Destiny rang Saturday in the fourth quarter for Carl Bonnell. For the first time since the second half of the last Notre Dame game in South Bend three years ago he was going to get some meaningful snaps in a college football game. It wasn't a Hollywood ending as Carl was abused as much as his predecessor Stanback, and was unable to advance the Huskies down the field. This coming weekend in Berkeley he is a very good bet to get the start against the Golden Bear's if Stanback can't go.
Carl isn't as mobile as IS, and he doesn't have as strong an arm, but few can say they have better raw tools than IS. What Lappano needs to do is reconfigure the offense around Carl's strengths, and also get some better production out of his running back to take the pressure off. That isn't going to be easy against the Bear's who have one of the better defense in the country. Carl is going to need a lot of help, and this offense is going to have to pull together if the Huskies want to not only be respectable this week, but go on from that to salvage the season.
The next option according to the coaches would be Johnny Durocher who moves up to backup on the depth chart. Durocher had a terrible debut last year in terrible weather against this same Oregon State team. I expect Johnny to get some time in the second half if the Bears put it out of reach early. No, we arent going to see Sweetman.
Finally you have true freshman Jake Locker on the bench.
Is he ready?
He has spent most of his time with the scout team imitating other teams offenses while learning to execute the UW playbook. He has a total of 2 1/2 months in the program.
Would I play him against California?
I wouldn't play him against California unless I was convinced he was the guy you could count on to get us 2-3 more victories and a bowl bid.
I wouldn't play him until I was convinced that Bonnell, and Durocher could not do the job. You wouldn't play Locker if you can get by for a week or two with Carl.
I wouldn't want to start him this week so I could concentrate on getting him ready the following week if needed when we have a very winnable game.
I wouldn't play him against California if IS has a chance of coming back for the final two games of the year.
Carl Bonnell has earned this shot at this point of his career. He is a guy that had been written off who now has a chance to make a big impact this season. He looked pretty decent in camp, and many thought he would beat IS out after the season started. It didn't happen, but it will be interesting to see how well he does when he isn't being blitzed on every play.
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2 comments:
Good reasons and a well thought out approach John. We just got back to SoCal from the game. My thoughts: it wasn't pretty. It's been a long time sinc I saw a team destroy us physically. Ore St DL and OL were just knocking us off the ball from the start. The positives were we scored quickly after the two interceptions. I thought Kenny James ran and more importantly blocked well for both IS and CB. All of Morovicks and Garcia long snaps were good. Douglas' punts while shorter had more hang time and less return yardage. Other than that it was ugly, if Ore St hadn't made such silly penalties and miscues the rout might have been worse. You could have heard a pin drop when Isaiah was down. I know this is a team sport but we are going to have to make a lot of adjustments. CBs lack of moving the team was no reflection of his abilities, as OSU was just teeing off on us as we were very one dimensional and predictable by then. Still, I think Cal will have us in that same situation very early this week Its time to wind the clock and wait and see the official extent of IS injuries and then make predictions and plans according to your what ifs. If anyone doubted who was the leader of the team, rewatch the tape after IS was out, the team was even flatter than they were before it happened. Too bad we will be in Berkeley this weekend, I hope it isn't too ugly. Maybe i will be more positve after a good nights sleep.
Great post...Lappano needs to figure a way to keep Carl out of that situation this week. Key of course is running the ball and eating up some clock. Pick up some yards with some short passes that let some of your speed guys get a shot here and there. Our defense needs to show up the way they did at USC, and they are capable of doing that.
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