It’s commonplace in football: A team has a sound defense and — at least in first halves if not second halves — will be competitive precisely because its defense isn’t going to let a game spiral out of its control. The offensive line is capable of providing good run blocking. Just about everything’s there…
… except for the quarterback.
Despite the “11-men-on-a-side, 22-on-the-field-at-once” reality of football, some positions are more important than others. On defense, those positions are the nose tackle, middle linebacker, and free safety. On offense, there’s the left tackle, running back, and especially the quarterback.
The main point to emphasize about the quarterback in a larger context is that whereas college football was mostly a running back’s game for a long time, continuing through the mid-1980s, the past quarter of a century has witnessed the emergence of a quarterback-centric style of play. Spread and vertical concepts, with their numerous tweaks and variations, have made college football a province for passing. It’s true that running backs dominate the Heisman list so far this season, and there is still a place in the game for dominant running backs who can keep the ball away from potent offenses on the other sideline. However, college football has rarely if ever been as hospitable to quarterbacks as it is now.
Coaches and programs might not need great quarterbacks, but they absolutely have to have good ones if they want to win championships.
So far in 2015, a few teams have lots of good pieces, but either lack quality or don’t yet know what they have at quarterback.
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First in line, consider the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
This team showed well in its season opener against TCU. The Horned Frogs didn’t have 742 injuries (#UNOFFICIALLY) on defense at the time, so it’s not as though the Golden Gophers were contained by backups or lower-level players. In that game, Minnesota was able to put together a few drives on the ground. Its offensive line wasn’t great, but it earned its share of victories (in a film-study sense) against TCU’s front seven. Had Minnesota not coughed up a fumble just before reaching the goal line, the outcome of that game might have been different.
Genuine talent exists on that offensive line, and on the other side of the ball, the defense has been very capable this season. Minnesota won three tough and very close games after the TCU loss because its defense — despite playing with the knowledge that it had to carry the workload for the team — never truly faltered. This past weekend against Northwestern, the defense — lacking any help whatsoever — gave way in the second half after a very respectable first half.
What’s missing with Minnesota? A quarterback.
Mitch Leidner is regressing instead of moving forward this season. Experienced as a player and familiar with coach Jerry Kill’s system, Leidner should be an asset for his team. Instead, he’s proved to be a liability. Anything the Gophers might (hope to) achieve in the next several weeks depends largely on Leidner’s ability to rediscover his game.
Before you say that’s extremely unlikely, consider what Mike Bercovici of Arizona State did this past Saturday against UCLA. Arizona State’s offense played four poor games in September. After reaching a point of no return in a humiliating loss to USC on Sept. 26, Bercovici clearly found himself against UCLA’s main Pac-12 rival. If Berco can do this, Leidner can.
So can Missouri’s Maty Mauk.
If Leidner resembles anyone — and if Minnesota’s situation parallels that of any other Power 5 conference team — it’s Mauk and Missouri.
Mauk is also an established veteran who is regressing under center. The Tigers’ defense is not a problem. The running back position has been hit by injuries this season, but that’s just one smaller component of a larger whole. The maddening thing about Mauk is that he’s shown he can make plays in crunch time. The absence of every-series, every-quarter consistency shouldn’t be part of Mauk’s profile at this point in his career, but it is.
One wonders if Mauk and Leidner talked at all before (or after) Missouri’s win over Minnesota in last season’s Citrus Bowl. Neither player is better off as a result of that experience, one of the better bowl games either program has enjoyed in the past 35 years.
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Another team that’s just a quarterback away from being special: Duke.
The Blue Devils’ defense has been outstanding this season. Keep in mind that the 19-10 loss to Northwestern was fueled by a kickoff return from the Wildcats. The Blue Devils just aren’t giving away much of anything on the defensive side of the ball. David Cutcliffe has reinvented his team, a sign of his adaptability and preparedness.
Now, if only Cutcliffe could coach his quarterback a little better (what a world, right?).
Thomas Sirk continues to struggle in his first full season as an ACC quarterback. What’s striking about Sirk and Duke’s offense is that they’ve been utterly stymied in second halves against non-cupcake defenses. After Duke polished off Tulane and North Carolina Central, the Blue Devils simply haven’t been able to achieve anything on offense after halftime.
In Duke’s three games against non-cupcake teams (Northwestern, Georgia Tech, and Boston College), the Blue Devils are averaging a whisker over 100 yards in second halves (102). The Duke offense — separate from the special-teams unit, which ran back a kick for a second-half touchdown against Georgia Tech — has scored one second-half touchdown in these three games… and that was a 39-yard drive set up by the defense. Duke’s total number of offense-based scoring the past three weeks: 11 points.
Sirk has not reached 200 passing yards against any of his last three opponents. Defenses know they can stack the tackle box and dare Sirk to beat them with the pass. More specifically, defenses know that since Sirk is especially uncomfortable when throwing the deep ball, they’ll dare him to make that throw, especially outside the numbers, because Sirk’s security-blanket reflex is the dump the ball off with a short pass. Even then, Sirk has surrendered interceptions on those short throws — he doesn’t always generate enough zip to stick the ball into a tight window.
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In the Big Ten, one can identify multiple examples (in addition to Leidner) of quarterbacks who are holding back their teams. Joel Stave did this last year at Wisconsin, and after seeing Saturday’s ugly 10-6 loss to Iowa, it’s clear Stave is still that kind of quarterback for the Badgers. C.J. Beathard has been reasonably good this season, but on Saturday, he didn’t look the part of a quarterback who was ready to take his team to the next level.
This conversation hasn’t even touched on quarterbacks who are still waiting to face the kinds of challenges which could either lead to their finest hours… or expose their limitations. The foremost example here is Brandon Harris of LSU. He needs help from his receivers, yes, but with Leonard Fournette dominating college football, Harris is in a position to give LSU the balance it needs to be successful. We’ll see how well he’s able to handle the heat in the coming weeks.
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My kingdom for a quarterback — if coaches just had one extra piece at football’s most important position, imagine how much they could achieve. Alas, life just doesn’t give us everything we want.
