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B1G Monday Morning: 4 Big Ten teams finally come to grips with their QB issues. But does that mean a better future?

Ryan O'Gara

By Ryan O'Gara

Published:

In terms of quarterbacks, fortune favors the bold. Nick Saban pulled Jalen Hurts for Tua Tagovailoa at halftime of the national championship game, and the latter delivered a second-half comeback for the 2017 season title. Dabo Swinney benched Kelly Bryant for Trevor Lawrence the following season when the Tigers were 4-0 and ranked No. 2, and the latter led a national championship run.

Coaches know their teams better than any media member, and they understand the strategy — on and off the field — that goes into every move. Is a short-term spark worth a long-term headache? Can a coach afford to continue getting substandard play from the most important position in sports and risk sending a bad message to his team? Does pulling a struggling QB mean he will transfer?

The Big Ten in Week 4 confronted those difficult questions, as 4 teams made a move at QB. A few could be temporary, like Michigan’s Cade McNamara relieving Joe Milton and Penn State’s Will Levis subbing in for Sean Clifford. Others, like Nebraska’s Luke McCaffrey and Michigan State’s Payton Thorne, could be a bit more permanent. Time will tell in each case, but as this shortened season is already half over, time is of the essence.

After finally pulling the trigger on benching Martinez, Nebraska coach Scott Frost told the media: “That decision was one of the hardest I’ve ever made. I think so much of who Adrian Martinez is as a football player and as a person. He’s been through a lot with us. He certainly practiced well enough to play, so it was a tough decision.”

The fact that Frost is still using practice as a way to evaluate a QB who has 23 career starts is a bit of a head-scratcher. Anyways, why go to McCaffrey now? A big reason was probably waiting for McCaffrey, a redshirt freshman, to be ready, just as it was about waiting for Tagovailoa and Lawrence to be ready in their freshman seasons. Once that guy is good to go, there is usually no turning back. So, while Frost may tell the media that he is agonizing over the decision on a personal level, it couldn’t have been all that difficult from a football perspective since there was clearly a precedent set at high-profile programs that it’s OK to bench an established QB who doesn’t seem to be progressing the way you want.

At the time he got benched, Hurts was 25-2 as the starting QB at Alabama. Bryant was 16-2 at Clemson. Martinez, after 2 losses to open 2020, was 9-14. Both Hurts (Oklahoma) and Bryant (Missouri) eventually transferred, and Martinez probably will, too.

Maybe that’s why this decision has weighed so heavily on Frost — and why he has been so effusive in his praise for a QB who has regressed since starring as a true freshman — as there is a decent chance that Martinez has started his last game for Nebraska. McCaffrey, who was on Martinez’s heels all offseason and reportedly narrowly lost out, called his fellow QB “one of the classiest people I’ve ever met.” The way this situation is being talked about leads me to believe they are both operating under the assumption that Martinez, barring an injury in front of him, won’t get another chance to start.

The situations at Penn State, Michigan and Michigan State are more complicated because there is no clear heir who is ready to step in like McCaffrey. No one could have imagined that Sean Clifford, who led Penn State to a top-10 final ranking in 2019, would be so bad that he’d get benched in the first half of the fourth game of the season. Michigan State’s coaching staff was very open during the week that Rocky Lombardi was their guy for now. And Michigan’s Joe Milton, after an impressive debut, has gotten worse each week. Clifford and Milton were supposed to be the starters for at least the next 2 seasons.

But with the way each turned the ball over on Saturday, how could their head coaches tolerate such poor play? What message would that send to the rest of the team? That meant Levis, who has completed 53.8 percent of his passes in his career; Thorne, appearing in just his second game; and McNamara, also appearing in his second game, were unexpectedly thrust into action. James Franklin, Mel Tucker and Jim Harbaugh all declined to name a starting QB moving forward, insisting on relying on the film.

(Illinois, it should be noted, is a different situation since the original starter, Brandon Peters, has been out with COVID and is due back next week. Did Isaiah Williams, who ran for 191 yards, show enough to keep the job? Lovie Smith declined to say.)

Can Levis, McNamara or Thorne — all of whom were afterthoughts 2 weeks ago — become the QB who turns his program around? Though it’s more likely that these replacements are just bridges to the next high-profile recruit, it is possible. I don’t think a ton of Florida fans were expecting Kyle Trask, who was thrust into action after Feleipe Franks’s mid-season injury, to blossom into a Heisman contender. Graham Mertz, after a preseason injury to incumbent starter Jack Coan, is already the best non-Justin Fields QB in the Big Ten (though Mertz was a highly sought-after recruit who falls in the Tagovailoa/Lawrence category).

