Which Nebraska QB would you choose for Frost's offense?

Pick a Nebraska QB (past or present)

  • Turner Gill

    Votes: 32 27.6%

  • Tommie Frazier

    Votes: 23 19.8%

  • Scott Frost

    Votes: 23 19.8%

  • Bobby Newcombe

    Votes: 9 7.8%

  • Eric Crouch

    Votes: 29 25.0%

  • Jammal Lord

    Votes: 5 4.3%

  • Zach Taylor

    Votes: 6 5.2%

  • Joe Ganz

    Votes: 27 23.3%

  • Taylor Martinez

    Votes: 33 28.4%

  • Tommy Armstrong Jr.

    Votes: 13 11.2%

  • Adrian Martinez

    Votes: 11 9.5%

  • Tristan Gebbia

    Votes: 7 6.0%

  • Andrew Bunch

    Votes: 4 3.4%

  • Gerry Gdowski

    Votes: 10 8.6%

  • Steve Taylor

    Votes: 13 11.2%

  • Brook Berringer

    Votes: 22 19.0%
  • Total voters
    116
I've got to go with Frazier, he just had IT. Accuracy would definitely be the weakness, but it's also worth pointing out he wasn't being asked to make high percentage throws. We didn't pass to move the ball, we did a lot of deep shots so nobody was going to complete 70% in the mid 90s offense.

Most of the QBs would be great fits though, and then it's just a matter of which strength (accuracy, decision making, athleticism) you like best or which weakness you dislike the most. It's totally unfair because for most of his career the decisions were great, but the OT interception Ganz threw against Texas Tech always comes to mind so I don't tend to consider his decision making a strength. He'd do well in this offense though.

 
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Mavric said:
From the two years I compared earlier:

Interceptions:

Martinez - 12

Ganz - 11

So I'm not sure where you're coming up with your decision-making rating.  Martinez had turnover issues but they were mainly fumbling and I think a lot of that had to do with being hurt.
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It's something that (imo) the stats don't tell the whole story with, but if you take those INT numbers and average them out over number of attempts, Taylor threw a pick every 30.667 passes, Ganz every 38.18, so there's something there. Also, Ganz was usually good for one-ish a game, while Martinez had two 3-pick games and two 2-pick games. But I digress.

Regardless of the stats, Martinez never gave a sense of having any kind of intellectual mastery of the offense, or having a fundamental understanding of what he was doing and why, and that was in an offense designed to not make a player think as much. Joe Ganz very obviously was in total control and knew what he was doing and why. His short (thus far) coaching career is more evidence of that.

 
Loved Steve Taylor, but we sometimes forget he was a 41% passer as a sophomore, and a 47% passer as a senior.

Scott Frost had terrible passing mechanics. He would be happy to have Taylor Martinez. 

Turner Gill or Gerry Gdowski. 

 
I don't want to relitigate Martinez's entire career, but his mechanics were much improved his last two years after he started working with that Calhoun guy. They were bad his sophomore year because he was hurt. IIRC, he had a bad ankle on one leg and a bad knee or foot on the other.

 
Hilltop said:
I only voted once for Brook.  To me, he is a great fit for Scott's system but there are many good arguments for others.  I'm guessing Scott could have made many of the guys on this list "serviceable".  If Martinez were on this team this year, my guess is he wouldn't be playing QB but his speed would be utilized in another skill position.  
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That list? Tmart would be the starter hands down, the only one close would be Ganz.  I don’t even think that would’ve been that close.  

Would you rather have Taylor touch the ball 6 times or 75 times?  I am taking 75 all day, because 5 of those were TDs.  That kid when healthy was one of the most dynamic players we have ever seen.

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
Loved Steve Taylor, but we sometimes forget he was a 41% passer as a sophomore, and a 47% passer as a senior.

Scott Frost had terrible passing mechanics. He would be happy to have Taylor Martinez. 

Turner Gill or Gerry Gdowski. 
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It's tough to compare passing percentages from the 70s and 80s with today's QB's.  It's just a totally different game.  Yes, his completion % isn't great, but Taylor was asked to throw a lot more lower percentage passes than recent NU QB's.

