Was that a worst case scenario for our QB situation?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Riley vs. Jake discussion:

[jay santos]

I think I have two disconnects between those that think this is a bad decision to go with Nelson.

1. I believe that personnel changes so quickly in the college game and the experience factor varies so greatly (ie some new starters do great some long time starters never improve much) that I rarely think it's good to invest games now for the future. Also, what kind of impact could 7-6 vs 10-3 make on a program in terms of recruiting, reputation, national interest, winning attitude on the team, etc?

2. The difference in Riley vs Heaps. Riley's not quite as bad as people are saying. He's never going to be a great college QB but he could be a good college QB. And as for Heaps, I'm not sure he'll ever be a great college QB and is a long ways from being a good one.

[jay santos]

If it's true that Riley has the support of his teammates coupled with the fact he's playing better, then it's very tough to put in Jake just to give him practice. Coaches lose teams and their jobs by doing this sort of thing.

BS. Players get behind a QB who's good. If Jake does well, they'll get behind him. If Nelson plays poorly, suddenly we'll hear rumors about how he's cocky and the players don't like him.

[Tone Loc]

CJ I'm not gushing. I'm just getting Hsaru's brother Ton Loc up to speed. No one thinks Riley is all-world. However I think he's getting a short shrift from those guys. With them no credit is ever given unless your name is Jake. Right now not a lot of credit should be going to the chosen one. Unfortunately for them the only way to give credit to Jake is to denigrate Riley constantly. Judging by the two players performances I think they are being unfair. Frankly judging by your comments to a post I made specifically about Jake I think you're being slightly unfair.

Nelson obviously has weaknesses but in spite of those he's playing the position better than Jake. Sure Riley has thrown two INT's but rarely are the five INT's Jake has thrown brought up. In six quarters of action Nelson has five TD's to Jake's three. Obviously he's thrown some bad balls. With that said he's thrown some very good balls. No one thought he could stretch a defense but he went over the top twice to Jacobson. One was perfectly thrown and caught for a TD. The other was slightly under thrown but still should have been caught. Even the under thrown ball was better than most of Jake's deep attempts.

When Riley did well against USU I didn't gloat about it. However I'm sick of all the one-sided BS that's been slung since then and I'm going to speak up.

Just so you know, I think that heaps struggled and deserved to be benched. He is obviously too immature to handle the gig right now. I was so pissed at him laying down when he threw that pick at ole miss I wanted him benched right there.

However, don't even give me this stupid comparison crap between the two. Jake played against 4 man press defenses that byu has rarely been good against. Max was terrible against them, and only beck had moderate success because he had a whip, and that was only as an upperclassman.

Yes riley came in was successful against usu, but I would bet that if gary anderson had time to gameplan against him it would have been a different story.

So yes, put me in the let jake play against these tomato cans so he can get the live reps he needs. I just can't get excited about the next year and a half with riley at the helm. If he proves me wrong and blossoms, awesome. But if he comes in and hovers around .500 ball in 2012 it will mark a huge coaching failure

[Shaka]

Riley vs. Jake discussion:

Agreed

[Flystripper]

This is the only disappointing thing to me. Riley just isn't a very good Div 1 college QB. I know you hate when I say this, but Riley's ceiling will hurt us down the road. I don't know what more progress he can make aside from cutting down on the turnovers. And I just don't see that happening with his talent, particularly against much better defenses. He's going to win this year because Terrence Brown could win at QB with our remaining schedule. And I expect him to get a long leash this week, at TCU and at Hawaii because we won't be favored to win (I think we're -1 at Oregon State). So this means no more live reps for Heaps, barring injury to Nelson.

We have a rare opportunity to use the rest of the year to prepare for the next two (which could be very big) the way our schedule is shaped. It really disappoints me that we're squandering that right now. I am not saying that Heaps is the future. But he could be. And I'd rather find out now than over another tumultuous offseason. Riley is not the answer. Like Goat said, he's the ultimate backup QB. Heaps may not be the answer but we need a setting outside of practice where he shines to see. As it stands, we have two shitty quarterbacks. One with potential. One with heart. Heaven help us Taysom Hill.

