EJ Manuel: Running quarterback? Maybe not
Florida State University's EJ Manuel out runs Florida's Ahmad Black for a first down in the fourth quarter of an NCAA college football game which Florida State won 31-7 on Saturday, Nov. 27, 2010, in Tallahassee, Fla.(AP Photo/Steve Cannon)
Frank Alexander has seen as much of Florida State quarterback EJ Manuel in the past week as any player.
The Oklahoma defensive end’s take after watching hours and hours of film in preparation for Saturday’s showdown in Tallahassee?
“He’s an athletic guy,” Alexander said, “but I think he prides himself on pocket passing.”
Passing?
Wait. Isn’t Manuel supposed to be this great dual-threat quarterback? A completely different player and wholly different challenge than Seminole quarterback Christian Ponder was a year ago?
Alexander admits that Manuel is different than Ponder.
“He’s more stable back there,” Alexander said of Manuel. “He doesn’t get rattled as fast. If he sees a blitz, he’ll step up in the pocket and still try to make a throw.
“With Ponder last year, he’d get rattled … he’d take it and run. He’d pull the ball down and run. I think EJ Manuel wants to be a great pocket passer.”
Sooner defensive coordinator Brent Venables backs that up.
“Christian would pull it down a lot more than Manuel,” he said. “They have design QB runs. They have the option and everything else.”
But just taking off?
“He doesn’t get antsy like Ponder would get antsy,” Venables said.
Those assessments of Manuel may fly in the face of just about everything you’ve been lead to believe about the Seminole quarterback, but the numbers back them up. In Florida State’s first two games, Manuel has completed 66.7 percent of his passes for 581 yards and six touchdowns.
His rushing numbers?
He’s only carried the ball 10 times for 30 yards.
Not exactly Michael Vick stuff.
“From the film I’ve watched on him, whenever he had the opportunity to run, he didn’t run,” Alexander said of Manuel. “He’d scramble a little bit and look for an open man to throw the ball.
“I feel like he can run all day. He’s a big guy, a real athletic guy. I feel like he can get out there and run. But I think he wants to let the world know that he can be a passer, too.”
Advantage, Sooners.
Against offenses that have a true dual-threat quarterback, OU has had its struggles over the years. Just look at last year’s games. Against option-running quarterbacks from Utah State and Air Force, OU had two of its closest calls of the season, winning those games by a combined 10 points. Nebraska quarterback Taylor Martinez also gave OU fits in the Big 12 championship game, when the Sooners squeaked by the Huskers by only three points.
Now, I’m not saying that the fact that Manuel is more pocket passer than dual-threat guy means the Sooners are going to roll to an easy victory in Tallahassee. But Manuel being more of a passer gives the OU defense an advantage.
Sure, Manuel may burn the Sooners on a run or two, but every quarterback does that from time to time.
OU is preparing for him much like it’s prepare for Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State or Ryan Tannehill at Texas A&M.
“With not having a threat of him running, you can be a lot heavier on your rushes,” Alexander said. “When you have a running quarterback, you’re always taught as a defensive lineman not to run behind the quarterback. With him staying in the pocket, that’ll make our rushes a lot more efficient.
“I feel like we don’t have the big threat of him running.”
I’ll say it again — advantage, Sooners.
Super Conferences Aren’t So Super
Texas A&M’s departure from the Big 12 sparks many questions.
All are important, including the most pressing around these parts — “What happens next to Oklahoma and Oklahoma State?” — but I suspect there’s a big-picture question that will have ramifications for many years to come.
Is this the dawn of the super conference?
It sure looks that way.
The Aggies are likely headed to the SEC, which is sure to add another team to maintain an even number of schools. That will bring the SEC’s total to 14 schools.
Remember when the Big 12 first formed and people thought a dozen teams was a big number?
Now, four of the six BCS conferences have a dozen teams. ACC. Big Ten. Pac-12. SEC. And with the SEC on its way to 14 teams, you have to wonder how long it is before other conferences start expanding. The Pac-12 has made no secret of its desire for expansion. The Big Ten just added Nebraska, but it always seem to have its eye on Notre Dame. Why wouldn’t it be interested in others, too?
