is that by the end of that season he was showing significant progress and settling into Anae's offense. Sure, some of it had to do with the schedule softening up a bit in the 2nd half of the season but I could see his confidence growing and when he marched the team down the field in the Utah game, I was sure that he was gonna get this team into the endzone to win but we all know what happened there.

The question is what happened before the 2011 season that caused him to regress so much. Some say he lost the support of a lot of teammates because he wasn't showing up to off season workouts but if that's true, you would've seen signs of that during camp. Yet in Fall camp, all we heard were rave reviews on well the offense was doing. Unfortunately, it was a different story when the team played in real games. Was it Doman's fault for changing the offense too much from what Anae ran? Perhaps but on the other hand, a truly good QB will figure out a way how to make a new offense work.

Some fans blame Doman for Heaps leaving and maybe if he had just kept Heaps as the starter after the 2011 Utah State game then maybe he would've improved and stayed. I doubt Doman benched Heaps because he secretly liked Riley better. I think it was because he saw a young QB losing his confidence in himself and felt the best way to get it back would be to sit him down and regroup and hopefully light a fire under him. I can only imagine how hard it is to be a backup QB when you've spent your whole football life as the guy calling the signals and you have all those lofty goals and dreams of making it to the NFL and yet here you are sitting on the bench with a bunch of other guys in the same boat. I would like to believe that Heaps would've ended up being a good QB for us if he stayed but ship sailed and we now have a QB with a much bigger upside.