Staying the Course with Jake Heaps…For Now

So, we all knew that Idaho, bless their souls, was a tomato can.  Sadly, one of the realities of modern football is that even a tomato can can injure your starting quarterback if things suddenly go wrong.  Consequently, at the beginning of the second drive, starter Riley Nelson was injured.  He played until the end of the series with the injuries, but was taken out for the rest of the game after completing a 32-yard touchdown pass to Cody Hoffman for the first score of the game.

Enter Jake Heaps, who did a great job in relief of Nelson.  Heaps was 15 out of 20 with two touchdowns and one interception for an average of 9.3 yards per attempt and 12.3 yards per completion for a stellar efficiency rating of 175.7, just a touch better than Nelson’s 171.49 rating.  Heaps will now get to play the next two games, first against another tomato can in New Mexico State, and finally against Hawaii, which is the most Jekyll/Hyde team in the history of football.  

I’m sure there will be a lot of people who clamor for the return of Heaps to the starting position.  Once again, though, there will be no QB controversy.  Coach Bronco Mendenhall has stated that the starting job is still Nelson’s, and that Nelson will play as soon as he is able.  Heaps still has the best upside for the future, but Nelson is a bit more efficient right now.  

There are many reasons that those in the Heaps camp can cite for awarding the starting job to Jake Heaps.  Heaps throws the ball a lot better than Nelson, and has a higher upside.  After losing his starting job, he didn’t whine, cry, or act like a diva.  Instead, he worked hard to get better.  He is now following through on his play fakes much, much better, and has made his throwing motion a bit more compact, giving him a slightly quicker release.  

Also, while Heaps was playing against the tough teams at the beginning of the schedule, Nelson has gotten to play the weaker teams in the middle.  Both have losses to good teams, and have cleaned up on the lesser teams.  Ultimately, though, the two most important reasons will be in Nelson’s favor.  First of all, the upperclassmen are more willing to follow Nelson than they are Heaps.  You can call it leading by example or whatever you want, but the fact is that the team just plays better when Nelson is in there.

Secondly, during the season, it is against the “code” to let a player lose his starting job to an injury.  Nelson’s performance has been very good, and Coach Mendenhall won’t take Nelson’s job away from him just because Heaps shows he can beat up a few lesser teams.  Also, there is a reason why the team will do anything for Nelson: he is tough.  He played the entire second series with two broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung, and drove the team in for a touchdown.  

Basically, we have Riley Nelson’s toughess, maturity, running ability, and attention to detail against the arm, playmaking, and potential of Jake Heaps.  There will be a time for Jake Heaps to shine.  We thought it was this year, but it wasn’t to be.  There is no sin in that, nor is there any reason for Jake Heaps to hang his head.  He is young, and was beaten out by an older player.  Besides, Heaps has two more games this season to make it a good one.  

In an ideal situation, Heaps shouldn’t have had to be force fed the offense last year, anyway.  Most quarterbacks in good programs get to watch for a couple of years and learn everything about the offense from a seat on the bench, applying it against other teams’ scrubs at the end of blowouts.  In that ideal situation, Heaps would be learning and progressing right now, making him ready to contribute somewhere down the line.  

Instead, Heaps has had to shoulder the responsibility of being THE man at a marquee program for quarterbacks at a younger age than he should have.  And when he sits on the bench, it feels like it is because he failed instead of because that’s just the way things are done.  Ultimately, the way events have gone this year will help Heaps grow at a faster rate than he would have, but at an emotional cost.  For now, his responsibility is to get ready for the next game and do as well as he can.  Then, he can get ready for the next game.  That is really all he can do right now, and all he should have to do.  

We expect Nelson to come back for the bowl game, and then the battle starts all over again next spring and summer.  We don’t know which quarterback will win, but the team will win either way by having two quarterbacks with different strengths capable of starting.

The best-case scenario for the Cougars would be for Riley Nelson to have one great year as a senior and for Heaps to have one great year as a senior the following year.  It might seem sorta unfair to Heaps to only have one “season in the sun,” but Brigham Young University isn’t about individual glory, and it never was.  

There are 120 teams playing Division 1 or Football Bowl Subdivision football right now.  They range from football factories to schools that know they can’t win and have football almost as an afterthought, or because they know how much it means to a school to be perceived as a “major college.”  The Cougars are different from all of them.  

