Post by elp525 on Oct 12, 2011 3:31:46 GMT -5
October 11, 2011
By Dave Hickman
The Charleston Gazette
MORGANTOWN - Six weeks into the college football season, Dana Holgorsen can stake at least some claim to the No. 1 passer in college football.
He can also claim some responsibility for the quarterback who ranks No. 2 in passing yards per game and the one who sits at No. 3 in total passing yards.
Two of those, Case Keenum at Houston and Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State, are pretty much off his radar these days. He could probably find a little more time to keep in touch with them if he really had to, but there are more pressing issues for West Virginia's first-year head coach.
"Well, I've got my hands full with the one I'm coaching right now,'' Holgorsen said Tuesday. "He's a daily challenge.''
That's a challenge, of course, that a lot of coaches would like to tackle.
Through half of his first season under Holgorsen, Geno Smith is the third quarterback in that triumvirate. With 2,159 passing yards - already tied for the seventh-best season total in school history - Smith is looking more and more like a finished product every week.
That is, until he's held up in comparison to Keenum, who was coached by Holgorsen two years ago at Houston, and Weeden, Holgorsen's pupil a year ago at Oklahoma State.
Keenum ranks first in the country in passing yards, yards per game and total offense. He is likely to soon break the NCAA records for career passing yards, total offense and touchdown passes (the latter, by the way, held by another Holgorsen pupil, Graham Harrell of Texas Tech).
Weeden, meanwhile, ranks second in passing yards per game and third in total offense.
Statistically, Keenum and Weeden are only slightly ahead of Smith, who is third in passing yards, fifth in passing yards per game and seventh in total offense. Holgorsen, though, says he is much further behind on the learning curve.
But that's only temporary.
"He's a great player and he's going to continue to get better and better over the next year and a half to the point where you'll see a finished product,'' Holgorsen said of the junior. "But right now you're not looking at a finished product. Some of those other guys, like Brandon Weeden and Case Keenum, are finished products. They've taken more snaps in the system.
"When I left Houston and Oklahoma State, they kept the same system for a reason. They have the same guy doing the same system - Case four years now and Brandon two years. And you're seeing some pretty good football out of those guys. They're both 6-0 [actually, OSU is 5-0] and they're playing at a very high rate. We're 5-1 and we're not playing at that rate right now offensively.''
While Holgorsen doesn't pay more than passing attention to what Keenum and Weeden are doing these days, he does still channel the two in his effort to develop Smith. Virtually every week, he says, Smith watches tape of those two. The offense that Smith runs at West Virginia is the same one Keenum and Weeden ran under Holgorsen, so if Holgorsen needs to illustrate a point to Smith he can always pull out clips of the other two.
"We reference some of that stuff - specific plays, specific ways of doing things,'' Holgorsen said. "The best way for a kid to understand it is to see it. Kids are so film-oriented where they have to see it. I guess it's because of video games or something, but if they see it they're probably going to do it a little bit better.''
To the untrained eye, there wouldn't be much of a difference. Holgorsen can show Smith tape of Keenum running a specific play, of Weeden running the same play and of Smith doing his version of it. They all look essentially the same.
Except to Holgorsen and Smith.
"Knowing exactly what to do with the ball and understanding exactly what we're trying to accomplish,'' Holgorsen said. "They understand it a little bit better than Geno does right now. Geno can do some things those guys can't do, but they understand it a little bit more just based on experience.
"It'll be fun a year from now watching Geno with that kind of experience under his belt, knowing exactly what to do and being on the same page a year advanced with everybody else around him. Then you can start talking about good offensive football.''
Since the day he arrived and began working with Smith, Holgorsen has raved about his new quarterback's competitiveness and his desire to be the best. Perhaps Keenum and Weeden share the same trait, but listening to Holgorsen talk about Smith for nine months now it seems as if he thinks his latest quarterback might have an advantage there over the other two.
It's just going to take some time to develop it.
"He learned stuff again this past week,'' Holgorsen said. "He gets so wrapped up in a game, which is a good thing. He's all in. It means so much to him. He wants to be successful on every play to where he probably tries too hard at times.'
"But it takes time. It's not a snap-your-fingers thing. It's not like you can just show it to him on tape and say, 'Go do it.' He can do some things that a lot of people across the country can't do. His competitiveness is something that's irreplaceable. But it takes reps, it takes experience, it takes time to get to the point where it's more efficient.''
