jwinslow;2349092; said:
Cinci, michigan fans will tell you that replacing Denard was overdue last season.
No disagreement there, not unlike Bauserman, Miller, Boeckman, Pryor, Zwick, Smith. I thought Gardner gave them a much better offense, still a mobile QB and now a way to add ways to get the ball to their best big play back.
His presence on the roster forced Hoke and Borges to delay implementing their offense to cater to Denard, yet he can't truly execute the read option offense either. What he can do is succeed better from those formations than pro sets (which was part of the reason he was so brutal this year).
So the question becomes why wasn't Gardner ready, or was DR a potential problem maker if Benched? That happens, ask Coop about putting Jackson on the bench for Germaine. But, I wonder more about the strength of the coach than the skill of the player in those situations- It's not DR's fault if Hoke and Bourges can't do their job.
He was a special runner that was poor at passing, poor at scrambling (managing the pocket, deciding when and how to take off, not unlike Braxton) , terrible at reading the option (to the point where coaches were frequently predesignating the choice on the option before the snap) and constantly getting injured during losses.
Nice to have some insight on that. Makes me appreciate the Oregon QB of a few years back- Miller?- who was so good at getting the right read - and like DR was prone to injury.
And that's where I probably have the biggest issue with many who posted on this thread. I know that my years as a track coach didn't present the same kinds of injuries, or injury problems as a high school football coach faces, but I wouldn't want to be the coach who put an injured athlete into a contest. I wouldn't want to be a coach who coerced an athlete back into a contest. DR took a lot of hits... and not unlike Braxton Miller, he was out of big games at key moments. But you- as a coach- do not decide when a player is fit for action. That's a call that begins with the player and goes through the trainer or doctor. Likewise, unless someone here has a special access to the Michigan sidelines, we don't know what happened in each instance that DR left a game. Did he want to go back in? Did the trainer/medical staff say no? In the case of the Ohio State game, did Hoke decide his chances were better if he put Gardner on the field w/o DR? We don't know and it's presumptuous to call DR a pussy as a result.
A lot of running qbs are inconsistent passers. Most of the notable ones are even weaker at scrambling and running the option than they are at passing.
But teams still seek them out. In three cases I can think of, problems in the offensive line/pass blocking package forced Ohio State coaches to bench Zwick, Boeckman and Bauserman before they felt their replacements were fully ready. That may well have been the case with Hoke at Michigan.
The guy was a killer as a pure runner and that held up when he stopped masquerading as any type of qb.
And imagine what their offense could have been with Gardner at QB, DR moving between slot back and wide out and Toussaint as the RB. Again, that seems to say more about the strength of the coach than the players involved.
