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Mar 7, 2019
8:32:22am
4th and Niner Starter
Wright Thompson highlights that it's all about the QB.
I know others have highlighted this on here, but the quote below jumped out as being applicable to BYU's situation and the endless Bronco/Kalani and Independence/conference affiliation debates.

It's all about the quarterback. We all know it. It's not a surprise. Everyone who has watched football for any amount of time intuitively knows that most teams (teams with all-time defenses excepted) are only as good as their quarterback.

BYU's issue over the past 10 years haven't been due to Bronco or Kalani. They haven't been due to being independent vs. being in a conference. For the most part it also hasn't been due to talent at other positions. It's been due to quarterback play.

I can see arguments being made that Bronco or Kalani haven't recruited or developed QBs well enough. Or that being independent handicaps our ability to land talent that makes QBs look good. But I don't think that's the case.

During the 80s - 90s when we had great teams its because we had one of the five best QBs in the country. During the 2000s we had some good years that were defined by QBs in the top 5-15 range in the country.

Taysom was a great talent that developed well, but couldn't stay healthy while at BYU. Had he stayed healthy he could have been top five in the country and we could have had a special season or two. Heaps and Mangum were great recruits that didn't pan out as expected, which happens all the time.

The difficult part is that predicting who will be great at QB is nearly impossible even for NFL teams with all of the resources they have. Imagine how tough it is to predict whether a high school quarterback will translate into an elite college QB with the limited resources college staffs have. We've made some good picks in recruiting, but the chips haven't fallen our way recently.

We've been in a QB drought and are hopefully seeing light at the end of the tunnel with some of the guys currently in the program and those that are committed.

From here on is the Thompson quote:

"This is a league built on talent.

Great players matter, and therefore the people who can find them do, too. Coaches, for the most part, do not. The handful of great coaches in each generation are experts at maximizing the talent they find by work or luck — like, say, drafting the greatest quarterback ever in the sixth round. Everyone else is basically taking credit for stuff other people do. Only three Hall of Fame coaches in the Super Bowl era didn't coach a Hall of Fame quarterback. One, Tony Dungy, will fall from the list the first year Peyton Manning is eligible.

The other two are Bill Parcells and Joe Gibbs. Both had teams led by vicious defenses and franchise quarterbacks who landed just shy of the threshold to Canton. It's clear: The key to a great coach and a great team is finding a great quarterback. At any one time in the league, there are maybe five of them. A billion-dollar industry hinges on being able to tell which young men will be great, which will be good and which will fail. And yet, according to Lombardi's book "Gridiron Genius," teams find functioning NFL quarterbacks on about 40 percent of their picks in the first two rounds and the numbers go down after that. (He deems a pick successful if he started for three years and, generally, helped his team win games.)"

This message has been modified
Originally posted on Mar 7, 2019 at 8:32:22am
Message modified by 4th and Niner on Mar 7, 2019 at 8:33:35am
4th and Niner
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4th and Niner
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