What I find disappointing is that next season (which supposed to be the beginning of a couple of really special years for BYU) is going to begin with a QB controversy which at best will have Jake regain his position. However, Jake will be behind where everyone expected him to be in his development which at best will make next year what we thought this year would be. The worst case scenario is that Nelson retains his position next season (through his own progression or Jake's lack of progression) and Jake never reaches even a fraction of his potential by the time he is a senior. So basically BYU will have had a couple of OK seasons with Nelson but if if Jake were properly developed those two seasons could have been very special. Essentially BYU will be at least one year behind schedule and quite possibly 3-4 years behind schedule if Jake never develops.

There is much blame to share for this:

1. Jake for regressing in a big way and not getting it done on the field.

2. Doman for failing to provide effective gameplans and calls during the first third of the season.

3. Bronco for choosing an inexperienced guy to be his OC and failing to replace Doman with a great QB coach. Jake's coaching is failing him and that is mostly on Bronco TBH.

[MarkGrace]

I wonder how much of this team thing is a reflection of Bronco's "culture?" As far as I can tell, the guys who don't like Jake are handful of key players that happen to be seniors. Tree, Jacobsen, etc., and all it would take is a few guys positioned as "leaders" to really start to push the team in a certain direction. I highly doubt Apo, Hoff, Wilson, Juice, et al, have any problem with Jake. Does the divide exist because they believe the more experience guy, the guy who has "paid his dues," should be playing?

There was a post on CB from yesterday about Tidwell being appalled at some point in talking with Manti because Manti believed he could play right away. Who knows if this is actually true, but you can see where it would be based on what we know about Bronoc. Is this mentality ingrained in the players? I know at the moment we could point to play and say Jake just isn't getting it done so that's why he lost the team, but it seems this problem predates Jake's struggles (which to me have only been serious in the UCF and Utah St games). Despite his excellent play to end the season, and despite all reports that he basically left Riley in the dust during camp, it still didn't seem like everyone was on board with him. To me that suggests they either didn't like him on a personal level, or they didn't believe he had "earned" the position, despite the fact that he was outperforming the other guy.

[Tone Loc]

Riley vs. Jake discussion:

I agree Lebowski, lets either go back to the foyer and nitpick about LDS items or start the who is a better pick for the pac 12, utah or byu, thread back up.

[Shaka]

BS. Players get behind a QB who's good. If Jake does well, they'll get behind him. If Nelson plays poorly, suddenly we'll hear rumors about how he's cocky and the players don't like him.

Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed...

Actually it's about my younger brother's high school basketball team.

My brother was starter at center his junior year. His best buddy was a starter as a soph and was an all-state caliber player. I played for the coach and in spite of his temper liked him a lot.

My brother's senior year the coach decided that he was going to cut all the seniors except for my brother, the all-stater, and one other kid and have a youth movement. The idea was to cultivate the young talent for the future.The problem was that there were seniors who were better than the underclassmen the coach picked up. Mind you there was some younger talent. The older brother of two future Utah Mr. Basketball's was on that team.

The coach started a alleged freshman phenom a the point, the three seniors, and a junior. The sixth man was a sophomore and another freshman was in the getting a lot of time. The team sucked and struggled mightily. The coach, in an effort to build a future winner, threw the seniors under the bus. Had he not cut the upperclassmen that team probably wouldn't have been anything too special but it probably would have made state and even won a tourney game or two.

Needless to say there were locker room problems galore. The coach's credibility was shot. The end result was the coach lost the team and ultimately resigned because he was going to get fired. Some of those leading the charge for the ouster were parents of the three seniors. I felt bad for my former coach but he got what he deserved. He was also a great teacher. Even worse was he was a alum of the school and was a very good college player.

