6-3" 185# Anthony Gordon out of City College of San Fran. He has 4 to play 3.
Cougs land 2016 QB
- Thread starter kougkurt
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Fills in that spot from last year. And while JC is not the same speed as the PAC, he did as well as one could do at that level. Makes one curious to see what he can do after a season of preparation.
So, doing the QB math...
Falk, 2 to play
Bender, 3 to play
Hilinksi, 4 to play
Rogers, 5 to play 4
Gordon, 4 to play 3
Neville (2017), 5 to play 4, assuming he shows
I don't expect Rogers to stay at QB, but with this addition it seems likely we'll lose Bender or Hilinski. It's 3 guys fighting for the helm in 2018, so two of them have to be disappointed...The the guys without red shirts are the ones with the least wiggle room
Falk, 2 to play
Bender, 3 to play
Hilinksi, 4 to play
Rogers, 5 to play 4
Gordon, 4 to play 3
Neville (2017), 5 to play 4, assuming he shows
I don't expect Rogers to stay at QB, but with this addition it seems likely we'll lose Bender or Hilinski. It's 3 guys fighting for the helm in 2018, so two of them have to be disappointed...The the guys without red shirts are the ones with the least wiggle room
The cynical part of me thinks that Leach taking a QB with only 4 years of eligibility means that he either wasn't particularly comfortable with either Bender or Hilinksi or he feels that a transfer by one of them is inevitable. Gordon does nothing to fill the gap for last year's class. Of course, he might just be crazy good and couldn't be passed up. I'm hoping the weakest link does transfer. Scholarships are precious things and we suddenly got very deep on guys that are all getting done around the same time.
And if a rash of injuries occurs, you'll be sniping and griping over how Leach didn't recruit the position well enough.
Leach has been playing with fire with the QB depth for about three years. Of course there will be transfers. Clements, Apodaca and Bruggman all transferred. More will.
Agreed Dgib. The concern so many had last year about not getting a QB was warranted, in my opinion. This helps.
It also ushers in a period of time where the QB's are put on notice. No one's job is secure. And while that may seem like a normal stance, especially for CML (since he continually preaches that), it hasn't really hasn't been seen at the QB position, as of late. With holes in the QB depth, there would be hope for each and every QB recruit that they would get their senior year, at least, to shine on the field. Well now, not so much.
Bruggman was the first big hit. Last year was another big hit. This helps fill and bring in more competition. This will only drive our QB's to be better. If they can't stand competition or step up, they'll have 2 options. 1) Leave or 2) stay to drive the rest of the QB ranks. Either option will only help WSU.
And to be brutally honest, the recent trend of players transferring so easily, it makes coaches need to fill depth positions even more than in years past. Players want to have the freedom to transfer, which I agree with. But the unintended consequences of that is coaches will want players at each position ready to step in, so when a player leaves, there is someone there right away. Among so many other reasons, I think this is one reason why JC's have become more valuable.
I think it was smart by the staff (and, most likely, common practice at nearly every school) to not have a "victor" in the race for the #2 spot this spring. All that would do is make it more likely the other guy would transfer out before this fall. Then you're a couple snaps away from playing one of the walk-ons or your true freshman. Rather, both Bender and Hilinski reasonably expect to be in the mix for being a snap away from getting extended playing time in the Pac-12. Doesn't make sense for either of them to transfer now.
I'd expect to see one of Hilinski, Bender, and/or Gordon transferring out prior to next year. Just based on what we've seen, and relying only on a JC highlight tape of Gordon, I'd be surprised if it's not Bender.
I have never griped about us not recruiting at the QB position ever. Please feel free to search the entire internet for a single instance where I said we should have recruited more QB's. You won't, because I haven't......ever. If anything, we've been guilty of over-recruiting the position and watching a lot of QB's leave WSU for other schools. If Leach saw something in Gordon that made him feel that he needed to get him, that's what we pay him for, but it does put us in a position where we have four guys trying for the back up spot with three of them graduating within a year of each other. Something has to give and someone is going to leave. I'd just rather that the weakest link get out of the way first, whomever that might be.
What's funny is that we get so obsessed with getting QB's, that some seem to forget that if things go well, only one really gets to play much. Here is a list of our QB scholarship recruits since 2002 and what they did:
2001: Josh Swogger - greyshirted, transferred in 2005 when he realized he was not going to start ahead of Brink.
Chris Hurd - transferred
2002: Carl Bonnell - transferred
2003: Kyle Kendrick - concentrated on baseball
Alex Brink - four year starter
2004: Cole Morgan - greyshirted and transferred soon after
Gary Rogers - career ending injury
2005: Arkelon Hall - transferred
2006: no recruit
2007: JT Levenseller - transferred
Marshall Lobbestael - part time starter
Kevin Lopina - part time starter
2008: Calvin Schmidtke - never made it to campus
2009: Jeff Tuel - multi-year starter
2010: Connor Halliday - multi-year starter
2011: Cody Clements - transferred
2012: Austin Apodaca - transferred
2013: Tyler Bruggman - transferred
When you look at the stretch from 2001-13, we recruited 17 quarterbacks. 11 of them left WSU for other schools to get more playing time. When you look at how backup QB's have performed for WSU when they came into games in place of a starter......they've generally sucked. Kegel was terrible in the 2002 Apple Cup, Swogger was terrible in the 2003 Apple Cup, Brink choked away the game against CU in 2004 with a pick 6, Rogers looked good but the team lost anyway, Lobbestael and Lopina were just different cogs of the crapfest that was 2008, 2009 and 2010. Falk looked pretty mediocre in 2014 in a relief role and Bender was not up to the task against the mutts last year. Halliday beating ASU in 2011 is one of the few times in the past 15 years when the backup QB won the game he stepped into but he was still wildly inconsistent as a quarterback. You could make the argument that Rogers got screwed by Rosenbach if you want of course. The long story short is that we haven't had a backup QB who played well since Aaron Garcia took over for Brad Gossen in 1989.
