucky is hosting Rutgers transfer Gavin Wimsatt for a visit. What could the Big Ten transfer bring to Lexington?
Are you sure? That's really not that many allowed. 1.5 per conference game? I think Teel got sacked 11 times in 2006, which was one of the better figures in the country, if memory serves.
Oh, wait. Do you mean 14 was the LEAST allowed? OK, that would make sense. My bad.
We were good with avoiding sacks. It’s debatable if that was due to Gavin’s running speed, a tribute to our improved OL play or simply a result of Gavin being programmed to rarely try to make in game reads. Since he quickly threw the ball away when the play call broke down and rarely attempted to scramble or look for what the D gave unscripted this makes sense.
I hope you'll forgive a basic question. It seemed clear that the staff was not comfortable with RPO plays -- maybe the staff didn't think he knew how to read defenses. But why would the staff resist having Wimsatt scramble the way many QBs do when there are no open receivers?
I think they wanted to minimize risk of injury to Wimsatt.
Thank you, but I'm not sure that explanation holds water. Scrambling carries a risk of injury no matter who is the QB, but teams (college as well as pro) allow scrambling anyway. What, if anything, was different about Wimsatt? Was Wimsatt especially likely to fumble? Did the staff not want him to hold the ball for fear he might force a pass into tight coverage? Wimsatt was, of course, an excellent runner, so one would think that the staff would have liked having him scramble.
I don’t think it’s that they didn’t want him to scramble. It was probably more of a situation where Gavin, unfortunately, did not demonstrate that he could be relied upon to make unplanned read decisions of any kind. His runs were almost entirely QB draw plays designed for that outcome. He just did not exhibit strong, or quick, decision making abilities. So they managed that by encouraging him to throw the ball away immediately as his default when a play broke down.
Shelby tried at points to argue that it was about Schiano wanting to be conservative but there’s no way. Healthy Noah Vedral, for all his flaws, made plenty of read adjustments. Greg was there in both regimes even if it was a different coordinator. Our line was a lot worse when Vedral was QB so basically every play required adjustment. Ironically, Noah wasn’t nearly as fast as GW and didn’t have nearly as strong an arm but he scrambled for far more yards and completed way more read option throws - often short route outlets - before he got hurt. He may have been limited in terms of talent and potential, but Noah had important game management skills that Gavin never developed here. My guess is the staff thinks AK can be a modestly more talented version of this for us.
Vedral didn't suck. So a modest improvement in ability, behind a very good rushing game and solid OC, could mean more than modest increase in offense.
I agree. By modestly more talented I meant in terms of measurables. I think AK has a bit better arm strength and similar running ability to Vedral (who also could run better than he was usually credited for by fans). Noah’s stat line shows a better completion rate than AK’a but that’s partly reflective of mostly safe, short passes. Noah’s longer completions were usually a result of yards picked up after carry. At one time, many of our fans pointed to that as a negative (claiming it was the wide outs doing the work for him) but I think most have come to appreciate that post catch yardage is at least partly a result of accurate throws being made in stride (seeing how few of them we’ve enjoyed recently). AK can make those throws consistently which is why he won the competition.
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