I got a copy of the Illinois game and watched it last night, hate watching more film, nothing surprised me about his performance, even after looking at it under a microscope. He is exactly who I thought he was with the requisite skills.
Some observations- not much new:
Transfers his weight quickly and well from back to front on pretty much every throw with exception of the 2 roll outs- which is expected
His shoulder orientation was about perfect- on 2 throws it was slightly off and on 1 throw the pass Interference to Enumwa, it was way off- TM like
He stepped through well with the exception of the 1 throw in the first Q where he didnt have any room, had he would have stepped right on the hands of one of his O-lineman- just like I had seen the first time around.
Nice quick releases, classic form for the most part
His high throws, a combination of wind and releasing the ball early. Possibly not enough weight transfered from back to front as he releases it a tad bit too far in front of the weight transfer.
It looked like TA had 2 reads that werent good, not obviously poor, but not good. 1 on a sweep read and another on a power read. It didnt look like either play was maximized for anything, true reads
TA would have scored on that Jet read play had Kenny Bell got any kind of block to the boot side. Well designed and executed play with the exception of Bell- should have been 30 yard TD.
Had he turned the right way on that Pistol handoff to Cross at about the 10-12, Cross could have walked into the endzone, From Imanis reaction, looked like it was TA who went the wrong way, not Imani.
As stated before, command of the huddle, alignments, no problem with the 25 sec clock, smooth on option and man the pellets were flying in the air on his cuts- he has lateral quickness and body control
So not perfect, but his fundys are 100% rock solid, and when fundys are rock solid you can do a lot- and focus on play execution.
IF he is able to execute the existing playbook, he has skills TM doesnt have that may allow BEck to start adding back in, once the offense is hitting its higher gears and needs some nuances later in the season. Beck would be able to run some of Oregons more elaborate plays like the option pitch off of Zone read. My guess is Beck already has this in but didnt bother running it due to TMs inablity to run any type of pitch option. My guess is also that it wont be a true triple it will be a Zone read handoff fake with a keep or pitch all the way to another trailing or motioning back. Or the other way, a true zone read option with a dummy wide option guy. Just a guess- something TA could defitnitely do and do well. Im not speaking from any knowledge Ive gotten from a clinic or practice- havent been to any this year.
Really liked his play action and pocket presence- standing tall and his rollouts, does all 3 pretty well.
I knew we were unbalanced on the 3 Sweep Read planned gives but didnt see that we also went unbalanced on 2 straight power plays, like that. Note on the 1 trick pony unblanced sweep read- we either dont see it again OR we may see it and run a much different play off of it- the one trick pony switcharoo for lack of a better term. Beck does think like that.
I saw an article that also stated how the O-line- maybe Sirles says that the kid has great calm command of the huddle, thermostat, not thermometer. 13 possessions 9 TDs, no 3 and outs, no punts, Against any level of competition, those are very nice numbers. Smooth and consistent.
