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Quarterback situation still causing fans to worry

April 3, 2008

What if I told you the unsettled quarterback position from last season has carried over to the spring?

What if I said the Baylor football team is just marginally better than it was last season and has improved at few positions?

Or, worst of all, what if I dared to dub the impending 2008 season another "rebuilding year?"

There are, after all, new offensive and defensive schemes to digest, a different playbook to mull over, new coaches to feel out.

Things aren't quite that bleak. New head coach Art Briles appears to have the gears moving as well as possible on little more than four months of work. But can you blame Baylor fans for addressing these questions as the annual Green and Gold Spring Football Game approaches this Saturday?

If any fan base in the Big 12 has the right to harbor unabashed speculation toward an impending football season, the Baylor faithful have earned it.

Baylor might have a new coach, but that pesky quarterback situation just won't seem to recede.

"(The quarterbacks) are developing, but they are not being real consistent across the table and that's understandable," Briles said on March 28.

"What we have to do is protect the football. We tried to go the entire practice (today) without a pick and we threw one right there at the end. We almost made it, but almost isn't good enough.

"We'll keep banging and they'll keep getting better. They are fighting hard and competing which is what we all have to do." The effort is there, Briles says. If this year's spring game leaves us with the same quarterback questions as last year's did, that "effort" isn't going to keep me from tearing through my fingernails all the way until the opener against Wake Forest in August.

Last year at this time, hopeful senior transfer Michael Machen entered the spring game with a tenuous hold on the starting quarterback position.

His performance was less than inspired. He went 8-18 and threw two interceptions, failing to lead the offense to a single score.

Most importantly, he opened the door for a quarterback controversey that wasn't solved by then-head coach Guy Morriss until the day before the season opener. This year, senior Miami transfer Kirby Freeman is in the same position.

A talented transfer who underachieved at previous stops, he's looking to make a one-year impact on a Baylor football program that hasn't had consistency at quarterback in many moons.

So don't blame the skeptical Baylor fans, those surly ones banished to the corner of the Big 12 playhouse, hardened from years of watching everybody run roughshod over their favorite (and not so favorite) college team.

Judging by the quotes we've heard, the fact that Freeman -- and all of the quarterbacks, for that matter -- hasn't yet blown away the coaches has to worry you just a little.

Briles holds all the cards in this situation, and it would be foolhardy of any of us to assume to know how he'll play them.

This goes double for the quarterback position. We have no clue how he'll react to the quarterback battle in the fall, let alone on Saturday.

How does he manage a group with an incumbant starter, a stud freshman, a traveled veteran and some unknowns?

Will we see a dual-starter situation? Is all this just posturing? Has Briles already picked a starter?

There are a lot of questions, and don't expect many of them to be answered on Saturday. But at least it's a start.

And hey, maybe we'll get a little hope on the side. Baylor fans could sure use some.

Will Parchman is a senior journalism major from Austin and the sports editor of The Baylor Lariat.

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