Here we go again. I'm compelled to counter your position with what should be obvious to all of us, but is obscured with the drumbeat of bashing Swoopes.
Before I point out the obvious, let me make it clear that that I don't think the kid is an all everything QB. Far from it, my position is he should not even have seen the field until this year - or maybe even next year.
This kid arrived at UT from a tiny little town that played 2A football. In essence, he was a country bumpkin going to school in the big city. He was thrust into the chaos of just acclimating to college - never mind playing football...For the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS...with grown ass men...at the position if QB.
He was probably thinking "Thank God I get to RS this year - you go Ash.".
All of a sudden he is the STARTING QB for the mighty Texas Longhorns, in front of monstrous, roaring crowds. Deer in the headlights did you say? What did you expect - the second coming of Colt McCoy? The finished senior Colt McCoy - who struggled mightily as a freshman himself? And a RS freshman at that.
In addition, he had to play behind, arguably, the worst damned OL in the history of the storied UT football program. And with receivers that could not have been starters on half of the Big 12 teams.
That surrounding cast was destroyed by two of the best defenses in college - in Arky and TCU. Subsequently, so was Swoopes.
And, yeah, Swoopes contributed poor play himself - sometimes he stunk horribly. But he had PLENTY of company - from players a lot older than he and a lot more experienced.
So how about cutting that youngster a little slack?
You Swoopes bashers cannot be so ignorant as to think this kid can't improve from year to year. Will he eliminate some of the horrible freshman play from last year? I like to think he will. Logic dictates it. It also dictates that Heard should be better as well. We shall soon see.
But, look, this is a new year and Heards RS is off and there will be stiff competition between the two - and even more when Locksley arrives.
And the bottom line is that we all want the best man to play - whomever it is.
Strong has cleared the board - why can't everyone else?
You do seem to have a soft spot for Swoopes. If I wanted to bash him, I would have been a little more obvious.
59 yards
59
That's it, that's all we got after an entire year of spring practice, fall practice and regular season of experience Swoopes received after his second season in the program.
You think I'm "bashing" him for pointing out his obvious regression over the season? I tried to be patience with him over a full season. Watched him continually miss passes short and long, miss option reads that would have gone for long runs,and I could have lived with all that if he had shown that he was progressing.
Then in the last game, He commits one of the worst mistakes you can as a quaterback. He lost confidence and mentally mailed it in. All his teammates saw it in his eyes and you could see the whole team deflate.
If it was just a matter of him having a weak are or slow mechanics then I would agree that he just needs more time to develop but that's not what it is, it's mental and I hate to say this about anyone who puts in the work to play football at the college level but when things got tough in those last two games he mentally quit on the team.
You can like Swoopes all you want and he seems like a good guy but the warning signs should be obvious at this point. He goes 2-8 his last year in high school on a 2A team. His senior year should have been the year he was putting everything together. His size alone should have won 4-5 games at worst playing in 2A. Instead, he and his team completely underachieve. That's forgivable, maybe he just had a poor coach.
He then comes to Texas as a freshman and can't beat out McCoy or Ash, not that they were horrible qb's but neither one of them were NFL prospects or even the best QB's in the conference. No biggie, he was a freshman.
He makes it to his sophomore year. Ash gets hurt. No competition. Every offensive coach on the staff is solely dedicated to making him better. He gets all the first team snaps through the year. He gets personalized film study, where the coaches break down ever play he makes, helping him learn the right way to play QB.
He shows signs of promises but begins to regress until we get our butts kicked by TCU. Okay that sucked but TCU has a good defense and has made a lot of QB's look bad.
He then gets all the first team snaps during bowl practice. The coaches spend a month developing a perfect game plan to attack Arkansas.
After all that, he leads our team to 59 yards......59.
The reports of him being a workout warrior and throwing clean crisp passes are great to hear but those are all physical attributes. Those have never been the problem. Running a up tempo offense doesn't really encourage me either because he managed to have a 2-8 record in high school running the same thing.
There's something to be said about being a winner when it comes to sports. Heard has proved he's capable, Swoopes has proved he's not. I hope Swoopes proves me wrong and makes me look like a juggling idiot but we will have a potential three other Qb's that deserve the chance to reach their potential. It's time to see what the other guys can do with all coaching focused on them. Time to give Heard a chance.
Sorry for the wall of text