While there aren’t a ton of examples in recent years of non-blue-chip recruits stepping in due to poor play from the starter and becoming “the guy,” there are a few situations in recent years for Michigan, Michigan State and Penn State fans to look at for some optimism. These admittedly aren’t perfect comparisons and they are probably the best-case scenarios for these programs, but hey, let’s try to be positive on a Monday morning.

Penn State: 2018 Notre Dame

Brandon Wimbush, a former top-50 recruit, went 9-3 as the starter in 2017, leading the Fighting Irish to wins over 4 teams that finished in the AP Top 25. But after struggling early in 2018, Notre Dame — ranked No. 8 at the time — turned to redshirt sophomore Ian Book, a former 3-star recruit who had started 1 game the previous season. Book, though he has had some rocky moments, has Notre Dame ranked No. 2 in the country. He even fought off former top-100 recruit Phil Jurkovec, who transferred to Boston College.

Penn State’s situation is strikingly similar, with the supposedly better QB regressing. Sean Clifford has a better recruiting pedigree than Will Levis and is coming off a good (though not great) season. Now Levis, a former 3-star prospect who is unproven as a passer like Book was, will likely get a real chance to win the job. Whether he’s a stopgap or will hold the job like Book is to be determined.

Michigan State: 2016 Oregon

Oregon began the 2016 season just inside the AP Top 25, and graduate transfer Dakota Prukop started strong with 6 TDs and no INTs in his first 2 games. But by the sixth game, a lightly recruited true freshman took over for the underachieving Ducks. Though he now could win NFL Rookie of the Year, Justin Herbert was no Lawrence or Tagovailoa. Just the No. 43 QB in the 2016 class, his other offers were from Montana State, Northern Arizona and Portland State. It’s safe to say college coaches did not expect Herbert to be that good.

Thorne, who grew up in the heart of Big Ten country in the Chicago suburbs, was the No. 64 QB in the 2019 class. He did not have a single B1G offer aside from the Spartans, as he was more heavily recruited by MAC schools. The redshirt freshman has drawn rave reviews for the way he conducts himself, and he is a coach’s son, which means he could catch on quickly. Rocky Lombardi, aside from an outlier performance against Michigan, has not been good, so Thorne could have a chance to be the starter moving forward. It speaks volumes that he is already ahead of Theo Day, who was the more sought-after recruit and is a year older.

Michigan: 2019 USC

USC thought it had its QB of the future in 5-star recruit J.T. Daniels, and he started as a freshman in 2018. But Kedon Slovis, an unheralded 3-star recruit, outplayed him in 2019 as a freshman. Daniels transferred to Georgia. Now Slovis looks to be a top QB prospect for NFL scouts in the coming years.

Let’s see if a similar dynamic plays out in Ann Arbor. Michigan thought it had its QB of the future in Joe Milton, especially after a terrific debut at Minnesota. But Milton has gotten progressively worse, culminating in a disastrous performance against Wisconsin in which he threw 2 first-quarter interceptions and was benched in the third quarter. Cade McNamara, who was an afterthought behind Milton and Dylan McCaffrey coming into this season, immediately provided a spark in leading a 4-play TD drive on his first series. Milton is unlikely to lose his job just yet, but keep an eye on McNamara, who was the No. 15 QB in the 2019 class. In reality, both may just be a bridge to 5-star recruit JJ McCarthy, who is part of Michigan’s 2021 class.

Wait, which team hasn’t played 3 weeks due to COVID?

No. 13 Wisconsin 49, Michigan 11. If you were watching your first college football game Saturday night on ABC, you would’ve thought Michigan (1-3) had a COVID outbreak and was coming off a 2-week hiatus in which it had limited practice time. And you, of course, would’ve been dead wrong.

Wisconsin (2-0) reminded the college football world why it is such a good program. How many teams, faced with that kind of adversity, could have delivered that sort of performance in their first game back? The Badgers out-gained Michigan 129-1 in the first quarter and led 28-0 at halftime. Graham Mertz (12-of-22 for 127 yards and 2 TDs) was far from perfect, but the guy was recovering from COVID, so let’s cut him a break. He admittedly didn’t have a good rhythm early on, but Mertz has a way about him that we haven’t seen from a Wisconsin QB since Russell Wilson.

After the opener at Illinois, I wrote about how I was concerned with Wisconsin’s run game. Without Jonathan Taylor, the Badgers struggled. I wondered why Paul Chryst bemoaned the 2 failed jet sweeps, because that’s not the typical style of play for the Badgers. But on Saturday, I saw what Chryst envisioned. Wideout Danny Davis (7 carries for 65 yards) gashed Michigan on jet sweeps all night.

