2009 Washington Preview - Quarterback

but one of the things I loved this spring was watching Locker’s head. Seriously.

You could watch him going through his reads as he was dropping back. You could see him make three distinct reads, and either throw the ball down the field to one of them, or check down to Izbicki or Homer. It was quick, and fluid, and actually made him look like a QB. Like I said, you can’t extrapolate it directly to the games (especially given that Locker said he often forgot to breath during plays his freshman year), but it was a noticeable improvement from the last two seasons.

Same thing with Fouch. He actually looked a little more crisp, truth be told. He just lacks the arm strength to put the ball in some of the places that Locker can.

I watched Fouch, Bean, and Locker doing a sprint-out drill one day around a cone and throwing what would amount to a fifteen yard out. All three actually looked decent, but the velocity Locker could put on the ball really separated him from the other two. It’s not like Bean and Fouch floated the ball in there, it’s just that when it left Locker’s hands, it was THERE! in an instant. The manager that was catching the passes grimaced a little on some of Locker’s throws. After each rep, Nussmeier had something to say to all three about rollout depth, timing, how to hold the ball during the rollout, etc. It was great.

I doubt Locker hits 60%. That’s pretty high. In fact, it would be the highest ever for a single season at the UW. I’ll bet he ends up more in the 55% range, which is more than good enough to win games.

I saw a huge improvement after spring ball. If he wouldn’t have had that drop in the spring game he would have thrown one incompletion out of 18 attempts.

The kid is the most dynamic athlete in the Pac 10, even over Joe McKnight! The USC kid looks good because of his buddies on the O line. With proper QB coaching and the right offense, Locker could explode not only up the Pac 10 charts, but national recognition as well.

Still he has to play within a system, play within the game. When he tries to do too much is when he puts himself at risk. Allow the game to come to him and not force the action. Everytime Locker got hurt is due to him forcing something to happen. Best athlete in the Pac 10, but he is a quarterback. Quarterbacks have to play within a system even if they are as gifted as Locker.

Before Locker can be something, he must first get acclimated to a college pocket. Still don’t think he has much pocket pressence and it reflects some of his ill-advised decisions of the past. Locker is not the entire offense anymore, he has good college level talent around him. He needs to learn to trust his teammates more. When Locker developes better pocket pressence and more trust in his teammates then everything on offense will begin to click. Right now game situations are confusing, but become much more clearer when chemistry is born. Become something Jake and trust your teammates.

The kid played very well in his first season, though his passing game needed improvement. He didn’t get much of a chance to do anything last season. I think this could be his breakout year. That would be a good thing for us huh?

Try thinking of Jake as entering his RS soph year (which he might have been had he committed out of high school to a team with an existing solid QB). Now look at the team around him as young, and just emerging onto the D-1 scene, with real coaching for the first time in their lives. The future is just now opening before them.

Kinda changes your framework, huh?

We all suffer from these incredibly high expectations, which admittedly, are based upon the fantastic raw talent we’ve see in this kid. But if you try to pretend that he and his team are just taking the stage for the first time, allow for some growing pains, and revel in each success, it’ll be a helluva ride—like starting over as a virgin.

My good buddy and fantastic athlete (great wrestler but terrible soccer player) had the good fortune (?) to have played against Jake as a senior at Ferndale. My buddy played safety and got absolutely flattened by Mr. Locker (well downfield, typically). Talking with him about football helped to emphasize for me just how little emphasis the passing game had when Jake was QB’ing for Ferndale. He was an extremely high rated dual threat QB because he’s always had the arm strength, but I think it’s obvious to all of us how little his high school offense depended on his arm, leading him to develop “run first” instincts. Unfortunately, Ty et al were more than happy to throw the entire team on Jake’s impressive shoulders which led to slow development of Jake’s passing technique. I think this dynamic was ultimately detrimental to the Roy Lewis/Marcel Reese offenses in that I saw receivers of 2007 looking to block downfield rather than break for open space as a passing option.

With the new coaching staff dedicated to the Pro Style offensive set, I think we see incredible strides in the passing game, even if the O-Line is somewhat sub-par. With delayed routes from TE’s and TB’s and Jake’s proven ability to throw on the run, I don’t see an average set of Big Uglies being terribly detrimental to Husky offensive production in 2009. Go Dawgs!

I’m sure they’re going to try and bring a lot of pressure to try and get to Locker. When they do that we have to have the routes and plays to make them pay.

I’m sure we’ll have hot routes in prior to the LSU game. Not sure if we’ll have a decent screen in by then. We use to run a lot of good screens [see Whammy in Miami]. Ty and Lappano never dove into screen action. They needed to because when a defense brings the house, calling screen is a good call.

I definitely want to see some screens up and running prior to week 3 (USC). Week 1? The only way I see them getting in to start the season is if Locker and the receiving corp have beeen working on them during the summer. Takes time to develope screens that are deceptive. And if a screen is not deceptive you’ve got to throw it out of the playbook. That is the essense of the screen.