At BYU, the coaches can’t just recruit anyone like a big football factory can.  They can’t overlook “minor” transgressions because those students would be almost a lock to break the honor code sometime down the road.  And they can’t overlook low GPA’s, SAT’s, and ACT’s, because those players probably won’t be able to hack actually having to go to their own classes and do their own school work.  

At most colleges, players supposedly represent their school, but usually end up representing themselves more than their schools.   At BYU, they not only represent the school, but the LDS, even if they aren’t yet members.  They may represent themselves, but they can only do it by being sportsmen and citizens of whom the LDS and BYU can be proud.

Both Jake Heaps and Riley Nelson have represented BYU and the LDS in a way of which everyone can be proud.  In other words, the program is in great hands, no matter who starts and who sits on the bench.

BYU vs Idaho

One Game Does Not Define A Season

The general consensus among national writers was that the Cougars’ game against TCU would ultimately define their season.  Going into this game, the Cougars really hadn’t beaten any teams that are doing any damage right now.  The TCU game was their chance to prove to a national audience that they were worthy of national ranking.  

Right from the start, the Cougars were in trouble.  When Brandon Ogletree was called for a bogus personal foul after the Cougars had made a great stop on defense, he temporarily lost his poise.  Unfortunately, losing his poise made for a wide-open TCU receiver on the next play: TCU 7, BYU 0.

On the next series, after officials somehow “missed” a pass interference penalty and a personal foul against TCU, the special teams decided to start Christmas gifts early.  As the commentators mentioned, the Cougars had only punted three times since Riley Nelson took over in the USU game.  The punt was a disaster as Riley Stephenson was unable to field a bad snap, and TCU subsequently got the ball inside the 10.  

Next, the defense was caught napping, and TCU backup QB Matt Brown scored on a run through a hole that the marching band could have gotten through.  TCU 14, BYU 0.  After that, it was simply a case of the Cougars not being able to get out of their own way long enough to catch up.  This game ended up as a ten point game, but 14 of TCU’s points came after botched snaps by Reed Hourning.  

Going into the season, TCU was seen as a top ten team by many.  The Cougars were seen as a fringe top-25 team at best.  TCU was seen as having an elite defense and an offense that merely had to plug in another player to replace current NFL QB Andy Dalton.  

Both teams came into this game with two losses, though, and there really isn’t much of a difference between them now, even after Friday night’s missed opportunity.  What makes this possibly the most painful loss of the season is that, by losing to a team that really isn’t any better than they are, the Cougars missed a golden opportunity to make a statement in the marquee Friday night game on ESPN.

The Cougars outgained the Horned Frogs, both on the ground and through the air, for a total advantage of 354 to 283  They had 24 first downs to 14 for TCU.  While the time of possession was almost even, the Cougars ran 81 offensive plays as opposed to 62 for the Horned Frogs.  

But when you add in two botched punts and two terrible interceptions by Riley Nelson, not to mention another week of penalties being called or not called at just the “right” time, it adds up to a crucial loss on a national stage.  The bottom line is that you can’t give up this many turnovers and win against a good team.  

Luckily, the worst of the schedule is over, and Friday’s cloud has plenty of silver lining.  First of all, the team never quit.  Even when most teams would have lost their edge and gotten blown out, the Cougars never stopped trying to make a game of it.  Here is a quote from Bronco Mendanhall:

“I think it was a privilege to coach this team tonight, because they wanted to keep on playing.  I think they wished we could have played two or three more quarters.  They wanted to keep playing football…they realized and were frustrated by the mistakes we made, but they were having fun, and they were supporting each other, and they believe in one another, and I believe in them.”

Sure, the Cougars made mistakes.  Coach Mendenhall took some of the blame for the playcalling at the end of the second half, and admitted he would have done a few things differently, especially on the last drive.  But everyone on the team, from coaches to players to support personnel, has each others’ backs.  Going into a bye week, it is comforting to know that there won’t be any of the backbiting and bickering that often happens on less mature teams in this position.  

Also, the defense played very well against what has been a high-powered offense most of the season.  They really played well enough to win.  They were fooled on a wheel route after the Ogletree penalty, and they had problems defending the wildcat plays run by the backup QB.  Other than that, the defense played as well as could be expected, considering the short fields TCU was given by turnovers and special teams mistakes.  

