I am very excited to see Gray at QB and what Kill can do with him there.
The only regret that I have is that Weber didn't have that opportunity to play under a group of very solid and stable coaches like Kill and his presumed staff. Weber gets so much crap on this board, and I would get extremely frustrated with him too, with his innaccuracies and errant throws and with his sometimes boneheaded choices and decisions on the field. Those were very frustrating, but i have to believe that he got jerked around so much in his college career that it seriously impeded his development, with changing coordinators, changing schemes, and changing expectations for what he was asked to do out there, and that held him back badly. And a big part of my frustration is the fact that in my opinion he is nowhere near the player he could and should have been.
Seeing him play his freshman year, he looked to be a natural. He was a very instinctive and very heady player who was great out of the pocket and a significant threat to run the ball, set tons of school passing and offensive records and just seemed to have this certain 'it' factor that led myself and many others to believe that if he could be that good as a freshman in the Big Ten, then the sky was the limit for him, and that by his senior season he might be an absolute star player and unquestionably the best Gophers quarterback I've seen in my lifetime, and that seemed eminently reasonable at that time based upon how truly good he looked as a player and assuming a natural upward progression as he gained even more experience in big time college football.
But then they pulled out the rug from underneath him and started yanking him around, and he was never the same after that. He stopped running, it seemed like he stopped displaying much of that natural instinctive feel for the game he'd shown his freshman year, and he just changed. It seemed like he was thinking too much or something and became a really mechanical QB.
It's just damning as all hell of Brewster and his staff that all you saw after the brilliant freshman season that Weber put up was a continued regression throughout the rest of his career. It's a fricken shame is what it is. I've talked about this before and I don't mean to beat this or any other topic into the ground, but it just gets to me sometimes how much heat Weber used to take from us fans, when the reality is that he's the person who got screwed over most of all, and I can't help but wonder how he might have fared and what heights he might have attained if he'd been granted someone like a Coach Kill to develop him as a QB and teach him and make him even better throughout his college career, like the way it's supposed to work.
Anyway, yes. Long story short, I can't wait to see Gray next year. The season can't get here soon enough far as I'm concerned.
