Was this year’s ZT as good as we want to be in the position? Heck no. That shouldn’t be arguable. Is there every chance that, having been forced in as a true freshman with no backup behind him he could be better as years go on? Of course there is.
But improvement isn’t guaranteed either. So what do we have in the QB room to push him and to start if he doesn’t get better? We have Roberson, but you can’t count on someone coming off knee surgery to be near 100% by the start of next year. Maybe, maybe not. And, while we know Roberson won the job in camp, we don’t know how far ahead of ZT he was. We have Millen, who was pushed out of the QB room at Oregon, didn’t win the job at a FCS school and then was unable to throw beyond the level of a high school QB this year. Might his arm be totally better when he recovers from his second shoulder surgery? Possibly, but given his prior record and what we saw, you absolutely can’t count on that. And then we have Tyler Phommachanh, who incredibly the press really hasn’t pushed Mora on as this season wore on. Is he simply viewed as not a QB by the staff? Was he never recovered from the knee enough that playing was a real possibility this year? We have no clue. But that he didn’t warm up either when ZT had to be pulled to be calmed down in the 1st Q or when ZT hurt himself in the 4th Q tells us that it’s clearly one or the other, because look — you can’t rationally think Millen this year looked better than Tyler Phommachanh did last year. It can’t be that Tyler Phommachanh is viewed as a QB, could have played but Millen was just the better back up when ZT sat.
So the point is that, in this QB room today, we don’t have one QB who you can count on pushing ZT when camp opens in August, much less spring ball. Lewis, if the rumors are true and he’s coming, gives us at least one other option. Do we need a second portal QB beyond that? That depends on what the staff thinks of Tyler Phommachanh and what the medical prognoses are on the other three. But reognize that for a program like ours, it’s one thing to get a guy like Lewis (who did have reasonable success for one year on a P-5 level) to come here and compete, but it’s harder to get the second guy once Lewis is already here.
And if ZT wins the job again, I’ll assume its because he shows improvement and will be better and, as I keep saying, I’ll be fine with that AS LONG AS HE HAS TO GET BETTER TO WIN THE JOB. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist yesterday to see that if Marion and Ross come back healthy, even if we don’t get the big #1 target at WR it will be far easier to get receivers open and YAC than it was this year.
