How was Bell not the starter all along
It’s a day after Blake Bell broke Sam Bradford’s passing record for most yards passing in a quarterback’s first start at OU.
I still can’t figure out how Trevor Knight was OU’s starting quarterback the first two games of the season.
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What I’d like to believe is that OU’s offensive staff decided they wanted to go in a new direction offensively. I’d like to believe they wanted to get away from the statuesque quarterback era Landry Jones seemed to set in stone over the past three years.
SCOOPHD: BOB STOOPS POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE
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video by Eddie Radosevich
Because comparing the quality of passes Bell threw against Tulsa against the quality of passes Knight was throwing against ULM and West Virginia, I’d say Josh Heupel has no idea how to evaluate quarterbacks.
I think Heupel knows how to evaluate quarterbacks. So it has to be the system argument.
The problem with switching to this new zone-read/option/QB run system is that Knight just wasn’t the guy to get it done. And maybe OU was fooled by watching Knight compete against their 2012 defense. Maybe they thought he was a lot better than he actually was.
Knight probably was better than Bell for the offense they tried to run in the first two games.
But Landry Jones’ offense with Bell is a better option than Oregon’s offense with Knight.
Stoops of course denied OU was running the Landry Jones offense with Bell after the game Saturday.
“Are you moving away from the offense we saw the last couple of weeks with Trevor?” I asked Stoops.
“No, we’re not,” he replied.
Well, I couldn’t let that be the end of it. I couldn’t let Stoops brush me off like that.
“It didn’t seem to look anything like the offense we saw the first two weeks,” I blurted.
“What are you complaining about?” asked Stoops, as if I was ripping the fact Bell broke Bradford’s passing record with 413 yards passing. “We had 600 yards, 51 points and no turnovers, ate up the clock. What did we do wrong? What do you want to see?”
This was one of those situations where Bob knew this was coming. He was on the defensive, and he should have been. He benched a quarterback the first two weeks of the season for a guy that couldn’t complete the simplest of screen passes.
It’s a situation that could shake the confidence of a fanbase. Stoops essentially took the question as, ‘Do you guys have any idea what you’re doing?’
That wasn’t the question I was asking. I’m not that callous. There are hard questions, and then there are unprofessional questions.
‘Do you guys have any idea what you’re doing?’ is an unprofessional question.
I think Stoops and Heupel do know what they are doing. I just think they were caught somewhere in the middle of innovating and producing.
“So much for your controversy right now,” said Stoops after confirming Bell would be his starting quarterback against Notre Dame.
Making a controversy over whether Stoops and Heupel blew the quarterback decision serves no purpose.
They’ve got the right guy now. The only real question now is do they have the offense they wanted?
I really don’t think so.
I think what this staff learned over the last three weeks is they don’t have the right quarterback to run the right offense. Unless that quarterback is Kendal Thompson.
OU might not have the offense they wanted when they started the season. But they now have the quarterback they needed after struggling the first two weeks of the season.
For now, the staff will put a pin in the Trevor Knight offense. But I fully expect them to revisit it as soon as they feel they have the right quarterback to run it.
Maybe that's Kendal Thompson. Maybe that’s Cody Thomas. Maybe that’s Justice Hansen.
Blake Bell’s performance yesterday proves it is not Trevor Knight.