One last point about this game before moving on: if anyone thinks Jake Heaps should have gone in, please don’t bother.  Riley Nelson has his weaknesses: first, he doesn’t have a rocket arm.  Second, his greatest strength, his competitiveness, is also his greatest weakness sometimes.  Nelson doesn’t quite realize yet that there are times to keep the play going and times to just throw the ball away.  

Ultimately, though, Nelson’s feet and his leadership skills make up for his lack of arm strength, and he will learn when to bail out of a play with a little more experience.  We expect him to make a quantum leap in that department after he has had two weeks to watch film of his mistakes against TCU.   

We still think Heaps has a lot of potential, and we expected him to be the starting QB this season, but the players on the team play better for Nelson than they do for Heaps.  The bottom line is that it is the job of Brandon Doman and Bronco Mendenhall to decide who is going to play QB for the Cougars.  We heartily recommend trusting the coaches to do their jobs the best they know how.

At the beginning of the year, we thought 11-1 would be a great season, 10-2 would be a very good season, and 9-3 would be a good season.  The Cougars have a very good chance of ending at 9-3.  They need to take care of business against Idaho in two weeks and then New Mexico State the next week, before another bye week and a game at always-dangerous Hawaii on December 3.  

A 9-3 season capped with a bowl victory to make it 10-3 would be a very good place to start their tenure as an independent team.  We don’t really know how long the Cougars will be an independent team, but they are positioning themselves for a great future either way.  

Finally, a Cupcake

As we all know, the Cougars dismantled Idaho State on Saturday, 56-3, to go to 6-2 on the season.  One of the benefits of a front-loaded schedule is that you get games like this in the middle or end of the season sometimes.  Most BCS conference teams play three games like this one to start the season with one tough game somewhere in the middle.  The Cougars, because they are independent, started out with three of their four toughest games.  

The benefit of playing a game like this one in the middle of the season is that you can rest up and get a few players healed for bigger games.  In this situation, though, it wasn’t really any advantage for the next big game, as next week’s opponent, TCU, destroyed New Mexico, 69-0.  

So, what did we learn Saturday?  Pretty much nothing we didn’t already know.  There were a lot of contributions all around, and it was a good day for almost everyone.  Kyle Van Noy and Riley Nelson both won FBS Independent Player of the Week awards.  The awards are voted by a panel of two media members from every football market in the country.   

Van Noy continued his stellar play, blocking and recovering a punt and collecting two sacks on the day, along with three tackles for loss.  Most LB”s don’t really have years like the one Van Noy is having until they are juniors or seniors.  Van Noy’s accomplishments are all the more impressive when stacked up against other sophomore LB’s at major college programs.  

Then again, there is the elephant in the room.  Van Noy injured Idaho State’s punter David Harrington, giving him a concussion and taking him out of the game.  ISU coach Mike Kramer called it a dirty hit, and his soundbite at halftime is, sadly, all a lot of people will remember from the game.  Van Noy, who apologized to Kramer of his own volition after the game, said he didn’t know he was hitting the punter and didn’t know the hit was late.  Was the hit late?  Yes.  Dirty?  No.  

Football is a tough game played by tough people.  Players are coached from junior football at five years old to play hard through to the end of the play.  Sometimes players don’t hear the whistle, or they hear it after their synapses have already fired off for one last hit.  We’re not saying the hit wasn’t late, but Van Noy didn’t intentionally deliver a late hit, nor did he intentionally injure the punter.  

As far as we are concerned, the matter is over.  Van Noy apologized, Bronco Mendenhall apologized, and that should really be enough.  If Kyle Van Noy had established a pattern of dirty play, it would be another situation altogether, but he hasn’t.  Van Noy’s body of work, so far, is that of someone who plays as hard as anyone on the field every play of every game.  We wish Harrington well, but we also have to put Harrington’s injury in the “stuff happens in football” category.

As for Riley Nelson, what can we say?  Nelson continues to improve every week, and this was a great week for him to just have fun playing football.  Nelson went 11 for 17, with three touchdowns, and gained 62 yards in seven rushes for another touchdown.  The Cougars spread the wealth around, too.  Ross Apo and Cody Hoffman each had 5 catches for 71 yards, and eight players in all caught passes.