We obsess about QB depth but it really doesn't mean squat. When your starting QB goes down, most often, your season goes with it. We have fans that are worried if our #3 QB is capable of starting in a pinch. Newsflash.....he isn't. It is incredibly rare to see teams get to their #3 QB and usually, their seasons are shot if that happens. Deal with it and get ready for the next season. If Gordon is the man and Leach felt like he needed him, again, that's what we pay him for, but any idea that this is building "depth" is just foolishness. With his signing, someone is going to be gone by the end of the 2016 season. The quarterback position is one where you try to get one every year, knowing that half of them will leave once they know that they are future bench riders. The reality is that Leach is good enough at his job that any QB that he starts is going to put up ridiculous numbers. Once we have a deeper team overall, we will be less reliant on the QB position and you can already see that happening with the running game becoming more productive last year. It will always be important, but in time, any Leach QB will be good enough to get us to 7 wins. Worrying about how many we have on the depth chart will be (and always has been) a waste. It's more important to look at how things lay out down the road than obsessing about depth.
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Exactly. The article on brandx said that WSU had been holding the offer until they had more clarity about the future depth chart. If you're a young QB with talent like Bender and Hillinski, why wouldn't you at least consider transferring if you lost the #2 job? Not sure why posters freak out about this. Ride the pine at WSU or start for Montana, Eastern, etc.
Have we ever had this quantity/quality of QB depth at WSU? I can't think of a year we did. We have always been on the ragged edge of a starting QB injury away from a disastrous season. We'll have to consider the UW game last season as anomaly. I don't see that happening again under Leach. Always need a good backup ready to step up.
A question about this new QB acquisition. I was under the understanding that we had used our full allotment of recruits in last year's commit class. Does this new addition mean that someone of that class is not making it in? This would be about the time of year that final grades come out and would clarify the situation if someone was on the academic edge. Somewhere I read about "roster shuffling". What is going on that makes this new scholarship available? If one of the commits failed admission requirements, who would it be?
I have no issues with kids leaving to get on the field somewhere else. You only get 4 seasons. It goes quickly. Get in where you fit in, play ball, get educated, move forward in life when it's done.
Flat, my guess is a QB doesn't feel like sitting on the bench for a total of three years before his first sniff at playing time. If Falk stays Bender will be a senior and Hillinski will be a junior before seeing the field unless they have an unfortunate injury to Falk.
People thought we had it when Swogger, Brink, Hall, but clearly that didn't last long. Bledsoe Gossen, Garcia and Patterson, and it is now 26 years later and the same thing holds true, QB's especially don't like to hold the clip board.
I don't blame any of the QB's for transferring. To some degree, it's a good thing because we are getting guys that are good enough that other schools want them. Still, the actual results of how our backup QB's have played when put to the test tells me that QB "depth" is a myth for most programs and particularly WSU. Even the guys that played ok as starters were ineffective when they were initially thrown to the fire (Kegel & Falk are great examples of this). A good football team is built upon the idea that they have a good offensive line in front of the QB so you don't have to worry about him being injured (or rushed on every play), not on how many backup QB's are ready to start.
QB depth is important for success in the long run. Ideally, when Falk graduates, Hilinski or Gordon would be ready to take over the starting role as a redshirt junior the next year (no offense to Bender intended). One of them plays for two years and then Neville becomes the starter as a redshirt junior and so forth. You recruit enough guys so that the ones that don't work out can transfer and you'll still have viable candidates. If a coach is doing his job well, he should never have to take a QB on scholarship "just in case". Rogers is an athlete that Leach is going to allow to play at QB, but everyone including Rogers, knows that he'll probably end up at a different position. Nothing wrong with that kind of offer. Guys that fall in the "maybe" category should be offfered a preferred walk-on role and given a chance to prove themselves. That is exactly what Leach did with Falk.
Since you really only need one good QB every 2-3 years, there isn't any given year that your QB recruit is make or break. Your regular recruiting should get you that guy if you take the best possible recruit every year. If that's not the case, your program is begging for trouble and you aren't doing a good job of evaluating QB talent (I'm looking at you Oregon).
I think you mean Pattinson. I agree that was a nice lineup of QBs. Still though the exception at WSU sort of proves the point.
mean Pattison, and I think the greater point is QB depth is a myth. While I agree on paper this current crop of Qb's isn't bad, but when post next sprig I think the depth chart will be completely different.
Other than being completely outmatched on the field, I don't know why Gordon would transfer, or where to. He had no offers out of high school and WSU is his only offer coming out of JC. I guess he could transfer down a level, but again, that would likely only come after a total flop of a first season.
Yes, I think he's the least likely to transfer of the three. In fact, I probably should revise what I wrote from "expecting" one of them to transfer to stating that it's just a possibility. It's also possible that (i) Falk has an outstanding season and goes pro after this year and (ii) neither Hilinski nor Bender plays much this year and there is no clear "loser" in the battle for the backup spot all year. We could see both Hilinski and Bender stick around in that situation, as well as in various others.