Frost's throwing motion was hurt by Bill Walsh during Frost's time at Stanford.  Walsh tried to do a complete overhaul, and he ended up making it worse.  Frost still could make good passes when needed to.

 
ColoradoHusk said:
It's tough to compare passing percentages from the 70s and 80s with today's QB's.  It's just a totally different game.  Yes, his completion % isn't great, but Taylor was asked to throw a lot more lower percentage passes than recent NU QB's.

Frost's throwing motion was hurt by Bill Walsh during Frost's time at Stanford.  Walsh tried to do a complete overhaul, and he ended up making it worse.  Frost still could make good passes when needed to.
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Boy, I'd have to say the opposite. Osborne's run-first offense created more high-percentage passes, either those wide-side screen passes, or play-action fakes that got receivers wide-open. Very few short crossing patterns, timing patterns or end zone fades. 

Because Nebraska was a run-first offense, defenses were quick to bite on the play-action. Our 50% completion rate ended up being pretty efficient because those completions were bigger gains than the dink & dunk variety. But I don't think some of our favorite quarterbacks would fare as well in the precision passing ball-control game.

And if you compare Steve Taylor to other QBs of his era....47% is still pretty low. And 41% is kinda "whoa." 

Still, he was a great leader, and that's QB in a nutshell.

The knock on Frost was that he had trouble hitting receivers in stride. The network telestated this one time, showing how Frost always released the ball with the tip pointing down, making receivers reach low for it.  So Bill Walsh wasn't wrong about Frost. He was a great quarterback for Nebraska, but had a better future at Safety.

 
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Guy Chamberlin said:
Boy, I'd have to say the opposite. Osborne's run-first offense created more high-percentage passes, either those wide-side screen passes, or play-action fakes that got receivers wide-open. Very few short crossing patterns, timing patterns or end zone fades. 

Because Nebraska was a run-first offense, defenses were quick to bite on the play-action. Our 50% completion rate ended up being pretty efficient because those completions were bigger gains than the dink & dunk variety. But I don't think some of our favorite quarterbacks would fare as well in the precision passing ball-control game.

And if you compare Steve Taylor to other QBs of his era....47% is still pretty low. And 41% is kinda "whoa." 

Still, he was a great leader, and that's QB in a nutshell.

The knock on Frost was that he had trouble hitting receivers in stride. The network telestated this one time, showing how Frost always released the ball with the tip pointing down, making receivers reach low for it. 
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Fair points on both Taylor and Frost.  My thinking of the lower completion percentage for Taylor and would be this:

1)  Greater number of deep play action passes - while the play action passes are to wide open guys or guys with one-on-one coverage, they were still thrown deep downfield, which brings in a greater variability of completion percentage

2)  Greater number of passes to smaller receivers whose main job on the offense to be blockers

3)  When the offense was forced into obvious passing situations, the offense wasn't conducive to being very successful in those situations, leading to a lower completion % (could be a chicken-egg argument)

 
Landlord said:
It's something that (imo) the stats don't tell the whole story with, but if you take those INT numbers and average them out over number of attempts, Taylor threw a pick every 30.667 passes, Ganz every 38.18, so there's something there. Also, Ganz was usually good for one-ish a game, while Martinez had two 3-pick games and two 2-pick games. But I digress.

Regardless of the stats, Martinez never gave a sense of having any kind of intellectual mastery of the offense, or having a fundamental understanding of what he was doing and why, and that was in an offense designed to not make a player think as much. Joe Ganz very obviously was in total control and knew what he was doing and why. His short (thus far) coaching career is more evidence of that.
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I think the bolded is largely because TM did not portray intellectual confidence in really any setting, particularly when he had to speak publicly. There are some other anecdotal examples I heard from people who shared classes with him but I'm hesitant to just completely throw him under the bus. I guess what I would say, as politely as I can, is I never felt comfortable with his decision making and this was especially true after that injury.

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
So Bill Walsh wasn't wrong about Frost. He was a great quarterback for Nebraska, but had a better future at Safety.
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Bill Walsh also kind of broke Frost, to a certain extent, as a quarterback. Started toying around with his throwing motion and trying to get him to change his muscle memory. If my memory serves correctly.

 
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