Been reading all these questions about "Why didn't the coaches do this? Why didn't they do that?" Take a look at our QB situation heading into the year....
We dismissed a QB that had a real shot at being the starter. DW broke his collarbone and didn't play in the spring game so the coaches never had a chance to see him in so much as a scrimmage. So our depth chart coming out of the spring was:
Senior who had seen limited action in meaningful games True Freshman who had seen no action in any games and was recovering from an injury RS Sophomore who had seen no action in any games
Based off of that alone, I can't blame the coaches for starting Stoudt at UGA. Yes I know DW came in and played well in spurts and that's great. But some people act like we threw our season away trying to win with CS. Watson came into the third game of the year and basically never looked back, became our starter, and did some great things. Yes I question the staff's insistence on putting CS in for a series or two, but had DW not been injured we're probably not even having a "controversy" over QB's. I don't think waiting 2 games to make a true freshman your #1 QB is that much of a stretch, especially considering 2 of the first 3 games were on the road against UGA and FSU.
Yes, it's shocking to me that a true freshman can be that talented at the QB position, especially over someone who has been in the program for 4 years, but to say the coaches didn't recognize this I just don't get....we put him in in the 3rd game! And had some wacky things not happened (terrible snap, Alexander slipping, bad call on 4th and 1)we may be talking about how we handed FSU their only loss in 2 years.
And for those of you wanting to start Nick S. in the bowl game, I still think it's ridiculous to start someone who would have been at, at best, fourth-string (without Kelly's dismissal) over a 4th year senior. What I will say is that, without question, our coaches need to game plan around the weaknesses in CS's game. He's been banged up this year and played through injury and I don't think Morris did him any favors with some of the game plans he called. Let's have a run-heavy offense and make the other team score on our #1 ranked defense and let the chips fall where they may.