EVANSTON, Ill.
Andrew Brito trotted out onto the field with 54 seconds left in the third quarter Saturday.
It was yet another in-game quarterback change from Walt Bell in his first year as the UMass football coach. Bell has only coached the Minutemen for 11 games, but he’s already made an in-game switch six times because he’s been unhappy with a quarterback’s performance. The Minutemen had to make a change because of injury on two other occasions, so in only three games has the same quarterback started and ended a game.
Let me be clear that none of the three quarterbacks who have started a game have been good for an extended period. Nothing about the UMass offense this season deserves to be described in a positive tone, but the play of the three quarterbacks has been troubling at times. But I wonder if all of this shuffling at quarterback is the reason why UMass has never found a rhythm on offense.
The only time UMass (1-10) had some stability on offense was heading into the opener against Rutgers. Bell named Randall West the starter to begin the season then reaffirmed that commitment prior to the second week against Southern Illinois. The past 11 weeks any question about who starts at quarterback has come down to who practices the best that week. Yet, if there is one thing this season should have taught Bell and company, it’s that practice performance has rarely equaled the performances when it counts.
The issue is that these quarterbacks look too afraid to make mistakes early in games for fear they will be pulled for poor decision-making. Most of the quarterback miscues have come once the Minutemen are playing from behind and they need to take more risks. That’s when the underthrown passes and chucking the ball into double coverage tend to happen because the quarterbacks all of a sudden feel the need to make a big play happen by themselves.
Part of the reason the UMass offense hasn’t found any consistency is that there isn’t a steady leader of the unit. The unit hasn’t been able to grow with one signal-caller under center and has had to adjust to three very different types of quarterbacks. It’s different to block for someone like Michael Curtis, who can use his feet to extend plays and scramble, compared to Andrew Brito, who is far less mobile in the pocket. Even Randall West adds a different dynamic because, despite not being as quick as Curtis, he showed plenty of elusiveness against Northwestern on Saturday in twisting his way out of several sacks.
And yes, injuries have played a part in this mess. West isn’t fully healthy, Brito missed some time with a concussion and the offensive line has more patchwork than a quilt. But the quarterback issues were evident well before Brito was sidelined as Bell restarted the quarterback competition in the third week of the season. At that point in the year, it seemed like a worthy idea to see if Bell could spark something in his offense by extending the competition. Instead, it seems to have dented the confidence of all three quarterbacks in the room – even if none of them will admit to it.
There is a reason quarterback is one of the toughest positions to play in sports. By playing that position, you agree to become a spokesman of sort for the unit as its leader. You get to face the heat when the offense doesn’t perform well and accept the accolades when the unit succeeds. But Bell has seemingly heaped on more pressure by asking his quarterbacks to be perfect all the time and was quick to change quarterbacks if there were too many poor throws or decisions early in games.
At this point in the season, what’s done is done when it comes to the quarterbacks. UMass has Saturday’s finale against BYU at McGuirk Alumni Stadium and then it can work on recruiting and developing the talent for the future. But this season will always be a question of what-if for the offense because it feels like Bell left so much on the table with this group by butchering the quarterback situation.
What type of quarterback would West have turned into had Bell allowed him to grow through his early mistakes as a starter? Would it have been better for Bell just to start Brito from the outset and let the junior college transfer figure out the FBS level by learning from his early mistakes? Would it have been better just to let Curtis run a scaled-down version of Bell’s scheme and become more of a run-pass option team?
Those are answers we’ll never know now, but those are not the important questions now. The only thing that matters for UMass is Bell has to find his quarterback of the future quickly. All the defense in the world won’t win the Minutemen football games if the quarterback play is as poor as it’s been this season.