From all accounts, Tony Rice was set to be a Gopher until Holtz bolted for Notre Dame and took a big chunk of the recruiting class with him. He probably would have been the best recent-era Gopher QB - although I loved Ricky Foggie.
Pivoting to a different point - upnorthkid may lose it after this post, but:
I have never understood this idea that you can't or shouldn't pull the starting QB if he struggles. I hear a lot of people say "If you yank the QB, he'll lose confidence." I would think that staying out there and stinking up the joint can't be great for the confidence, either.
If a baseball pitcher is getting shelled, you take him out of the game. If a shooting guard in basketball is tossing up bricks, you at least let him sit down for a while to re-group. If a hockey player is struggling, he might wind up as a healthy scratch. Nobody brings up the "confidence" angle for those sports. But for a FB QB, no matter how poorly he plays, some people maintain that you should not, under any circumstances, take him out of the game. I just don't buy it.
If the starting QB is having a bad day - throwing bad passes, fumbling, or having trouble reading the defense, I say give him a mental break on the sidelines - let him talk it over with the OC and QB coach, and let someone else have a shot at it. If nothing else, it gives the coaches a chance to evaluate a back-up in game conditions, so the back-up is better prepared in case the starting QB is injured.
just my opinion.
I would go with, for most teams, the thought process is we picked the best guy for the job. Let's roll with the guy who is the best guy. Pulling him in a game has a potential positive (he plays well, he takes over your team), it also has a potential negative (he plays like crap and you lose the game). I don't think anyone has an issue pulling a guy when the game is out of hand and you plug in your backup (ie when we've played Croft in the past). However when you pull him mid-game in a competitive game, what are you pulling him for? for a guy who you said was not good enough to beat out the guy that is in the game. I would go with that is the logic behind it. I'm not saying that's the right or the wrong logic, but I'd go with that's the general gist of it.
In regards to my thought on the topic, I've got no problem with pulling a guy and sitting him if he's playing like ****e. But it needs to be done for the right reason in that you think the backup gives you the best chance to win the game, or that it's out of control and you want him to get some game action. The idea of a spark plug doesn't really vibe to me in the sense of that your starting QB should have been (or I'd hope so and I think this is what PJ is selecting based on) the guy who gives you the best chance to win, is the leader of the team, and provides that spark. It's the reason that they say a 2 QB system is a no QB system. You put out the guy who gives you the best chance, and that should be for every single series. Now if you've come into the year and you have 2 guys (or no guys) that are equally equipped, pull the dude who's sucking and see what happens. You just have to be comfortable with the repercussions of him succeeding (he's now your starter) or tanking (you get second-guessed by the media and your team if the game was in reach when you made the sub).
The situation I was talking, and I think this is why you put in the quote SON, is about when we, as fans, clamor for the backup after the QB starts 1-6 with a pick on the first 2 drives and we think that it's purely on the QB and the backup will save us when there are clearly other factors (our whole team is out of sync, the line is porous, we're playing a shut down D) contributing to the whole thing. It's fun as fans to fantasize about the little heralded backup or recruit who walks in and gets a chance late in a game and leads us to a comeback, starting a new golden age of Gopher football. But as a fan, I'm going to trust the coaches who have them in practice every day unless I personally feel I've seen something in game or on film that makes me feel that they are missing something. That's all. Nothing wrong with giving a guy some experience late in a blow out (win or loss). That I'm all for. But to equate a QB to a hockey player (you have 12 forwards, 6 defensemen so there are equivalent players), a starting pitcher (you have multiple every single game), or to a SG (basketball is made for subs and you don't see a guy sat for the whole game if he's just shooting poorly) doesn't make sense. You have maybe 3 QBs on a roster and usually you have a tiered set of skills with the best guy, by far, starting. Now if he's not the best by far, you should as a coach be willing to pull the trigger, and I would. I dunno what we have for our QBs, but it sounds like, to me, we have 2 guys who are above the others at this point pretty significantly. So to me, it's those 2 guys based on Fleck's most recent comments. Given that, I wouldn't be looking for Green, Estes, or whoever to come out of the shadows because I'm not putting my hopes on a fluke. But if Croft and Rhoda stay non-separable, PJ should be willing to pull the trigger to switch between them. I would be
