QB star rankings haven't mattered a whole lot here of late. That's why we are skeptical- also for those of us who went to the SPring game. Looking at real life on the field production- not stars- it doesn't look like we have much in the way of QB depth.
Smothers was 8-13 with no interceptions? Pretty rough judgement for a kid who has only been in one scripted scrimmage at the college level. Haarberg looked like a green kid who didn't know much - to be expected for someone who just joined the team. However, he seemed to be settling in pretty well and tossed the touchdown that won the game in the end.
8-13 with the 1s. He did have 1 incompletion with the 2s. He didn't look like a world beater but anyone expecting that would be crazy. He got very little work leading up to this spring since he was 3rd on the depth chart during the Covid year. Pretty tough to make a complete judgement of the kid under those circumstances imo. The only other body of work we can compare to is his high school career- which was pretty damn good.
He is something else to consider - many great QBs have a rough first spring game. https://247sports.com/college/ohio-state/LongFormArticle/Ohio-State-Buckeyes-football-quarterback-Justin-Fields-play-in-spring-game-analyzed-131309460/
ass ratio).
It is very rare that at the FBS level, you have multiple QBs on the depth chart with enough playing time to be able to say "Yep, he's awesome and we've seen it". Fact is, you have to go off of potential and I believe we have two guys behind 2AM that have that potential. We haven't had that in a long time.I would probably argue that QB depth means “multiple guys able to successfully execute the normal offence.”
In this case the backups are extremely young and should AM2 go down for whatever reason (which we should all pray he doesn’t) I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that.
That is not to say that if the OL executes to its potential that the backups can’t move the ball, just that the playbook needs to be drastically cut-down for both back up options (with Smothers likely requiring a higher run
Bottom line is if the OL was projected to be weak, this would be a bigger concert, but calling our QB Depth “good” requires a very optimistic world view.
10 yards per attempt 130 yards and 38 yards rushing doesnt sound awful 1 rushing TD one passing
What? He went 4 of 13. He completed 4 longer passes but missed on several throws and the skeptics were in doomsday mode after watching him. Many of the fans were calling for Baldwin to be the starter because he went 20 of 36 passing. The reality- fans over reacted to one scripted scrimmage and Fields turned out to be an awesome QB at Ohio State.