Spencer: Nothing unique about OSU’s quarterback shuffle
October 2, 2008
By JON SPENCER
NNCO
Welcome, Jim Tressel, to Lee Owens’ world.
A college football team, carrying high expectations after losing just two games the previous season, benches its senior quarterback, a captain to boot.
This soap opera-ish plotline, playing out these days in Columbus, gives us heralded Ohio State freshman Terrelle Pryor in the lead role of “92008” — the date he wrested control of the Buckeyes’ attack from returning starter Todd Boeckman — and should sound more than vaguely familiar to Ashland University players and their fans.
That’s pretty much how things went down — the operative word, in Ashland’s case, being “down” — for Owens’ Eagles in 2006.
Owens, who spent time at Massillon and Lancaster before cutting his college coaching teeth as an OSU assistant, was coming off a 9-2 season, his first winning campaign in Ashland. He could stand pat or stir the pot. Turns out, he didn’t so much stir or shake as agitate.
In at quarterback was junior transfer John Ferguson. Out was three-year starter Nick Strance, a captain from Willard. Sounds cold, but Owens wrestled mightily with the decision.
“It was one of the most difficult moves I ever had to make,” Owens said. “Part of it was that Nick had gotten hurt in the preseason and our other guys moved ahead. Had he been healthy, there would have been more of a chance of him going back in.”
Injury didn’t cost Boeckman his job at Ohio State, unless you buy into the fractured psyche theory. His prolonged slump reached its nadir in the 35-3 loss at USC, prompting the move to Pryor. The Buckeyes are 2-0 since the switch.
Ashland, conversely, started 0-2 after its icky shuffle — no thanks to a murderous schedule — and finished 4-6. The switch eventually would bear fruit. Over the short term, nothing but rotten tomatoes.
“I don’t think I would have lost the seniors if we had success early,” Owens said, “but all of a sudden we’re 0-2 and you open yourself up to second-guessing. ‘Hey, we won with this guy (Strance) … what are you doing?’ Nick is sitting on the bench, healthy by that point and not playing. It wasn’t healthy for team chemistry.
“It was one of hardest seasons I ever went through. I laid awake at night wondering what I could have done differently.”
Owens’ quarterback quandaries weren’t over. Redshirt freshman Billy Cundiff, another transfer, started for an injured Ferguson in the season finale, a 45-14 rout of Gannon. When the ’07 season started, Cundiff still was No. 1, so Ferguson walked away from the program.
Owens talked him back, with Ferguson helping Ashland make the NCAA Division II playoffs for the first time in 10 years.
“When Billy got hurt, John started against Ferris State and played the game of his life,” Owens said. “That (37-35) win on the road against great competition basically got us in the playoffs. He came back to the team with a great attitude and was ready to play when needed.”
Owens’ decision to play Cundiff ultimately proved to be the right one. The transfer from UConn basically has rewritten AU’s record book and directs one of the nation’s most potent attacks, with another season still to go. But Owens takes no great delight in the way he and his quarterback arrived at this point. Just as Tressel’s “Winners Manual” won’t include a chapter on how to promote and demote with no muss or fuss.
“When to play a quarterback is one of the toughest decisions a coach ever has to make,” Owens said.
Like Tressel, he turned to a freshman — ironically, Strance’s predecessor at Willard — when he was head coach at Akron. Charlie Frye was forced into action by injury, coming off the bench to lead a season-opening win over Ohio University in 2001. The next week Frye made his first start, in Tressel’s debut at Ohio State, and threw enough of a scare in the Buckeyes to convince Owens there was no turning back to a veteran.
By Frye’s junior season, Owens’ last at Akron, the Zips ranked among the top 10 Division I schools in total offense. Two years later, Frye was starting for the Browns.
“My mind was made up after that Ohio State game,” Owens said. “Watching Charlie in that atmosphere, play as well and as tough as he did, left no question in my mind that he was our quarterback.
“It usually takes a year or two for a quarterback to get his feet wet, so by playing him as a freshman he was hitting his stride his junior year.”
That means that Pryor, already something, should be really, really something by 2010. Unless, of course, a better option comes along to shove him aside.
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