The rushing game was in great form, too.  The Cougars ran the ball 44 times for 302 yards, which works out to a 6.6-yard average.  Michael Alisa had eight carries for 66 yards, and Josh Quezada had 11 carries for 62 yards. JJ DiLuigi was once again versatile, with six carries for 42 yards and an average of 7.0, and a 51-yard catch during the first drive of the second half, for 103 yards of offense.  

There was a Jake Heaps sighting.  After he threw an interception on his first series, he calmed down and ended up going eight of the next nine for 67 yards, ending eight of ten.  Both Heaps and Nelson have shown a lot of Cougar class as they have traded places twice in the last two years.  Heaps looked a lot better at executing play fakes than he did earlier in the year.  We have to deduce that his time on the bench is making him a better player.  Kudos to both players for avoiding the “quarterback controversy” that so many in the media are trying to drum up.

On defense, it was more of the same.  Jordan Pendleton had two sacks, two tackles for losses, and total of 23 players made solo tackles, with 26 making solos or assists.  Travis Uale, Marcus Matthews, and Daniel Sorenson had interceptions.  

All in all, the Cougars dominated both sides of the ball.  It was a well-earned break, and an opportunity for a lot of players to get playing time.  It was more of a “live practice” than a game, with both sides of the ball having the opportunity to work on their execution against live competition.  

Next, though, comes TCU on Friday night.  TCU is 5-2, and the game is at Arlington Stadium in Texas.  TCU is obviously not the dominant team it was last year, but they are still a tough team.  They lost rivalry games to Baylor and SMU, both of whom have been playing decent ball.  Even though it was TCU who got all of the pre-season accolades, they are really quite similar to the Cougars.  

They are playing good defense, and they really don’t have a marquee victory on their resume this year.  The Cougars have played a tougher schedule, though, and the Horned Frogs have beaten mostly cupcakes, with their wins coming over Air Force, Louisiana-Monroe, Portland State, SDSU, and New Mexico.  There are a couple of decent teams there, but they don’t have a big enough body of work to know exactly where they sit on the college football food chain.  

This should be one of the better games of the season.  We think the Cougars will win, 35-34, in what will undoubtedly be called an “upset” by most of the media.  

BYU vs ISU Highlight Video

A Very Nice Victory Against OSU

The Cougars were very impressive on Saturday.  Even though Oregon State was 1-4 going in, the Cougars were three-point underdogs according to most nationally-published spreads.  

There were plenty of obstacles.  The opponent was a Pac-12 opponent and the game was on the road.  OSU’s record was a bit deceiving, and they do have a fairly impressive collection of athletes.  For some reason, the officiating crew was a Pac-12 crew.  Over the years, this has been a recipe for defeat for many teams.

Somehow, the Cougars did something the rest of the football world didn’t expect them to do: they dominated both lines of scrimmage.  They ran the ball 48 times for 282 yards, which worked out to 5.9 yards per attempt.  That didn’t even include the Michael Alisa touchdown that was erased by what is best described as a phantom holding call.    

Riley Nelson looked good in his first start this year against legitimate competition.  He went 17 of 29 for 217 yards and 3 touchdowns.  His one interception was a big one: a pick six that allowed OSU to tie the game 14-14 at the half after being outplayed the entire half.  

The running game was great, with Michael Alisa continuing his campaign to prove he can carry the load with 84 yards in 20 carries.  JJ DiLuigi had 8 runs for 74 yards, including a 41-yarder.  Riley Nelson was still the leading rusher with 12 runs for 89 yards.  

As we touched on last week, Nelson’s ability to run puts a lot more pressure on the defense.  He may not have the arm of Jake Heaps or the ability to put the ball in a very small space to a tightly-covered receiver, but a QB who can run doesn’t need those abilities.  

Nelson played a very heady game and was able to make OSU pay time and again.  When OSU covered Nelson, it meant a receiver was wide open.  When they covered all of the receivers, it gave Nelson space to run through.  Riley Nelson can’t run as fast as Michigan’s Denard Robinson and he can’t throw the ball like Stanford’s Andrew Luck, but he is doing a great job of knowing just when to do which.  

We are still seeing a few flaws: the occasional throw off the back foot, or trying to force a ball to a receiver instead of just throwing it out of bounds.  All in all, though, Riley Nelson is doing fine.  The team responds to him very well, and he is one of the most underrated QB’s in the country when it comes to executing play fakes to keep the opposing defense honest.  

