If some of the other guys can replace Devin as the deep threat guy, I could buy Cardale being better than JT in the offense by forcing a safety deep. But until that happens I would put JT ahead of Cardale. Devin was just so good at tracking the ball that Cardale was just able to chuck it up and he would get it. Nobody has shown the ability to do that so far. BUT, we have a lot of young guys who I'm sure are looking to fill that void.
There should be no problem finding deep threats. One guy probably won't replicate Devin's amazing TDs and averages... but this team is not lacking speed or players at the skill positions. Not to take anything away from Devin's amazing and under-rated career, but I'm more concerned if they can replace Spencer's mentality with blocking consistency.
These are more along the lines of why I'd prefer JT (bear in mind this is somewhat nitpicky, b/c either QB is clearly effective and can do the job)
- Can Cardale get into manageable situations more often? Skeptical the team can rely on going 3/3 on 4th and convert that many 3rd-and-longs through a whole season.
- Kind of the same point as above, but he tends to go on hot-and-cold streaks. His deep ball is great, but the passing game as a whole is feast-or-famine and that can eventually bite you in the ass. Especially once teams have a good body of film to prep off of. While the WR corps is getting some (deserved) flak for the ints - they also balled out with some of those catches.
- Read options... had to take that aspect away from him against Oregon and just ride Eze and the OLine with that unbalanced counter. Teams in conference will figure that out and scheme for it. The obvious constraint is to give the QB a read - to either throw a screen out to the eligible split-end or run the sweep to the pivot. This offense relies on QB reads. It's one thing to beat Oregon into submission, but can't go through a 12 game season without using reads or having the QB check out of the play presnap. We'll probably face 3 or 4 defenses better than Oregon in conference.
This is all stuff I expect the staff will work on through Spring. He'll get plenty of chances to work on the read portion, especially since he and Collier will be the only QBs able to run those plays in Spring.
I'm hoping they find a way to utilize all 3 QBs, because they're all excellent and yet very different. It would have to be a nightmare for a DC to prepare for JT and Cardale taking snaps with Brax as wildcat/pivot, and don't forget the WR corps, or the RB stable led by Eze.