Super conferences sure look like the wave of the not-too-distant future.
I’m not a fan.
And no, I’m not some sort of stuck-in-the-past traditionalist. I loved when the Big 12 formed. Loved adding the Texas schools. Loved expanding the conferences borders.
Heck, I even got excited about the idea of OU, OSU and others going to the Pac-10 a year ago when conference realignment was all the rage. The idea of football games in Los Angeles at the Coliseum or in Eugene at The Zoo was pretty cool.
But now, as I listen to people throwing out all sorts of realignment scenarios that would result in these massive super conferences, I’m worried about all this talk. Thinking about all these different college football combinations is making me a little sick to my stomach.
The reason?
College football is different in different parts of the country. The experience in the SEC is different than the experience in the Big 12. Game day in Blacksburg, Va., is different than game day in Corvallis, Ore., or Madison, Wisc. Yes, people love their college football everywhere, so that passion is the same, but the way that passion is displayed is completely and totally unique in different areas of the country. But if you start throwing all of these strange bedfellows together, that vibe starts to change.
I mean, Nebraska playing in the Big Ten doesn’t feel like a stretch. Same with Colorado playing in the Pac-12.
But Missouri in the SEC? OSU in the Pac-12? Air Force in the Big 12?
I’m just not sure it feels right.
Sure, there are some potentially great match-ups, but they feel like great non-conference match-ups. Part of the reason why we love the idea of Boise State playing Georgia or Oregon playing LSU is because it’s not only a great clash of football powers but also a great clash of cultures. They do things different in Boise than they do in Athens, different in Eugene than they do in Baton Rouge, so bringing those teams together makes for great drama.
But making teams from vastly different football cultures into conference bedfellows?
It just gives me the heebie jeebies.
Maybe in another 10 or 15 years we’ll look back on this day as the start of a great era in college football. The start of the super conferences. The move to the future of the sport.
Then again, maybe we’ll look back on it as the muddying of football cultures, the day the identities of programs started to blend together, the day the things that made programs different and special started to be diluted.
I hope the latter isn’t the case, but I fear it will be.
Super conferences?
I’m not sure they’re such a super idea.
Some Sooner coaches weren’t sold on Heupel
If some Oklahoma assistant coaches would’ve had their way, Josh Heupel would’ve never been a Sooner.
So writes Mike Leach in his new book, “Swing Your Sword”.
Leach came back to the state over the weekend to sign copies of the book, which is a fascinating read. Most folks will pick it up because of the chapters on the saga that ended Leach’s tenure at Texas Tech. But if you’re an OU fan, the book is worth snagging for the 15 pages that he wrote about his one season in Norman.
He was hired, you remember, as the offensive coordinator on Bob Stoops’ first staff, and he writes at length about those early days in Norman. He talks about how all the coaches lived in a hotel, how they gathered in one room every night to make recruiting calls, how the energy was amazing.
Leach’s top priority: finding a quarterback who could play right away.
“Because,” as Leach wrote in the book, “we didn’t have a QB in the program who could run our offense. None. Emphasis on the word none.”
That meant finding a capable junior college quarterback, which was difficult enough, but add in the fact that Leach was trying to find a junior college quarterback who could come to OU in the middle of the year and the level of difficulty rose exponentially.
Leach writes that he narrowed his search down to two: Sean Stein and Josh Heupel.
I did some searching for Stein, a guy I’d never heard of before seeing his name in “Swing Your Sword”. He went from Long Beach City College to New Mexico, where he had a decent career.
Didn’t win a national championship like Heupel, though.
The wild thing is, Leach had to win over some of his counterparts that recruiting Heupel was the way to go.
“A few of the OU assistants didn’t like Heupel,” he wrote, “but I really did. They didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t run well. He also had a weak arm, but he could throw it 45 yards without the ball fluttering.”
But Leach said that most important to him was accuracy, decision making and command of the offense. Heupel had those characteristics in abundance.
Then, Leach pinned what I suspect might be one of the most insightful bits in the book.
“The reason teams struggle when evaluating quarterbacks is that sometimes their priorities are out of order,” he wrote. “They get caught up in arm strength, size, and speed. Things that are easy to measure.”