As for the freshman phenom? He ended up being average and wasn't really well liked by the upperclasmen. None of the other underclassmen turned into anything special either.

The moral of the story is that sometimes you can really screw things up trying to be too proactive about the future. This was a high school example but similar things occur in the college ranks. Coaches can and do lose their by botching these kinds of issues.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I think I have two disconnects between those that think this is a bad decision to go with Nelson.

1. I believe that personnel changes so quickly in the college game and the experience factor varies so greatly (ie some new starters do great some long time starters never improve much) that I rarely think it's good to invest games now for the future. Also, what kind of impact could 7-6 vs 10-3 make on a program in terms of recruiting, reputation, national interest, winning attitude on the team, etc?

2. The difference in Riley vs Heaps. Riley's not quite as bad as people are saying. He's never going to be a great college QB but he could be a good college QB. And as for Heaps, I'm not sure he'll ever be a great college QB and is a long ways from being a good one.

The first point is extremely important and the reason why I support benching Heaps. While Heaps is sitting there getting reps, BYU continues losing. BYU doesn't beat USU without benching Heaps. Furthermore, I think the game at OSU is at best a 50-50 game with Heaps and BYU's chances improve with Riley Nelson. With the trajectory that Heaps was taking (down), I'm not sure if he improves to the point where BYU could beat Hawaii at the end of the year.

While I'm saying this, I'm not saying that Riley Nelson is a great QB. Clearly he's limited. What I am saying is that Heaps was terrible and not getting better and Nelson probably gives BYU a better chance at beating OSU and Hawaii and without Nelson BYU loses to USU.

So, assuming a loss to TCU, BYU has the choice of having a good chance at a 9-3 season with Nelson or a good chance at a 6-6 season with Heaps. For recruiting purposes, 9-3 makes a huge difference from 6-6. Getting Heaps reps isn't more important than the difference in this and next year's recruiting classes if BYU appears to be a team in decline as opposed to a team that is maintaining a solid winning record.

[Flystripper]

I wonder how much of this team thing is a reflection of Bronco's "culture?" As far as I can tell, the guys who don't like Jake are handful of key players that happen to be seniors. Tree, Jacobsen, etc., and all it would take is a few guys positioned as "leaders" to really start to push the team in a certain direction. I highly doubt Apo, Hoff, Wilson, Juice, et al, have any problem with Jake. Does the divide exist because they believe the more experience guy, the guy who has "paid his dues," should be playing?

There was a post on CB from yesterday about Tidwell being appalled at some point in talking with Manti because Manti believed he could play right away. Who knows if this is actually true, but you can see where it would be based on what we know about Bronoc. Is this mentality ingrained in the players? I know at the moment we could point to play and say Jake just isn't getting it done so that's why he lost the team, but it seems this problem predates Jake's struggles (which to me have only been serious in the UCF and Utah St games). Despite his excellent play to end the season, and despite all reports that he basically left Riley in the dust during camp, it still didn't seem like everyone was on board with him. To me that suggests they either didn't like him on a personal level, or they didn't believe he had "earned" the position, despite the fact that he was outperforming the other guy.

It's a good question but I contend and believe that on field performance heals all of these "divides". If Jake was getting it done on the field I think the team begins to embrace him. The kid's personality and lack of experience probably give im a shorter leash with the experienced members of the team but I believe they would be all about Jake if he had the kind of success that even a 140 PER over a 5 game stretch would provide. (The inclusion of that PER is purely because I know how much you believe in it )

[SCcoug]

I get why people are down on Riley. I also get that he is playing better than Jake.

I've already admitted that I find the, "play Jake because he's the future" argument is a valid one. My, "play the guy who's playing the best" argument is also valid.

A caller on Hans and OC just stated that from talking to some parents of players that Jake isn't well liked by a significant amount of the team. Hans confirmed that Jake has a small cadre of supporters but generally it is true that Jake has lost the team. He also agreed with me that Jake can rehabilitate this image if he humbles himself and works hard in practice.

