The final entry in my series of best and worst case scenarios for the upcoming season. I would do one on special teams, but its pretty simple. Kicking and punting come down to freshman stepping up, and the return game, to paraphrase MGoBlog comes down do "HOLD ON TO THE DAMN BALL. Let's now look at the biggest x factor for the coming season, the quarterback position.
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The two-headed monster. I still
have nightmares about 2008. |
The story of the Michigan offense these last two years is largely a story of quarterback play
or lack thereof (amirite?). 2008 was the worst offensive year any of us have ever seen because the options at quarterback were a walk-on and a pro style passer unfit to run the spread and shred. This is a reductive view that doesn't take in to account the worst offensive line of the last ten years, and two freshman running backs, but bare with me. 2009 was a year of promise and ultimately failure, on the backs of one quarterback who was tasked with too much pressure to carry an offense (losing your best option at RB and the heart of your offensive line at different points will do that), and another quarterback who had all of three weeks of formal training at the position before the season. The quarterbacks did the best they could with the injuries and inexperience that surrounded the team last year. Their best wasn't good enough.
This year is different. The offense returns almost wholly intact and deeper than before. The defense returns a lot of its contributors from last year and is finally nearing the point where there is a legitimate two deep at every position. Questions abound for this team as we enter the season, but none of them seem to matter as much as who takes the first snap this Saturday. This isn't a real question, since it is clear all three options at quarterback will play. That doesn't really matter, because if there is one thing the media loves more than Brent Favre's annual retirement fiasco, it is a full fledged quarterback controversy.
So we return to the question that launched the discussion of running backs: If you have two quarterbacks, do you indeed have none?