We’ve seen the result of that, haven’t we? The kid who passes the eye test, who has all the measurables, who looks like he was plucked straight out of central casting is a bust. He never gets on the field. He sits the bench. He transfers.
(See, Keith Nichol, Tommy Grady, Noah Allen, et al.)
But then the guy who maybe doesn’t quite look the part plays it perfectly.
There is no better example of that than Heupel. He sparked a return to glory for Sooner football, then returned to his alma mater to coach quarterbacks. Now with a roster loaded for greatness, he’s about to start his first season as the OU offensive coordinator.
Good thing that Leach didn’t listen to those other coaches who thought Heupel was the wrong guy for the Sooners.
Justin Blackmon for Heisman?
Less than two months ago, I stood talking to Justin Blackmon after an Oklahoma State football practice about how this Cowboy offense didn’t have a superstar receiver.
Now, I have the sophomore wideout on my Heisman Trophy ballot.
What Blackmon has done this season has been as amazing as it has been unexpected. Heck, even if we’d have all known that he was going to be the star receiver in this new-fangled offense, we’d still be impressed by the numbers, by the impact.
Blackmon leads the nation in receiving yards with 955 and in touchdown catches with 12.
If not for Hawaii, he’d be the leader in both categories by a mile. But Hawaii’s Greg Salas is on his heels in the receiving yards category with 910 while Hawaii’s Kealoha Pilares has only one less touchdown catch. Besides Blackmon and Salas, no other receiver in the country has even 800 yards receiving. And besides Blackmon and Pilares, no other receiver has touchdown catches in the double digits.
That Blackmon is so far out in front of everyone else in the country in both categories is a big-time statement.
And hey, it doesn’t hurt either that every time he steps on the field he seems to one-up himself. A couple weeks ago, he had a career-high 13 catches and a career-high 190 yards at Louisiana-Lafayette. But just when you thought he couldn’t do anything more jaw-dropping, he went to Texas Tech last week and bested his career-high in yards with 207.
Who knows what he’ll do Saturday vs. Nebraska?
Truth is, what he does then could really catapult him into the Heisman conversation.
This week, I was the only voter in the HeismanPundit.com straw poll to have Blackmon on my ballot. He was third behind Boise State quarterback Kellen Moore and Auburn quarterback Cam Newton.
My ballot has changed nearly every week this season, so who knows what players I’ll have on it next week or even at the end of the season when it really matters. But right now, I felt like Blackmon deserved a spot. He’s been not only outstanding but also extremely important to the Cowboys’ 6-0 start.
Coaches comparing him to Michael Crabtree doesn’t hurt either.
Just two months ago, we had no idea if Blackmon would be the Cowboys’ go-to receiver, much less a Heisman Trophy dark horse.
Guess I was talking to the superstar receiver that day after practice in August, huh?
College FB: Lock of the Week
Week One was a rough one for yours truly — at least where college football picks were concerned.
But my lock of the week involved TCU and Oregon State. I said that the Horned Frogs would beat the Beavers but fail to cover the spread.
Nailed it.
TCU won 30-21, but the spread was 12 1/2 points.
So, let’s try to run the locks record to 2-0 this week.
For starters, this is a great week of games. Everyone around here is talking about Oklahoma-Florida State, but check out this rundown. Michigan at Notre Dame. Miami at Ohio State. Oregon at Tennessee. Penn State at Alabama. All of these games are going to make for a fantastic Saturday.
None of them are enough of a sure thing, though, to make as my lock.
No, for that, I’m looking to Lawrence, Kan., where Kansas is hosting Georgia Tech. Looking at the Jayhawks’ schedule before this season, this is a game that I thought they would lose. After last week, I have no doubt about it.
Kansas lost to Division II North Dakota State.
And it was even worse than it looks. The Jayhawks were at home in what was supposed to be the glorious start to the Turner Gill Era. Instead, they failed to score a touchdown.
Truth be told, I nearly picked Georgia Tech, a 13 1/2 point favorite, to beat Kansas 72-3. Actually had the score typed onto my computer screen. But I changed it. I figured that losing to a Division II team would spark something in the Jayhawks. Surely, they’ve got some pride to be better. Surely, they won’t be as bad this week as they were a week ago.
