Cam Ward bidding war thread
- Thread starter BleedCrimsonandGray
- Start date
I think their OC Grubb, who doesn't get enough credit, is gone....he the reason for their success.
Great play caller and play design.
The longer and higher it goes, the easier it will be to recruit the right transfer. Every FCS and low G5 team QB in the portal or thinking about the portal is watching this.
Kaelen DeBour is just riding the coattails of Jimmy Lakes hard work
If anyone is wondering Jimmy Lake is the assistant head coach for the LA Rams.
I'm honestly shocked.
Just another reason to watch only Cougs and Beavs and no sec or big ten. I just don’t have any interest in mid or eastern teams
Last I saw osu was out and it was condons, Florida St, Miami and Auburn.
Any of them can have him . He ain't that great. He better leave those pickup keys behind. Please tell me we didn't actually give that to him with no strings?
I'm looking forward to Mateer.
Ward is better than you all think. Our offense line would have made Justin “Jesus” Herbert look like shit.
You all are basically saying you know better big-time college football coaches.
You all are basically saying you know better big-time college football coaches.
I think the truth is somewhere between the two of you, but closer to Mike F Leach. Now that a team can simply buy players, a team with a need will look at who might be available and pursue them. In the case of QB's, the demand far outweighs the supply, and that drives the price up. Ward has strengths and weaknesses, but he is not bad. There are at most a handful of better prospects out there, and there are probably at least 20 programs with lots of money to spend that need a QB. The results are easy to predict. He made progress in all of his weak areas this year. It is easy to compare video between 2 years ago and last year and see the progress. There will be several HC's who will tell themselves that with their super coaching ability, he can make just as much progress in the coming year (on top of learning a new system and new teammates). The HC's who recruit him hardest will be those who are most desperate and those who have a very inflated opinion of their staff's ability to coach up their players.
FWIW, I think Cam will have a good season somewhere. I think his greatest weakness at this point is field awareness & reading coverages. It seems unlikely to me that he will make major progress in those areas on a new team, but I could be wrong. And he is already good enough to take a solid team that only lacks a QB and improve their chances of success.
I smile at the sarcasm. Of course they are important, and without progress in this area he will not be starting in the NFL...and may not even be drafted. It is easy to underestimate the time & learning lag that goes with learning a new system and teammates. Realistically, I don't think that allows a lot of bandwidth for working on improvement in coverage recognition and field awareness. But...and this is why so much money is being thrown around...he is one of the better choices for a program with a solid overall team, enough money to spend, and no proven QB. And Cam has been at WSU, in a conference that puts a premium on passing and good pass defense. My bet is that somebody buys him who is happy if he can come into an already solid group and get at least 8 wins. And if the rest of the team is solid, that is probably realistic. It is also probably his ceiling in a B10 or SEC team, due to his weaknesses.
I would argue that you can't teach field awareness...or at least, not very much. And, coverage recognition isn't likely to improve a great deal in the course of a single season...especially not when he's working on learning a new system, like you noted.
Maybe...if he goes to a team that's pretty loaded, it'll take enough pressure off of him to disguise those weaknesses, at least for a while, and talent around him can pick up the slack. But my guess is that even if that occurs, the wheels will come off when he faces opponents that are near equals.
Had an interesting conversation today with one of the players on the team at the gym I frequent. He plays on offense and appears to be a walk-on from what I see on rosters found on line. In any case, although just a FR, he says the team is ready and excited for Mateer to step in and take over. From what he witnessed during fall camp, that Mateer appeared to be just as capable as Cam was during all the practice sessions. He also believes there aren't going to be any more defections (maybe nonstarters/walkons) and that the players understand that we are still considered to be a P5 program with a more favorable schedule about to be unveiled.
I hope every part of this is true, but after looking at it from every angle I can think of for the last few months, I just don't see any way we stay P5.
I’ve been saying Ward is good all year. There’s a reason teams are throwing $2M at him.
3-5 Power 5 games makes us a tweener which I think WSU is rounding up when selling it to the team and sounds like they are buying it so far. I’m fairly impressed with the lack of portal entries so far (knock on wood).
I hope Mateer ends a good one. It's good he's had some snaps even if it was primarily as a runner.
I'm sure a lot of posters here remember reports about Steve Birnbaum outplaying Leaf every spring. Extreme example, but until they lace it up for real it's hard to know what you got.
There's a late portal in the spring too. If there's not some positive movement before then, that's the period I'm more concerned with.
Also hoping we don't hear crickets on signing day.
I suspect that Leaf wasn't much of a practice player, and Birnbaum was giving everything he had.
hes talented and a good kid but had warts that aren’t going to be sorted out in one offseason or with a new uniform. That said just like the NFL these schools see the potential and think they can coach the bad habits out of him. I truly hope they can I wish him the best. Fact is he’s not even an NFL qb right now, maybe a late round pick? I find it funny how UW folks I know are acting like he’d be a savior for them. But these same folks thought Jimmy Lake was going to be a step up from Chris Peterson and Sam Huard was gonna drop 50 on us in the AC.
Wards problems largely disappear behind a good oline with NFL receivers to throw to.
Birnbaum was actually pretty good. The leg injury nuked him. That's directly from the coaches.
He is next year's Jaden Daniels. That guy didn't really progress at ASU and many were glad to see him leave. Got into a better program and BOOM.
Certainly not predicting a Heisman, but as you and others have pointed out...the line makes all the difference to virtually ANY qb. That's all I have to say about that
FWIW, Mateer threw only 17 passes this year and one of them was for 48 yards and another was for 72 yards. To be fair, the 72 yard TD was really only about 28 yards in the air...so there's that.
Birnbaum was a decent QB, with a decent arm. He was surrounded by an O-line that was swiss cheese and he was always running for his life. I met him one time and he was really great. I remember asking him how cool it was to be a starting Pac10/12 QB and he said it was super fun and that he loved playing for the Cougs. His dad asked him something to the effect of which play was being called next? Which would be: “look out right” or “look out left”.
