The case for Swoopes
The guys at ESPN called it. Swoopes wasn't good enough this year, and so he'll be replaced next year by Redshirt Freshman Jerrod Heard. And the guys at ESPN totally know what they're talking about, so they must be right! But I'm not convinced.
Now, a few disclaimers: to be clear, it is currently an open competition, as it always should be. Whoever our QB is in 2015 will have to earn it, contingent on practices that I don't have access to and can't speak to. Therefore, I am speaking only based on what I've seen, and, admittedly, that means I only have Swoopes's body of work to look at (I believe firmly that high school record is of little to no value when discussing how someone will fare as a college QB). There are also rumors that we expect to transfer a QB in. If that QB is Braxton Miller, he will be starting. If that QB is Everett Golson, he will probably be starting. This column is given the current situation with the quarterbacks we have, namely Tyrone Swoopes, Jerrod Heard, and Kai Locksley.
First of all, let's just remove Locksley from consideration right now. Heard is a redshirt freshman this year, so if we burn Locksley's redshirt, then we will have two QBs of the same classification, and all that does is complicate things. Additionally, he is really skinny. If I know Charlie Strong, he's going to want a physical offense with a QB who can overpower the other team on his feet. Swoopes and Heard are built to do that. Locksley can be, but he'll need another year or two to bulk up. He doesn't need to be as big as Swoopes, but at this point he's physically the least impressive of our quarterbacks. That can change, but not in time for the season. There was talk on ESPN (the Fox News of sports) that they didn't play Heard because he's not good enough. That's what's called creating a story for views. They didn't play Heard because he was redshirting, and Swoopes himself was never bad enough to warrant burning Heard's redshirt.
So we've established that this year's competition is between Swoopes and Heard. Swoopes had kind of a tough year. He was great in the first half of UCLA, the second half of OU, all of Iowa State, most of West Virginia, most of Tech, and all of Oklahoma State. Even in BYU's massacre, he was one of the few players on our team who looked marginally competent. Unfortunately, his season ended in a whimper rather than a bang, throwing four interceptions against TCU and throwing for only 57 yards against Arkansas. So, because of that, ESPN decided that he's not good enough and will be replaced. But let's hold on a second. Yes, Swoopes had on days and off days, but there are a lot of players on the offense. And some of them have the job of allowing the QB and the RBs to make plays. And frankly, the O-line just didn't cut it this year. As soon as Dom Espinoza had his career ended short, we had the least experienced O-line in the country. Our running backs couldn't go anywhere, and so that forced Swoopes to throw when running would have otherwise been a better option. Additionally, the offense was designed for David Ash. David Ash is built differently than Swoopes and he processes differently than Swoopes. So after his career was ended early in the UNT game, after that, most of the summer practices were for a game plan designed for a retired football player. Obviously things were tweaked for Swoopes, but you can't compare tweaks to a full offseason of practice. So Swoopes had it stacked against him to start with, and he still looked really good in several games. As for his last two games, all else being equal, they maybe weren't his day, but, I mean, he threw four interceptions playing without his most reliable receiver, Jaxon Shipley, against the best secondary in the Big 12, and was completely stopped by arguably the best D-line in the NCAA, standing behind an O-line that was still clearly inadequate. So I think to give up on Swoopes already is premature.
As for Heard, he's really an unknown at this point, but he does lack one thing that Swoopes has: experience. If we give up on Swoopes, I'm sure he'd make a fine tight end, but what happens is that we spend another year playing with a Freshman QB, and we just can't have the mindset of "one year, move on," because what you get then is a string of untapped potential. To demonstrate this, just drive four hours up I-35 to Fort Worth and take a look at Trevone Boykin. The season before last, he was an absolute joke. TCU was a terrible team, with no answer at all at QB. Then, over the summer, their quarterback, Boykin, decided that he wasn't happy with where he was, so he got better. Way better, in fact. They ended up being one of the best teams in the country, with talk of him being an early Heisman contender for this upcoming season. And ultimately, I think we're going to see the same here. Barring a transfer, we have two guys competing for a starting position, and they both want the job. But what needs to happen, and what I fully expect to happen, is that one of them will want it so bad that they blow Charlie Strong and Shawn Watson out of the water, and the reason I say that with such confidence is that I know Charlie Strong would settle for nothing less. Who will it be? That's for them to decide, but the way I see it, it's Swoopes's job to lose, by and large.