So, I’m only picking Georgia Tech to beat Kansas 45-17.
Lock it.
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Cowboys and Thunder and Durantulas, oh my
Here’s a fun interview that I did with Kevin Calabro and Jim Moore on KIRO 710 AM in Seattle.
(Yep, I’ve been on with two stations there in the past day. Who knew I was big in the Pacific NW?)
We talked about all sorts of stuff, including Oklahoma State’s opener against Washington State and the team formerly known as the Sonics. I tried to let them down easy, but hey, it’s hard not to feel the excitement about the Thunder. Kevin Durant and Co. have us talking basketball before football even gets started.
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Got your college football fix right here
Need a college football fix?
Who doesn’t? It’s the middle of July, for goodness sakes.
So, here’s something that I ran across at USA Today. It’s a bunch of wide-ranging but pretty interesting questions about the upcoming season. It hits on everything from Brian Kelly to Tyrelle Pryor to Boise State.
Don’t miss a couple extra features on the page, too. On the left side, you’ll see links to a “replacements” series that the paper is doing. It is profiling players taking over for notables like Toby Gerhart and Colt McCoy. As the paper writes those stories, it’s adding the links. Read now about guys who will may soon be the talk of the college football world.
Also, under those links, there is a list of inductees in the College Football Hall of Fame. You’ll see some familiar names that you probably haven’t thought about in awhile — Major Harris, anyone? — and some names you may never had heard of. Did you know Harvard center William Lewis was the first black player to earn first-team All-American honors? You will after reading this list of legends.
Got any other college football bits that are helping keep you sane during these lean times? Send ‘em my way, and we’ll share them with the masses.
Football: What’s luck got to do with it? Ask the Sooners
Trying to sell Iowa? Start with the coach
Most of the time, press releases sent to us media types are boring. They might contain important info such as game times being set and whatnot, but for the most part, they hit on the basics and not much else.
That isn’t the case with an e-mail that I received earlier this afternoon.
It had no subject line, but in the e-mail, it said it was addressed to “College Football Media” from Phil Haddy. Never having met Mr. Haddy, I did some checking and discovered he is the sports information director at the University of Iowa.
The headline on his e-mail: GET THE CORRECT FACTS ON IOWA FOOTBALL
I don’t know about you, but that seems pretty demanding to me. Haddy writes, “It seems popular for national pundits to criticize the University of Iowa football team these days. Many have said Iowa doesn’t belong on the same board with Florida, Texas, Alabama, Cincinnati, TCU, Oregon or Boise State.”
I have to admit — I stopped reading right there.
It wasn’t because the e-mail was whiny, although it was. It wasn’t because I’m not interested in Iowa, because I am. (I can’t for the life of me figure out how they’re still undefeated.) No, I quit reading because the person who should’ve received that e-mail instead of me was Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz.
Just last week he said, “Realistically, I still have a hard time picturing us in the top 10.”
If I was guessing, I doubt a fourth-quarter, come-from-behind victory against Indiana — Indiana??? — on Saturday did little to change the coach’s mind.
Listen, if the coach of the team has a hard time believing that it belongs in the top 10, much less the national championship conversation, it’s going to be difficult for an e-mail from the PR office to sway me.
Mr. Haddy might want to get Coach Ferentz on board before he worries any more about the college football media.
Yes, Bradford will
News is out that Sam Bradford will start against Baylor.
That turns a potentially ho-hum day into an afternoon packed with intrigue. I suspected that Oklahoma would throttle Baylor and turn the second half into a second-stringer’s dream, and even though I think the Sooners are still the heavy favorite, this game has all sort of interesting questions.
What will Bradford look like? How will he play after more than a month off?
How will his arm look? Will there be signs of fatigue?
Will Kevin Wilson’s playcalling change? Does Bradford’s presence make that much of a difference?
For so long, the biggest question surrounding OU football was, “When will Sam Bradford play?” Now that we have the answer to that, we have plenty more questions that need answering.
Saturday can’t come fast enough.