The defense put on another fine show.  One thing Oregon State can do is put up points.  They have a good QB and a lot of excellent receivers.  The DL did well to not get pushed around, and the linebackers played stellar ball.  Kyle Van Noy was, once again, Kyle Van Noy.  Van Noy’s emergence as an elite LB is one of the best stories in college football this year.  Hopefully, the national media will eventually notice.  

Van Noy intercepted a pass at his own seven in the second quarter, and returned it 43 yards to the 50 yard line.  He also tackled OSU running back Marcus Wheaton for an 11-yard loss in the second quarter.  

Brandon Ogletree was a wildman in his return.  He forced two fumbles and had one interception in the space of three drives.  If he continues to play on this level, it will be hard to find any team with a combination of two linebackers like Van Noy and Ogletree.  

This game could have been a blowout if not for a couple of mistakes and some glaring officiating errors.  Whether it’s home team paralysis, lack of competence, or maybe just a lack of familiarity with the styles of opposing players, Pac-12 referees often appear to give Pac-12 teams a lot of breaks in games between them and “outsiders.”  

Probably the most glaring errors were the phantom holding call that wiped out a 30-yard Michael Alisa touchdown, followed by a non-call when it appeared that Ross Apo was mugged on third and 16 two plays later.  Luckily, the Cougars retained their poise and kept playing hard.  

One of the most difficult things for any football team to do is to retain its poise when it appears for all intents and purposes that they are playing 11 on 18 football.  Sometimes, the calls don’t balance out.  But often, if you keep on playing hard, the calls eventually start going your way.  

Even though they didn’t even out this time, with the Cougars being penalized 10 times for 79 yards with a touchdown wiped off the scoreboard and OSU only being penalized 8 times for 55 yards, the Cougars were able to play through the officiating and escape Corvallis with a victory.

The best aspect of this game is that it would be impossible to give out one game ball.  Alisa, Nelson, Ogletree, and Van Noy are all worthy of a game ball.  Not only is this a great development, but it also shows a very nice balance between offense and defense.  

When you are the BYU Cougars, you can’t get by with only playing well on one side of the ball.  Due to the fact that it is difficult to get 17 year-old recruits to agree to obeying the honor code, the Cougars seldom have the luxury of being able to put together one side of the ball that is so good that the other side of the ball can rest.  Even the best offenses of the LaVell Edwards years needed the defense to come up big in games against top-25 teams.  

This team lost to Utah, and might not make a BCS bowl, but it also might be remembered as one of the most overachieving teams in BYU history when all is said and done.  That is solely due to teamwork, and it bodes well for the future.

Next up: Idaho State.  Hopefully, the Cougars can rest a lot of dinged-up players and continue to get better as a team.  They will need every player to perform to the best of his ability in two weeks against TCU.

BYU vs OSU Highlight Video

Almost Already Bowl Eligible, What Now?

So, now what?

As we all know, Riley Nelson lead the Cougars to a 29-16 win over San Jose State last Saturday.  Obviously, the coaching staff saw something in Nelson that they haven’t seen in Jake Heaps this year.  

That is fine.  Once again, you have to trust the coaching staff to make the right decision.  We see the players for three hours every week; the coaches see the players six days a week for close to 30 hours a week during the season.  

However, I wouldn’t expect this to be the last word on the subject, or the last time we see Jake Heaps this year.  For now, it is Heaps’ job to be ready to play whenever needed, and cheer on the team just as Nelson did while he was the backup.  

Saturday night, Riley Nelson’s strengths and weaknesses were on display for all to see.  The team seemed to respond to his leadership better than that of Heaps.  The blocking was crisper, and the execution of both the running game and passing routes was a lot more precise.  

Sometimes, teams respond better to an upperclassman at QB than they do an underclassman.  The upperclassman is perceived as having been around longer and therefore having done more to earn the spot than an underclassman.  Last year, as we all know, Nelson was injured.  In sports, there is an unwritten rule that a QB doesn’t lose his spot to injury, and that he plays when he is well enough to return.

