I know this is a BYU football fan site, but I think it is worth mentioning that Virginia has named a transfer from East Carolina as their starting QB for this season. It made me think of a couple things…
Is he going to be sharing time with a 5 star recruit?
Is he gritty and does he try hard, even though he doesn’t have much talent in the QB arena?
We know how much Bronco loves those gritty, walk-on transfers…
Jim, I like your drift in the conversation.
wasn’t one of the Virginia new asst. coaches also from East Carolina?
Sorry but 5 star recruits who don’t produce as well as 2 star recruits ride the bench until they learn to produce. If they can’t handle competition they transfer once and when they are benched again they transfer again and sit on the bench behind a freshman. It happened once recently, probably happened before that, and will undoubtedly happen again.
Well I’m just kind of surprised that they aren’t having the transfer split time with the 5th year senior… you know, run one guy in for a series and then have the other guy play the next series and not necessarily go with the hot hand, just give them both time… to create a scenario where nobody really performs, gets comfortable or where there is absolutely no way to allow for any continuity.
We saw how successful it was for the team at BYU… I’m just not sure why they don’t try it again. And you are right about not producing… I just don’t understand how a player doesn’t produce given that set of circumstances.
Actually Jake Heaps started all of 2010 after Nelson got injured. He started 11 games and hardly ever sat. So the rotating QB thing only lasted 2 games. I suspect it was never intended to be a permanent thing anyway and would only last until one or the other established themselves. He played well by the end of the season and I was seriously excited about him. He laid a huge egg in 2011 and that is on him. He lost his job because he didn’t perform. He really had no competition to start 2011 so there wasn’t some issue about running two quarterbacks in and out. It was assumed by everybody, including me, that he was the next great BYU QB. He wasn’t. He played very poorly in the 5 games he started in 2011 and wasn’t pulled except as a desperation measure against Utah State in his fifth start of the year. I don’t know what the coaches were supposed to do. One guy was struggling mightily and the team rallied around the other one. It seems Heaps didn’t want to compete for the job in 2012 and went someplace where they had nobody to compete with and failed there and ended his college career a backup to a freshman at yet another school. These are the facts and it is easy to use coaching, or whatever, as scapegoats but it doesn’t work with me.
He isn’t the first great prospect who didn’t pan out but I am not going to blame it on the coaches. Ben Olson didn’t pan out either, probably for different reasons than Heaps, but he was rated nearly as highly as Heaps was and never really did anything at UCLA after transferring from BYU. He never played a game at the Y before leaving. It turns out he wasn’t as good as John Beck and Max Hall who did very well under Anae and Doman. Heaps wasn’t as good as Beck or Hall either. My cousin who was the strength and conditioning coach at BYU for years said he heard that Olson regretted transferring from BYU after his mission. Some guys don’t turn out as well as expected regardless of who the coaches are.
Who said anything about Jake Heaps? 