If it's true that Riley has the support of his teammates coupled with the fact he's playing better, then it's very tough to put in Jake just to give him practice. Coaches lose teams and their jobs by doing this sort of thing.

From a leadership perspective Jake was in a tough spot from the get go. A true freshman playing with upperclassmen RMs. That is a 4-6 year difference. Then mix in Bronco's walk-on warrior culture with a small group of highly recruited and highly rated true freshman who probably think a little too highly of themselves. It really is too bad that he couldn't have redshirted his freshman year.

[Shaka]

I wonder how much of this team thing is a reflection of Bronco's "culture?" As far as I can tell, the guys who don't like Jake are handful of key players that happen to be seniors.

That's not what I heard nor is it what Hans and OC were stating. My impression is that a significant majority of players aren't really down with Jake at this time. Can that change? Absolutely but Jake has to earn it. From what I heard on the radio today he's trying to do just that. I was glad to hear it.

[MarkGrace]

What I find disappointing is that next season (which supposed to be the beginning of a couple of really special years for BYU) is going to begin with a QB controversy which at best will have Jake regain his position. However, Jake will be behind where everyone expected him to be in his development which at best will make next year what we thought this year would be. The worst case scenario is that Nelson retains his position next season (through his own progression or Jake's lack of progression) and Jake never reaches even a fraction of his potential by the time he is a senior. So basically BYU will have had a couple of OK seasons with Nelson but if if Jake were properly developed those two seasons could have been very special. Essentially BYU will be at least one year behind schedule and quite possibly 3-4 years behind schedule if Jake never develops.

And this is why I asked the question at the very beginning. I can appreciate Lebowski's response that Riley playing as poorly as Jake has the last two is the worst case scenario, but for those of that hoped this team would get to a certain level, I think watching Riley and seeing that he is neither the answer nor definitively not the answer for now just might be. I'll definitely give him credit in that he's performed well and improved noticeably throwing the ball, but he still is what we thought he was for the most part, which is a guy that doesn't have game-changing ability. But this is a team where all the skill position talent was lined up to grow together, and the biggest piece of the puzzle in terms of them reaching their ceiling was the QB.

In thinking about this the last couple days, I'm wondering how much of the blame with respect to our expectations for Jake and our offensive potential in general goes to the coaches. Since Jake walked on this campus, we've heard stuff from Doman like "he's a phenom at the position" and Bronco saying "he could be the best that's ever played here." These types of comments in my mind have been a disservice. Jake's play his last two starts has been poor, and based on the performance we've seen on the field alone, I would really start to question if he does indeed have the talent to get there. And just when I'm thinking maybe he'll never reach his upside or whatever, Bronco comes out in the pre-game against SJSU and is talking about how Jake is the kind of kid that is going to play on Sunday's and once again basically making me believe Riley is just a stop-gap until our next great QB is ready. wtf?

The coaches should have been on the same page from the outset saying "Jake has talent, but he has a long way to go to become a good college QB." We finally got that from Doman this offseason, but again it was couched between something about "Jake could be the best QB in college football, I don't shy away from saying that." It's just the wrong expectation, but if they keep selling it, we're going to keep wanting to see it materialize, because NFL caliber QB's are what we want to see at BYU, not a stop-gap or talent backup. And when the portion of the schedule presents itself such that the difference in playing the two won't result in any appreciable difference in the W/L column, people are going to be disappointed. But, as I said at the very beginning, you can't take Riley out now because of his play, and he'll be able to slide through a quarter of our schedule no problem. Kind of a crappy situation.

[MarkGrace]

That's not what I heard nor is it what Hans and OC were stating. My impression is that a significant majority of players aren't really down with Jake at this time. Can that change? Absolutely but Jake has to earn it. From what I heard on the radio today he's trying to do just that. I was glad to hear it.

Right. But my point was all it takes a few well-placed players in your "leadership" circle (which are invariably going to be upperclassmen) to turn the tide.