Stiff Competition
August 25th, 2009 - byMichigan football is in either a really opportune spot, or a really tough one depending on who you are. Coach Rich Rodriguez is blessed with the availability of three potential starting quarterbacks according to Rivals.com. However, for these quarterbacks, the presence of the others will ultimately result in them all losing playing time.
Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez says he plans to use [Denard] Robinson and two other quarterbacks in the season opener Sept. 5 against Western Michigan.
Rodriguez spent about the first 10 minutes of his news conference Sunday answering questions about freshmen Tate Forcier and Robinson, who are competing for snaps along with junior Nick Sheridan, who started four games last year.
Rodriguez has seen his quarterbacks compete for a couple weeks and yet he isn’t ready to say who is even the front-runner in the race.
Rodriguez insisted the player who takes the first snaps will not necessarily be the No. 1 QB for the rest of the season.
“Maybe we’ll have three starting quarterbacks,” Rodriguez said. “That would be neat.”
While this is obviously a great situation for Coach Rodriguez, having three talented quarterbacks only increases his chances of success, imagine being in the shoes of the players, especially Forcier and Robinson. There are two situations; two or all of them will split time, or one will become the full time starter. Obviously the first situation will result in all of them losing playing time. The second situation will ultimately end in either Sheridan spending his remaining years in Ann Arbor on the bench, or one of the Freshmen spending their entire career behind someone within their class (barring a red shirt or injury). The question rises, did Robinson and Forcier understand the quarterback situation when they signed on at Michigan? If not, would they have signed if they did? Although Robinson was recruited as an athlete this still may have impacted his decision. Recruits need to know not only what a school offers academically, athletically, and socially, they also have the understand their chances for playing time there.
