Friday, March 19, 2010

Spring Camp Week 1: Quarterback Battle Update

In the background of the NCAA tournament this week, BYU kicked off spring camp by holding four practices (Wednesday was off). It is hard to read too much from practices or personnel at this point, given that there will be a number of players joining the team this fall, and that much depends upon which team a given player was playing with and against (first, second, third, etc). But with that said, all eyes are on the quarterbacks anyway, and their stats—even those from practice are being reported here and there--and are fully followed by the faithful in an effort to discover who, if any, will be named the primary signal caller going into the summer. Here are the summarized stat lines from the first week:

Week 1 Stat Lines
Riley Nelson, Jr (9/15, 66 yds, 1 TD, 0 int)
James Lark, So (10/18, 74 yds, 0 TDs, 1 int)
Jake Heaps, Fr (12/19, 204 yds, 3 TDs, 0 int)

Nelson has a year in the system, Lark has two years in the system but is just a few months removed from a mission, and Heaps is only a few months removed from high school (and only 4 days into official BYU practices). It is early, and to be fair, the stats are not necessarily comparable, but it looks like Heaps is off to a good start and will only get better as he becomes more familiar with the playbook and his teammates.

Other notes:
• Other new faces that have merited positive mentions in various reports include running back Josh Quezada, linebackers Kyle Van Noy and Uona Kaveinga (who will have to sit out this year after transferring from USC), and tight ends Richard Wilson and Mike Muehlmann (both redshirt freshmen) and Devin Mahina (back from a mission).

• O’Neil Chambers missed at least one practice this week in order to catch up on his academics

• Mendenhall noted that this year’s spring camp is already quite a bit ahead of where they were last year at this time, even with the task of finding a new quarterback, and that the new players have impressed on the learning curve

2 comments:

  1. Another useful stat that you forgot to mention is the amount of fumbles each QB had. I believe both Lark and Nelson also lost a fumble to the defense this week. There have been eight scoring drives and Heaps has led seven of those. He is way ahead in the running in my eyes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I appreciate the stats and they are important, but I want to know more of how the entire offense does when one of the qbs is in there...passing yards is one thing, but a team's total yards is more important...and scores is more important than that!

    ReplyDelete