Ohio St trotted out their 3rd string QB and beat Bama

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

Doesn't really matter if Knight is healthy or not when you're asking him to run an offense that he has repeatedly proven unsuccessful at. Given that your backup also struggles throwing the ball from the pocket, it's unclear why you'd base your offensive style around a pocket passing attack. Last year we had Bell, Knight, and Kendall Thompson. None of those guys are top tier pocket passers, and yet we did not adapt our offense to fit their strengths. That is either poor playcalling/gameplanning, or poor recruiting and evaluation (or both!).

I'm not trying to be abrasive here, but you are making anecdotal assumptions that aren't based on facts. In 2013, Oregon's QB (by percentage) ran the ball less time than any QB we had on campus. The rest of your argument seems to be based on those anecdotal conclusions.

Knight had 67 rushes, 134 passes (33% rushes)
Bell had 75 rushes, 233 passes (24% rushes)
Thompson had 4 rushes, 13 passes (24% rushes)
Mariotta had 125 rushes and 408 passes (23% rushes)

Now, I'm not arguing Heupel doesn't have issues that warrant him being replaced. I just think that if he goes you have to take Norvell with him. For me, Heupel's primary issue is his propensity to go 3 and out way too often in a game. The ballooning of that stat under his OCship has cost us more losses than I wish to contemplate.

[PalmBeachSooner]

When you look at tOSU QBs that played this year they are the splitting image of each other. It's no wonder they were able to come in and execute the offense with little or no drop off. OU on the other hand went from Sam and Landry to TK. I love TK and I think in the right offense he'd be outstanding, but he's been asked to be something he's not. I'm not sure about Thomas but Thomas certainly struggled to execute the offense.

That's the point exactly. We had a system and recruited QBs to fit that system. Then along came the dual threat QBs (RGIII, JFF, etc.). After the butt-raping by JFF in the Cotton Bowl we decided that's the direction our offense should go. At least that's the impression we had. Enter TK, who seems to be a great fit in that system, but guess what, we asked him to be a Sam. FAIL!

IMHO there's no reason Blake Bell could not have been a pro-style QB. He had the size and arm but never developed. I think he took it up the arse by our coaches. They totally failed him and seem to be failing TK.

[graphster]

I'm not trying to be abrasive here, but you are making anecdotal assumptions that aren't based on facts. In 2013, Oregon's QB (by percentage) ran the ball less time than any QB we had on campus. The rest of your argument seems to be based on those anecdotal conclusions.

Knight had 67 rushes, 134 passes (33% rushes)
Bell had 75 rushes, 233 passes (24% rushes)
Thompson had 4 rushes, 13 passes (24% rushes)
Mariotta had 125 rushes and 408 passes (23% rushes)

Now, I'm not arguing Heupel doesn't have issues that warrant him being replaced. I just think that if he goes you have to take Norvell with him. For me, Heupel's primary issue is his propensity to go 3 and out way too often in a game. The ballooning of that stat under his OCship has cost us more losses than I wish to contemplate.

I agree that Norvell should go too, and that the WR play is also a big problem with our offense currently (and really has been ever since Stills and Justin Brown graduated). I am not claiming that our QB problems are all about the QBs, because the WR play has also been very poor, with a few exceptions (Saunders and Shepard last year, Shepard this year).

I guess the stats do tell a different story, but it sure seems like we have not done an effective job using the running abilities of Knight (or Bell) consistently. Some games (like the Iowa State game this year), it was featured prominently and worked well. Knight had 16 carries for 146 yards in that game. In a lot of other games, it was never really a major factor. Against Clemson, for example, Knight had 2 runs. One was a sack and the other was a called play action pass that he ended up scrambling on. He threw the ball 37 times in the game, and there were zero called QB runs. Against WVU, Knight had zero runs. Against Texas he had 4 runs.

So I guess you're right that it's not correct to say that we never ran the QBs the last two years, but rather that we did so inconsistently. But you're also right that the bigger issue was probably that we did not execute consistently in the passing game, which would have required more than simply calling more designed QB runs to fix. I just felt that at times this year (and part of last, although they really dialed back the passing game the second half of the year last season), we put way too much of the gameplan on Trevor's arm and decision-making when we would have been better off to run it more (either with one of the RBs or with Knight in the option game), or call passing plays that gave Trevor a very simple read with an option to run if it wasn't there.

[dennis580]

That part doesn't frustrate me..Jones went 18-35 for 243 yards, 1TD and 1INT..and beat Alabama.

If a QB here has that stat line, we aren't beating anyone.

Cardale was also extremely effective with the power running game. He converted numerous first downs with his power running.