Agreed. Sims has a higher ceiling but there is not guarantee he can reach it. In particular, the turnovers just hurt us with him. We wrote that up to inexperience last year but it was still a problem against NIU and was one of the factors that cost us the game. Yates has the intangibles and decision making ability to be a starting college football quarterback. The team will win more games with Yates at the helm.
Without a doubt. At Clemson with terrible blocking and comes out with the best performance by a qb against that team this season. Completed tough passes, ran when he needed to, never turned it over, and pretty much made the right read (or a solid read) on every play.
I don’t think that’s true. He looks way better this year than he did in his limited appearances last year. In 2019, I think he was redshirted because the whole offense was a ****show, and Collins didn’t want to waste a year of Yates’ eligibility. And given that there’s no guarantee he’ll get beaten out, that decision has a good chance at paying off. I’m glad that he can start for us for another 3 seasons after this one if needed.
Part of my thought process is how our coaches talk about him. Either way, I think we can both agree that had Sims stayed healthy and played at an above-average level, Yates might’ve not gotten a legitimate snap this year.
That’s fair. The truth is that we don’t know how Sims would have played in Yates’ place this year. In the NIU game, he didn’t seem like himself or like the coaches had described. Maybe he would have continued the inaccurate throws or maybe he would have settled down and run the offense really well with his athleticism creating extra wrinkles that make it hard to defend. Yates has clearly improved a lot in both his mastery of the offense and his accuracy, but that doesn’t mean that Sims didn’t still legitimately beat him out in the offseason. I’ll just say that we’re lucky to have both of them and that neither has hit his ceiling yet. But Yates has earned the right to be our starting QB for the time being at least.
Yeah it’s hard to be enamored with the staff’s personnel choices. There’s all the hype, then you watch the performance on the field. We got Yates, Dontae and you have to wonder else what may be lurking particularly on the OL that’s riding the pine watching someone else struggle eating up all the snaps.
Hard to be real good in the Red Zone when your OL is the weakest part of the team.
You talk about folks hidden on the OL. I saw Lay in the game a few times. I know he filled in admirably last year during some injuries/COVID but you have to wonder why we are still playing walkons with a full compliment of scholarship OL available.
