...he seems to be about where Beck was after his sophomore year all things considered (ZW is maybe slightly ahead on stats, Beck played on some pretty bad teams which played pretty tough SOS’s his freshman and sophomore years). ZW has had some advantages getting started that Beck didn’t have. But Beck made steady and incremental progress from one year to the next while ZW had a really good freshman year followed by a clear step backwards his sophomore year.

Right now he’s trending down and there seems to be a pretty clear pattern to his struggles. Opposing defenses know that he crumbles and gets erratic under pressure so after we cross midfield it seems like it’s the norm for them to rush 5 or more guys on 3rd down passing situations And rattle him into making a poor decision like throwing into heavy coverage and getting a pick or trying to twist and turn his way out of the pocket and taking an ugly sack, rather than do what Romney does and pick it up pre-snap and then throw quickly to the back who vacates the pocket into the space just left by the pass rusher for a modest gain.

In the loss to SDSU ZW (iirc) completed less than 50% of his passes on 3rd and 4th down vs the Aztec pass rush and with several of the passes he did complete they were panicky throws to receivers he seemed to lock onto that were well short of the yard marker needed to get the 1st down.

There seems to be a quandary now for coaches. ZW sure looked great his freshman year and looked like he’d regressed his sophomore year (kinda like Jake Heaps). Do we risk wasting another year or part of a year on a guy who might be a great practice QB but melts under pressure when we have 2 other QB’s who seemed to both be gamers despite not having all the practice time that ZW had? Coaching careers are made and lost on these types of situations. At some point emphasis needs to be on winning now and not holding up the team so one guy who may be a practice warrior can have time to figure it out in live games. Some guys are gamers which is more important than looking good in practice.