This could be a determining factor as to why the team responds to him better, or it may not, but it is worthy of consideration.  Another factor is that SJSU is really not much more than what boxers call a tomato can.  Teams like BYU expect to beat teams like SJSU.  It isn’t arrogance; it’s just an acknowledgment of the teams’ relative places on the college football food chain.  

The biggest physical factor was Riley Nelson’s ability to run.  He finished with 65 yards on nine carries, and many of them were crucial.  He was also able to complete passes to open receivers, and finished with 219 yards and three touchdowns.  

For most teams, and most QB’s, the 219 yards would be great.  For the Cougars, though, 219 passing yards is an underachievement.  This week, Riley Nelson was able to get away with a lot of mistakes.  He threw a lot of passes off of his back foot, and a lot of passes into double and even triple coverage.  This was OK against SJSU, but won’t cut the mustard against Oregon State or TCU.  

So, we have the age-old quandary: is Riley Nelson’s running ability enough to offset his questionable judgment when passing?  

As we noted last week, whenever a QB can run, the defense has to waste a player on him.  This usually creates mismatches in the secondary and produces wide open receivers.  When the running game is clicking, too, the Cougars suddenly become a very dangerous team.  Teams can no longer sit back and turn the Cougars into a one-dimensional team when they execute the running game.  

Basically, last Saturday’s game was a lot of fun, but it didn’t really tell us what we need to know.  We will know more this Saturday, when the Cougars play Oregon State.  Oregon State is only 1-4, but they still have a very good assortment of athletes.  Oregon State isn’t Oregon, but they aren’t SJSU, either.  

Oregon State is a Pac 12 team, and has a lot of athletes.  The Cougars should win this game, but it won’t be easy.  The next two games will be great for Nelson to get a “groove” going for TCU in three weeks.  OSU has a better rush and a faster secondary than SJSU.  The game will go slightly faster, and Nelson will have to adjust accordingly.  

No matter what the case, it is a great situation to have two QB’s who can run the team, and who have different strengths and weaknesses.  There could eventually be a time when Nelson’s style doesn’t work, and Heaps needs to be ready to come in and throw the ball downfield.  

Remember, too, that the players still have to perform in practice every day.  Sitting on the bench could be the best thing that has happened to Jake Heaps.  He still seems to have a much better upside than Nelson, and the perspective from the bench is often a valuable teaching and learning tool.  

We are quite fortunate to have two competent QB’s this year.  Ask Ohio State if they would take either Heaps or Nelson right now.

Game Ball: Kyle Van Noy.

This season hasn’t gone the way most of us wanted it to, but the emeergence of Kyle Van Noy as a truly elite player has been one of the best stories in college football this year.  Thanks to the ESPN contract, Van Noy is getting some national publicity for both himself and the Cougars.

Van Noy was all over the field again, and delivered an interception in the first half to help set the tone for the entire game.  He is a major star in the making, and should have a serious chance at All-American status by his senior year.  He is disruptive and makes a lot of tackles that keep big plays from happening.  He also has a great nose for the ball and a penchant for causing turnovers.  

The next step in his development will come when opposing offensive coordinators design their game plans to stay away from him.  It won’t hurt the Cougars, though; it will just turn opponents more predictable and funnel plays to other players.

Honorable Mention: the Running Game.

The Cougars ran the ball 44 times for 224 yards for an average of 5.1 yards per carry.  Micheal Alisa carried the ball 16 times for 91 yards to lead the team, while Riley Nelson ran it 9 times for 65 yards.  If the Cougars can keep running the ball well, it will take a lot of pressure off of the QB’s and the receivers.  It will also make it easier for receivers to get open.  

Congrats to the Cougars on a well-earned victory.  

BYU vs SJSU Highlights

Controversy? What Controversy?

Is it Riley Nelson or Jake Heaps?  Jake Heaps or Riley Nelson.  The numbers are there.  Jake Heaps completed 11 out of 25 for 107 yards, and rushed for five yards.  Riley Nelson completed 10 of 14 for 144 yards and two touchdowns, while rushing for 62 yards.  When you use the stat of yards per pass attempt, Heaps had 4.28 yards per attempt, and Nelson had 10.3 yards per pass attempt, not counting sacks or scrambles.  

On the surface, it would appear that Nelson is a runaway choice to be the starter for next week.  However, there is a lot more to picking a starting QB than what is on the surface.  

