QB1: A Scandurro Story

BY TIM SCANDURRO

 “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

When I was a boy we did a lot of rabbit hunting, and one day my dad surprised us with two beagles.   They were a brother and sister pair we named Snoopy and Pepper.  Pepper was the smaller of the two but she was unquestionably the lead dog and was the smarter, harder working animal.    She always picked up the scent first and would start baying, which would trigger a similar response in her lesser male companion trailing aimlessly behind her.  I’m quite sure people see my wife and me today the same way I saw those two dogs back then.

One night they dug their way under the fence and lit off for the woods and fields nearby.  We could hear them baying the next day but they were working intently and wouldn’t come to our call.  Two days later my father was finally able to corral them and get them back to the house.  I remember Pepper’s eyes were almost completely shut, swollen from running through the weed-choked tall grass and briars.  My dad, who my brothers and I knew from personal experience had the kind of diagnostic ability, medicine chest instruments and bedside manner instantly recognizable to anyone who lived in the Middle Ages, poured a concoction made of Borax and laundry detergent into Pepper’s eyes to help soothe her discomfort.  You would think that would have broken her of the hunting urge, but she was undaunted and remained a great rabbit dog all of her days.  It’s what she was born to do.  You just had to take the good and try to manage the bad.

A couple of decades later and living in the suburbs, I surprised my wife with a young female beagle.  It was a disaster.  This beagle was not a city dog and not a house dog, and both my wife and the dog quickly grew very dissatisfied with the arrangement.  A fifteen hour Hurricane Katrina evacuation in which they shared a car together did not prove to be the bonding experience I had hoped for. 

We weren’t able to tame her nor would it have been fair to do so.  She was born for a different purpose, and under some mild spousal pressure (“it’s either me or that dog,” is my recollection) I found a home for her (the dog) on the north shore with a beagle owner who had a large tract of land.

I thought back to those dogs during Saturday’s scrimmage.  Every football coach would love to have a quarterback who hunts like a beagle, runs like a Greyhound, and bonds with  his teammates like a Golden Retriever.  The reality is that dogs and quarterbacks tend to have a complex set of tangible and intangible assets and liabilities that coaches like to call ‘traits.’  The same dog who faithfully protects the house from strangers might bite a friend’s hand; the same dog whose greeting makes your child’s day when he gets home from school might jump up and ruin Grandma’s dress with its muddy paws.

So it is with almost all quarterbacks.  It is a cliche’ that the QB with the big arm can be reckless because he thinks he can fit any throw into any spot, and that the QB with the modest arm is more careful with the ball and misses opportunities for big plays.  The two descriptions of these archetypes you often hear—neither of which are intended as compliments—are ‘gunslinger’ and ‘game manager.’  The good dog/bad dog challenge for coaches is to refine the gunslinger without taking away the aggression that is part of his identity and often endears him to teammates, and to push the game manager outside his comfort zone without taking away his mistake-free nature that gives you predictability and comfort as a coach.

On the third play of Saturday’s scrimmage, Jake Retzlaff faced a third and 18 following two negative running plays and a false start.  Last week in a similar situation against a defense spotted with backups, he threw a 30 yard pass to Zycarl Lewis for a big first down.  Against the first team Saturday, our defense lined up with five or six guys picketed across the line to gain, and several others ten yards off the ball.  Retzlaff took the snap and gave a long look to a receiver running up the sideline before dumping it off to Maurice Turner for a ten yard gain.  Coach Sumrall almost stopped practice to congratulate him on that decision.

Kadin Semonza took several “sacks” and short-armed a couple of throws early in his work on Saturday, when he didn’t quite trust his protection or what he saw downfield and wasn’t willing to put a ball in harm’s way.  Late in practice though, he cut one loose across the middle to tight end Johnny Pascuzzi that barely beat an interception bid by Jack Tschientchou and turned into a big gainer.  It came on a third and eight and was the kind of throw that will have to be made in that situation when the games start.

Two different quarterbacks, two different kinds of progress.

Before anyone anoints Jake Retzlaff as the starter based on Saturday’s scrimmage, and I’m as guilty as anyone, let’s not forget last year’s quarterback battle.  Jon Sumrall and Joe Craddock watched three guys a year ago.  The two the fans wanted most, the ones with the biggest arms and resume’s, didn’t get the nod.  The knock on one of them, Kai Horton, was that he was too reckless downfield with the football despite his distinct edge in both experience and arm talent.  In the end the coaches chose the least experienced, youngest, and weakest-armed of the candidates.  They watched and charted and graded every snap, not just the scrimmage snaps.  They liked his intangible leadership qualities and his propensity for avoiding big mistakes, and their decision paid off big.  This staff doesn’t award any jobs, at that position or any other, based on reputation or ratings or outside noise.  They proved that a year ago.  And Coach Sumrall has said that if Semonza is the quarterback, the offense will look a lot like last year’s.  For football coaches who like to control as many variables as they can, there’s comfort in that. 

But last year wasn’t good enough.   Does the newest guy give us that higher-risk, higher-reward chance to take the next step?   Or do the coaches think our overall roster is so much better that steady wins the race?

They say that the single most important decision a man will ever make in his life, the one that leads to happiness or anguish, is who he marries.  For a football coach, a close second is who he entrusts to lead his football team at its most important position.  While Sumrall and Craddock have earned the right to make this decision, it’s not going to be easy.  The candidates all have more game tape than any of last year’s, but in different systems and facing different levels of competition.  They have also been here varying lengths of time which impacts the evaluation in two ways: the new guy is racing to catch up, and the old guy is not getting the number of first team reps that might have made him look better than he did Saturday.  To make it even more challenging, we have more than one game in September that we will win only if the quarterback can BOTH avoid big mistakes AND make game-changing plays. 

And we haven’t even mentioned Brendan Sullivan who had a great camp before getting injured but who the staff loves and who figures to have a say, or even Donovan Leary who looked very good on Saturday and has as much talent as anyone.   Then on top of that, each of these guys pushes Coach Sumrall’s buttons.  He loves Semonza’s work ethic and football IQ and overall command of the offense.  He loves Sullivan’s toughness and leadership and willingness to lay his body on the line.  And he loves Retzlaff’s swagger and his arm.  Decisions, decisions.

These young men are all under intense competitive pressure, but iron always sharpens iron.  No matter who emerges from this hard-fought competition, our team will be the better for it.  I know what I would do, but my job and future won’t be affected by this decision the way our coaches will be.  So let’s trust the coaches to name the right man, and then design a plan that embraces his strengths and minimizes but accepts his weaknesses. 

May the best dog win.