I don't think you can do the BJ thing because our offenses are different. We don't plan on our QB taking a bunch of hits every game the way you guys should. If we had been running the spread for 4 years and had our QB situation I'd be wondering what the crap our coaches were thinking. With hindsight it is easy. Last year at this time Hall had never played a game and you guys were telling us how big of a drop-off we would experience from Beck to Hall. There were people last year thinking Gaskins should starting over Hall based on the spring game.
Again, without the benefit of hindsight I take losing our LT over losing our best DL and replacing him with a true freshman any day.
Again, without the benefit of hindsight it is debateable whether I would choose losing Collie outright and have our 1st and 2nd string safeties available. Collie was fresh off a mission last year so honestly, I didn't expect him to do as much as he did. So to answer your question, it would have been a hard choice.
The question is easy now because players stepped up and we didn't experience much drop off from any one of our injuries. Who's to say the same thing wouldn't have happened with the injuries you described. Looking at how I felt going in to last year I think it is close and not the huge deal that ute fans have made it out to be.
Need I remind you that this year at this time we were hearing about how bad our QB, RB, and TE were going to suck anyway with the loss of Beck, Brown, and Harline/Coats.