It's not fair at all to compare Tajh Boyd to Cam Newton, who might just be the best player in SEC football history.
(Better than Herschel? Yup. Just ask Vince Dooley, who put Newton in a class with Herschel and Bo and said Newton is "the best one-year player I've ever seen.")
But given the presence of Chad Morris, whose system is heavily rooted in the same stuff used by his pal Gus Malzahn at Auburn, it's completely sensible to look back at the trajectory of Newton's grasp of the offense and conclude that Morris might be using similar building blocks with Boyd.
Chris Brown of Smartfootball.com is the best out there when it comes to analysis of trends and strategies in college football, and in his latest dispatch he tackles the supposition that Newton was a "one read" quarterback last year at Auburn.
Essentially, the belief held by many is that Malzahn gave Newton one option in the passing game. If that option was not available, the notion goes, then Newton's next move was to take off and run.
Brown chips away at this theory here:
So Malzahn knows the pass, and Newton was obviously good at what he was asked to do. But what was that? I can only speculate on what specifics Cam was given, but I am familiar with Gus’s passing game and have a strong idea of how it was tailored to Cam Newton.
Gus, going back to Tulsa, uses progression reads, meaning his quarterbacks read the first receiver, to the second receiver, to the third receiver, and so on. That means that there’s no way Cam was given a “single read” — a single receiver to look at — or did Malzahn literally tell him to only look at one guy and to ignore everyone else? No to the first but, at least sometimes, yes to the second. This is because if there was one read it was not a single receiver, but a single defender.
I watched Newton closely last season, in part because Auburn had Clemson on the schedule and in part because, well, Newton might just be my favorite player ever. And here's my assessment of his development:
Early in the season, it did seem as if he had one option in the passing game and was quick to tuck and run if that option was covered. A chief example came in the third quarter against Clemson, when he completely ignored a wide-open running back check-down on the left flat when Auburn was in scoring territory.
It's certainly possible that the running back was in his progression and he just missed him. But there were very few, if any, occasions early last season in which Newton appeared to be surveying the width of the field and going through progressions from his first option to the second, and from the second to the third, and then to a fourth.
My take is that Newton's responsibilities were greatly expanded as the season wore on. I watched the entirety of Auburn's games against Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina in the SEC title game, and he seemed to be staying in the pocket longer and surveying more territory than he had in September in October.
Bottom line, if you pop in a tape of Auburn's second game (at Mississippi State) and then watch a tape of its 13th game (SEC championship), I think you'll find some vast differences in what Newton is doing.
Which brings us to Morris and Boyd. Will Morris take a similar approach with his quarterback? One would have to think so.
Another interesting part of Brown's analysis is his recounting of quarterback development from Boise State coach Chris Petersen.
1. Strict progression. Tell him to read first receiver, second receiver, and then third receiver — and then run like hell if they aren’t open. In Petersen’s view, if they don’t know anything else they can know, by rote memory, who they are supposed to throw to. This doesn’t require them to have any advance knowledge of the defense and it is where every quarterback begins.
2. Progression with coverage keys. The same progression concept as above except that the progression and sequence of receivers is determined by what the defense is doing. How many safeties are there? What kind of leverage are you getting from the cornerbacks? Is it a blitz? Is it man or zone? Once you’ve determined that, it’s one-two-three.
3. Coverage reads. This is the advanced NFL stuff: Tom Brady sees the defense doing X, so he looks one way and then rifles it back to the receiver he always knew he was going to because he understood the coverage, he understood the technique the defense was playing, and he understood the theory of the play he was running. There are few, if any, college quarterbacks who ever do this kind of thing.
Brown believes a good college quarterback should be at Level 2.
They should be able to come to the sideline after a mistake and explain why they threw it to a guy, and what they saw. They should be able to draw the pass play on the whiteboard but also describe the coverages and tell you why a play should get open, and they should be able to enjoy some freedom to determine their progression.
Based on what we've learned thus far, and also based on what we saw from Boyd last season, it's fair to say his biggest obstacle is nailing down all the stuff Petersen outlined in Level 2, and doing so at the jacked-up pace Morris requires.
Morris has dispensed praise of Boyd, saying he's done a really good job in the running game. But he also hasn't been afraid to scrutinize Boyd's tendency to make rushed, risky decisions under the duress of defensive pressure and the up-tempo style.
You know how in basketball, a good full-court pressing defense tends to "speed up" opposing players and cause them to rush shots and passes? That might be the best analogy for where Boyd is right now with this offense. The offense moves so fast that Boyd is "sped up" when it's time for him to calmly assess the defense, get the snap and make crisp, methodical decisions.
Thinking back to the spring and summer before the 2010 season, Boyd's biggest obstacle was live situations. He'd often look great in the 7-on-7 settings, and there wasn't much difference between him and Kyle Parker. But once things shifted to 11-on-11 and Boyd had to make the right reads and throws, the gap between him and Parker widened considerably.
This is how Boyd described it in a conversation with me in March of 2010:
“It’s a little different when there’s a line in front of you. Pressure is coming, blitz is coming. You’ve got to make sure you know where you’re going with the ball. You can get a little sloppy, because you think somebody is coming and you might throw off your back foot and your throw might go high. You’ve just got to calm down and relax out there.”
At this point, it's probably not fair at all to judge Boyd's chances of being a good quarterback in 2011. The guy has gone through one spring practice in a new offense, and an offense that puts a lot of pressure on the quarterback to make the right decisions.
He has a whole summer to develop and learn and improve. So maybe we're looking at a completely different quarterback by the time the calendar flips to September.
Whatever happens, the development (or lack thereof) will be apparent in how much (or little) Morris puts on Boyd's shoulders as this progresses.
LW
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