SnowBigRed said:
Wildly inflated and unrealistic expectations for Green, who IS the #3 guy, does not change what he is.
Green was a project the moment he walked on campus and has been thrown into the fire, and has perhaps not surprisingly, not progressed as much as he should have.
Therfore he is not being coached up the way he needs to be, correct? That's my point.
If he was such a big project, Watson should have recognized that, redshirted him (or whatever), and continued to coach him up to utilize the talent he does have. No matter how you look at it, Green does have talent. That 20 yard out he rifled in against A&M was an absolutely unbelievable throw. Green is not suited for a zone read offense that relies on quick decisions and quick feet to succeed. That is not his strength, yet this O staff thinks they can morph him into the next coming of Mike Vick. Not gonna happen.
Goodness, you think Green wasn't in line to be redshirted last year? We didn't really have a choice, did we?
Two guys in front of him went out of the equation after he came in. Spano tore his ACL twice, and Witt transferred in the Spring. All of a sudden this kid went from #4 to #2 because we literally didn't have a single other guy there. They even threw in a languishing LB at QB to be the emergency #3.
It is simply fact that Green was a big project, which is something the STAFF recognized, not fans for the most part, who saw 4 stars and images of a starting freshman dual threat QB like Tommie Frazier. I am sure he is talented, but again, he has a yet to put it together. And the lack of being able to redshirt has damaged his development when he should be a redshirt freshman right now that spent last year honing his craft instead of two years in a row with live bullets only.
I don't know really what kind of offense Green is best suited for, so I won't comment on that.
Cody Green is not the #3 quarterback. He is the 1B quarterback. The A&M depth chart has him listed immediately behind Martinez:
Quarterback: (#3) Taylor Martinez, 6-1, 195, RFr., Corona, Calif.
- OR - (#17) Cody Green, 6-4, 225, So., Dayton, Texas
- OR - (#5) Zac Lee, 6-2, 215, Sr., San Francisco, Calif.
Knapp, that's ridiculous and you know it! Since when has Bo really cared about what he put on a depth chart, and didn't we love him for that fresh new approach? Regardless of what is written on there (Zac is out, after all), the QB pecking order, when everyone is healthy, goes Martinez, Lee, Green. I think we saw that as the year went on.
You cannot use this as an excuse to cover for Watson. If Green isn't ready to go by this time in his career he's either a complete bust or horribly trained. Either way, if he cannot move this offense he needs to be benched. We cannot get much worse from Ron Kellogg or Brion Carnes, and frankly, it's looking like Carnes should never have redshirted. It is the responsibility of the QB coach to correctly gauge the ability of his quarterbacks. It is glaringly obvious that Green's ability has been mistaken.
"We are down to our third choice of QB" is just an excuse to cover for Watson?
Now you are saying it is Watson's fault that one player is not ready to go by the second year of his career. Again, Green is a project whose development has been thrown off schedule with the lack of a redshirt year that he needed. He has improved since coming on campus of course, and he definitely has some serious physical talent. But for whatever reason, he just has not put it together on the field yet. And even then we are talking about one guy on the list of QBs, who is third in the pecking order right now, when we've seen some pretty good things done with a couple other guys and how they were utilized. One guy hasn't exceeded expectations and all of a sudden Watson is awful at developing QBs? I guess we may as well dismiss Tim Beck for Collins Okafor.
I would be careful with any "How much worse could it be if <random coach/player> were inserted." As bad as it was with Green, I got to think he's a much better option than a guy like walk-on Ron Kellogg, whom we've heard some good things about but would limit everything we can do out there to probably absurd levels. As a disclaimer, that was speculative, but honestly as bad as Green has performed, it could always be worse.
I figure Green at least gets the shot, but RK3 would be the Plan B option at this point.
Zoogies, you've spent the better part of several threads deflecting blame from Watson. In your opinion, what is Watson responsible for?
The #32 offense in the country? 13th, if you go by yards-per-play. Averaging 426 yards a game.
I am not defending Watson where blame is, in my view, being misdirected. I answered this as well in another thread, but I guess it's worth restating. He works with QBs and designs the offense out of the pieces he is given. The most frequent offenders in terms of blame directed at the OC, in my view: 1) the pieces are broken and we expect top notch results (i.e, our WRs), 2) Bo is trying to be conservative and we expect glitzy stats and a wide-open attack, and 3) finally adjustments and tweaks and trickery coming from the offense that is hardly obvious at the surface level (including to me) because the only sort of thing that falls into that category for most (including me) are double reverses and halfback passes.
All told, I think Watson has done a pretty good job with what he has. Barney I'm skeptical, and Gilmore I'm extremely skeptical.