By Dave Hickman
The Charleston Gazette
MORGANTOWN - Six weeks into the college football season, Dana Holgorsen can stake at least some claim to the No. 1 passer in college football.
He can also claim some responsibility for the quarterback who ranks No. 2 in passing yards per game and the one who sits at No. 3 in total passing yards.
Two of those, Case Keenum at Houston and Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State, are pretty much off his radar these days. He could probably find a little more time to keep in touch with them if he really had to, but there are more pressing issues for West Virginia's first-year head coach.
"Well, I've got my hands full with the one I'm coaching right now,'' Holgorsen said Tuesday. "He's a daily challenge.''
That's a challenge, of course, that a lot of coaches would like to tackle.
Through half of his first season under Holgorsen, Geno Smith is the third quarterback in that triumvirate. With 2,159 passing yards - already tied for the seventh-best season total in school history - Smith is looking more and more like a finished product every week.
That is, until he's held up in comparison to Keenum, who was coached by Holgorsen two years ago at Houston, and Weeden, Holgorsen's pupil a year ago at Oklahoma State.
Keenum ranks first in the country in passing yards, yards per game and total offense. He is likely to soon break the NCAA records for career passing yards, total offense and touchdown passes (the latter, by the way, held by another Holgorsen pupil, Graham Harrell of Texas Tech).
Weeden, meanwhile, ranks second in passing yards per game and third in total offense.
Statistically, Keenum and Weeden are only slightly ahead of Smith, who is third in passing yards, fifth in passing yards per game and seventh in total offense. Holgorsen, though, says he is much further behind on the learning curve.
But that's only temporary.
"He's a great player and he's going to continue to get better and better over the next year and a half to the point where you'll see a finished product,'' Holgorsen said of the junior. "But right now you're not looking at a finished product. Some of those other guys, like Brandon Weeden and Case Keenum, are finished products. They've taken more snaps in the system.
"When I left Houston and Oklahoma State, they kept the same system for a reason. They have the same guy doing the same system - Case four years now and Brandon two years. And you're seeing some pretty good football out of those guys. They're both 6-0 [actually, OSU is 5-0] and they're playing at a very high rate. We're 5-1 and we're not playing at that rate right now offensively.''
While Holgorsen doesn't pay more than passing attention to what Keenum and Weeden are doing these days, he does still channel the two in his effort to develop Smith. Virtually every week, he says, Smith watches tape of those two. The offense that Smith runs at West Virginia is the same one Keenum and Weeden ran under Holgorsen, so if Holgorsen needs to illustrate a point to Smith he can always pull out clips of the other two.
"We reference some of that stuff - specific plays, specific ways of doing things,'' Holgorsen said. "The best way for a kid to understand it is to see it. Kids are so film-oriented where they have to see it. I guess it's because of video games or something, but if they see it they're probably going to do it a little bit better.''
To the untrained eye, there wouldn't be much of a difference. Holgorsen can show Smith tape of Keenum running a specific play, of Weeden running the same play and of Smith doing his version of it. They all look essentially the same.
Except to Holgorsen and Smith.
"Knowing exactly what to do with the ball and understanding exactly what we're trying to accomplish,'' Holgorsen said. "They understand it a little bit better than Geno does right now. Geno can do some things those guys can't do, but they understand it a little bit more just based on experience.
"It'll be fun a year from now watching Geno with that kind of experience under his belt, knowing exactly what to do and being on the same page a year advanced with everybody else around him. Then you can start talking about good offensive football.''
Since the day he arrived and began working with Smith, Holgorsen has raved about his new quarterback's competitiveness and his desire to be the best. Perhaps Keenum and Weeden share the same trait, but listening to Holgorsen talk about Smith for nine months now it seems as if he thinks his latest quarterback might have an advantage there over the other two.
It's just going to take some time to develop it.
"He learned stuff again this past week,'' Holgorsen said. "He gets so wrapped up in a game, which is a good thing. He's all in. It means so much to him. He wants to be successful on every play to where he probably tries too hard at times.'
"But it takes time. It's not a snap-your-fingers thing. It's not like you can just show it to him on tape and say, 'Go do it.' He can do some things that a lot of people across the country can't do. His competitiveness is something that's irreplaceable. But it takes reps, it takes experience, it takes time to get to the point where it's more efficient.''
