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Thursday, August 13, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com SPORTS
Fisch, Harbaugh eyeing
‘open’ QB competition
By JAKE LOURIM
Managing Sports Editor
Junior
Shane
Morris
led
the
Michigan
football
team’s
starting quarterback competition
after spring practice. But the
Wolverines
wanted
an
open
competition, so they continued it
all summer.
That still wasn’t contested
enough, so they added graduate
transfer Jake Rudock from Iowa
to the fold.
And that still
wasn’t contested
enough, so the
coaches
insist
each
of
the
eight
eligible
quarterbacks on
the roster has
the opportunity
to win the job during fall camp.
With three weeks until the
season opener at Utah, they’re in
no hurry to whittle it down.
“When it happens, it’ll happen,
and it’ll be clear to Coach
(Jim) Harbaugh and (offensive
coordinator Tim Drevno) and
myself, and the whole staff,” said
passing game coordinator Jedd
Fisch. “You really want it to be
clear to everybody. You want
the right guard to see it. You
want the head coach to see it.
You want everybody to feel that
we’re now anointing that starting
quarterback and everybody feels
great about it.”
That competition is just getting
started,
because
the
coaches
hadn’t
seen
Rudock
practice
before fall camp opened Friday
and hadn’t seen Morris since the
spring game.
Besides Rudock and Morris,
there
are
four
scholarship
quarterbacks — though Houston
transfer John O’Korn is ineligible
due to NCAA transfer rules — and
three walk-ons practicing.
In that group, experience is
limited. Rudock started 12 games
for Iowa last year and threw for
2,436 yards, 16
touchdowns
and
five
interceptions.
Among
the
other
eligible
quarterbacks,
only
Morris
has seen game
action. In his Michigan career,
he is 43-for-87 for 389 yards, no
touchdowns and five picks.
“Shane won the spring, I guess
you could say, and now we’re past
the spring,” Fisch said. “So we’ve
kind of put that behind us. Now
it’s a brand-new open competition
again for the fall. Guys are healthy,
guys are back, guys are in.”
Each
quarterback
has
an
advantage over the others: Rudock
with his experience, Morris with
his strong arm.
“I always try to figure out
that percentage and how much
of it will be a factor,” Harbaugh
said. “Everything is a factor
when it comes to the quarterback
position. It’s like
determining what’s
more
important
to
a
carpenter.
Is the saw more
important, or the
hammer,
or
the
slide rule? I don’t
know, they’re all
important.”
After
enrolling
early last winter,
freshman
Alex
Malzone
started
opposite Morris in
the spring game. He
went 15-for-27 for
95 yards and two
interceptions.
The
other
freshman is Zach
Gentry, a 6-foot-
7,
230-pound
four-star
recruit
Harbaugh
flipped
from Texas soon
after being hired.
Gentry,
however,
does not have the
extra spring camp
of
experience
that
Malzone
does, so he’ll have to pick up the
playbook quickly this fall.
Sophomore
Wilton
Speight
is also back, but he did not see
game action last fall and played
sparingly in the spring game.
Senior
Brian
Cleary,
junior
Garrett Moores and sophomore
Matt Thompson are the walk-ons.
“All of our quarterbacks except
for John O’Korn, they’ve got the
license and the ability to compete
and earn their position, whether
it’s starter, backup, contributor,
scout team, etc.,” Harbaugh said.
“That’s what we’re here for. That’s
what we’re going to find out.”
In Fisch’s 15 years of coaching,
between college and pro football,
his
quarterback
competitions
have run the gamut.
Most recently, he was the
offensive coordinator for the
NFL’s
Jacksonville
Jaguars
last season. The team had a
competition
between
veteran
Chad Henne and rookie Blake
Bortles and gave Henne all the
reps with the first team in training
camp. But Bortles was playing by
Week 3, starting by Week 4 and
started every game the rest of the
season.
For that reason, Fisch said he
wants to divide reps among all
quarterbacks.
In 1999 and 2000, Fisch
was a graduate assistant for
Steve Spurrier’s Florida team.
He recalled Spurrier rotating
quarterbacks “every play” — in
reality, Jesse Palmer threw 223
passes, Rex Grossman 212.
“But I don’t expect us to do that,”
Fisch said with a smile.
Outside of those memories, the
coaching staff revealed little about
its plans for the
position.
What we do
know
is
that
the Wolverines
will shoot for a
play distribution
of
50
percent
pass, 50 percent
rush. Of course,
that
balance
could tip if one
is more proficient than the other,
and Michigan could also run more
when ahead in the fourth quarter
or pass more when behind.
Expect the Wolverines to run
a pro-style offense befitting of a
coaching staff with four former pro
coaches on offense, plus Harbaugh.
“I think we’re pro style, which
means what you see on Sunday,
which means all of it,” Fisch said.
That includes, he said, the high-
speed offense of the Philadelphia
Eagles, the no-huddle philosophy
of the Jacksonville Jaguars or the
run-first strategy of Harbaugh’s
San Francisco 49ers.
Whatever it means, it needs
a
smart
quarterback
to manage the
game.
“We
talk
about
that
all
the
time,
the
difference
between
being
aggressive
and
reckless with the
ball,” Fisch said.
“We don’t want reckless. We want
aggressive. We don’t want you to
feel like you have to check it down
every time. We don’t want to feel
like, ‘What’s going to happen next?’
That’s not the mentality.
“The mentality is, ‘Go out there
and sling it, but be smart. Don’t
take an unnecessary chance. You
never go broke taking a profit.
You never go broke giving the ball
to the easy completion’ ”
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Junior Shane Morris was the starting quarterback after the Spring Game, but the job is still open.
“Everything is
a factor when
it comes to
quarterback.”
“Go out there
and sling it.”