I also wondered when we would see true freshman Jalen Berger, Wisconsin’s highest-rated running back recruit in 13 years. Berger got his chance due to several players still out with COVID, carrying 15 times for 87 yards and a TD.

The unofficial West championship game is set

No. 23 Northwestern 27, Purdue 20. Northwestern (4-0) hosts Wisconsin next week in what is a de facto Big Ten semifinal. It’s amazing to think that the Wildcats already have more wins than in their dreadful 2019 season. Northwestern has turned the clock back to 2018, using gritty defense and passable offense.

The Wildcats are averaging just 4.7 yards per play, which is 13th in the Big Ten. They are a throwback kind of offense, methodically working their way down the field. Their opening drive — capped by a Ramaud Chiaokhiao-Bowman 8-yard TD — was 14 plays, with just 2 going for 10 yards or more. They won the West in 2018 in similar fashion, averaging 4.7 yards per play (12th in B1G).

It’s not easy to put together scoring drives over and over without big plays, and Northwestern is 13th in the Big Ten in plays of 20 yards or more. It’s certainly a concern for the Wildcats moving forward. It should also be noted that Northwestern is fourth in the Big Ten with 56 plays of 10 yards or more.

Here’s the key, though: Northwestern has allowed just 10 points in the second half of its 4 games, meaning opponents are getting less than a field goal per second half against the Wildcats. That defense helped Northwestern climb out of a 17-0 hole in Week 2 against Iowa, and it held off late comeback attempts from Nebraska and Purdue the last 2 weeks.

Credit to Pat Fitzgerald, who has a reputation as one of the B1G’s best coaches for a reason. The whole is almost always greater than the sum of its parts in Evanston.

Iowa’s turnaround

Iowa 35. Minnesota 7. There are plenty of teams that seem to have checked out as their early-season hopes have been dashed, like Penn State, Michigan and Minnesota, to name a few (and LSU and Tennessee, to name a few more). It’s a testament to the Hawkeyes that they are not one of those teams, because it sure looked like they would be.

Their turnaround the last 2 weeks stems partly in a return to their offensive roots, yes. But it’s been the defense that has allowed them to get in a positive game script and minimize the need for Spencer Petras to chuck the ball all over the field. The Hawkeyes have allowed just 4.2 yards per play the last 2 weeks — the best mark of any B1G team that has played both weeks.

Iowa will be favored in its next 3 games before closing the regular season in Wisconsin. While it doesn’t have a chance in the West, it can at the bare minimum serve as a quality opponent for Wisconsin.

MVPs

1. Greg Newsome (Northwestern)

Newsome, a junior cornerback, had his coming-out party on a big stage. He shadowed David Bell and held the stud Purdue wideout to 9 catches for 78 yards, breaking his streak of 5 straight 100-yard games. Purdue force fed Bell, but he didn’t break off any game-changing plays because Newsome was right there with him in a way other corners have been unable to do.

2. Ty Fryfogle (Indiana)

The senior wideout has been on fire the last 2 weeks, with his latest performance being an 11-catch, 200-yard showing against Michigan State. His 2 first-half TDs were both incredible individual efforts. His emergence gives Indiana a second weapon out wide with Whop Philyor and makes the Hoosiers that much more difficult to defend.

3. Tyler Goodson (Iowa)

Given Minnesota’s struggles defending the run, it wasn’t a huge surprise to see the sophomore running back go crazy on Friday night for 142 yards and 2 TDs on 20 carries, but it was impressive nonetheless. The more the Hawkeyes feed Goodson, the better off they’ll be.

4. Ramaud Chiaokhiao-Bowman (Northwestern)

After watching Northwestern’s win over Purdue, I was surprised to find out that Chiaokhiao-Bowman had just 1 career TD — and it was in 2017! After tallying 7 catches for 79 yards and 3 TDs, the Wildcats would be wise to continue getting him the ball in the red zone. He has a nice combination of size and speed.

5. Tiawan Mullen (Indiana)

One of the nation’s top corners showed it against Michigan State’s turnover-prone offense. Mullen notched 2 interceptions in Indiana’s first B1G shutout since 2000. Now, can he pick off Justin Fields next week?

Honorable mention: Mohamed Ibrahim (Minnesota), Rashod Bateman (Minnesota), Pat Freiermuth (Penn State), Bo Melton (Rutgers), Isaiah Williams (Illinois), Danny Davis (Wisconsin), Graham Mertz (Wisconsin), Shakur Brown (Michigan State)

Ryan O'Gara

Ryan O'Gara is the lead columnist for Saturday Tradition. Follow him on Twitter @RyanOGara.