This happens a lot more in college than the NFL, because over half of the teams in the NFL run the same exact offense with different terminology.  So, in the NFL, the skill set for a starting QB is extremely narrow opposed to the skill set for a college QB.  Consequently, the NFL keeps QB’s who fit a narrow prototype, and it is usually easier to quantify who is the best for the team.

In college, though, it’s different.  Teams run different variations and combine a lot of different offenses.  The game is slow enough that some things that wouldn’t work in the NFL work great in college.  Also, coaches run different defenses in college.  There are so many different personnel packages and schemes on both sides of the ball that you never know what offense will work against what defense.  

What does this have to do with Jake Heaps and Riley Nelson?  Everything.  It is difficult to build a team exactly like you want to in college.  Unlike the NFL, players choose where they want to play.  In the NFL, most teams don’t have one or two glaring weak spots.  In college, almost every team has one or many weak spots that can be exploited by a savvy coach.  

Even though Riley Nelson had much better passing stats than Jake Heaps, Nelson is a QB whose strength is that he is a threat to run.  It forces the opposing team to alter their defense.  A disciplined NFL team with no weak spots would simply cover gaps and refuse to break contain.  A college team usually has to have a player “spy” on a running QB.  This can be a very fast LB or an extra DB.  Either way, it takes one man out of coverage and can create mismatches in the secondary.  

Jake Heaps failed to get the job done in the first half, and bringing in Riley Nelson was the correct move.  He was a “change of pace” when the Cougars needed it, and he did a great job.  Remember, though, that USU practiced all week for Jake Heaps.  If they had practiced for Riley Nelson, the outcome might have been different.  

It is often said that backup QB is the best position on the team, because you never do anything wrong.  Whenever the starter fails to perform, the fans and media clamor for the backup.  Now, it appears that most of the fanbase wants to see Nelson as the starter until further notice.  The media may or may not want Nelson to start.  Usually, they just want controversy because it gives them something more compelling to report.

Ultimately, though, the responsibility falls on the coaching staff.  Riley Nelson did his job as a backup QB; he came in, performed admirably, and won the game for the Cougars.  That is great, but the sample size is too small.  Coaches see the players six days a week in practice.  They know who is capable of doing what.  

As fans, all we see are the games.  All we know is what we see on Saturday (or, in the Cougars’ case, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday).  If the decision was being made solely on what happened during those three hours, Nelson would be a runaway pick as the starter.  

The coaches, though, have access to a lot more information, and make their decisions accordingly.  The coaches will make their decision based on what they see in practice.  Really, though, we expect to see Jake Heaps start against San Jose State this week.  

This year’s schedule has been tough.  The Cougars have played against much better competition than they did last year.  To their credit, they are 1-1 in intrastate rivalries this year, where they were 0-2 last year.  No games are “easy,” but it would be nice to see what Jake Heaps can do against an average team that doesn’t have a “rivalry game” with BYU.  Remember the UTEP game?

Sometimes, it does a QB good to sit on the bench and watch the action.  Jake Heaps has a lot of talent, but he needed a pattern interrupt.  He got one big time on Friday.  Jake Heaps took his lumps during the toughest part of the schedule.  He deserves to have a chance to see what he can do against the less difficult part.

Besides, the Cougars are in a perfect position right now.  They have a starting QB with a lot of talent and potential, and a higher upside.  If what he is doing doesn’t work, they have a backup QB who can come in and totally disrupt everything the opponents have practiced for all week.  

Make no mistake about it.  Jake Heaps has NFL potential.  He is still young, too: only a true sophomore.  In a more ideal situation, he could have had a redshirt year to sit on the bench.  When Nelson was injured last season, that was no longer an option.  

Also, Nelson was playing against his old team and had a lot to prove.  Once again, the sample size is too small to make a judgment. 

The bottom line is that, until further notice, Jake Heaps is still the starting QB.  If Riley Nelson outperforms him in practice, he will become the starter.  Either way, we are more than willing to trust whatever the coaches decide to do.  

Ultimately, it is the coaches whose reputations are on the line here, and it is they who have the most information to make a decision.  As far as we are concerned, there is no controversy.  We trust that whatever decision Bronco Mendenhall makes will be the correct one.

On a less serious note, here’s a pretty funny video a fan made about Riley Nelson’s hair:

Last updated by Jim at October 4, 2011.

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