the QB battle still undecided, was clarity ever a realistic goal?
An unprecedented strategy didn't render a clear outcome. But that doesn't mean it was the wrong way to do it.
Ole Miss faces its first true test of the 2022 season on Saturday in Atlanta, and as of this writing, there is little public-facing clarity on the quarterback situation. The competition has lingered beyond longer than most expected, and though I think it is more settled than what is being said publicly, it is an interesting layer of uncertainty to a team we already very know little about through eight quarters of football.
I feel as if I have talked about this ad nauseam on the podcast. Since it’s been a while since we’ve last met here (you’ll have to forgive me for that. I went from moving states to moving into an actual permanent living situation here. All settled now and two pieces written and loaded for the next two days), I figured we’d examine everything we know, everything we don’t know and why this has been handled the way it has.
How did we get here?
Last Saturday was the second in-season chapter of this prolonged quarterback battle. Though I wasn’t necessarily expecting to still not have a starter named 36 hours before the team’s third game, I cannot say I am overly surprised it has extended into the season. When Jaxson Dart announced his intent to transfer to Ole Miss in late January, and without having the benefit of knowing how spring practice and preseason camp would play out, the general idea of this competition bleeding into the regular season was more than plausible. Both guys are teenagers. Both are unfinished products in terms of what they are as prospects. Both have limited game experience and both are talented players.
I even wrote about the idea of it going into the season during the spring, but eventually recanted on the idea (sort of) because of Lane Kiffin being pretty adamant about not wanting that to happen. In hindsight, I suppose there are a lot of things Kiffin wants and does not want with regard to shaping this 2022 team into a winner, but that also doesn’t mean they will come to fruition. So, while you might be perplexed as to how this is playing out, the sheer idea of a competition involving two young quarterbacks with a new offensive coordinator lingering this long isn’t really that surprising.
An unprecedented strategy did not bring clarity
Once Kiffin decided this would indeed go into the season, he went with a somewhat unprecedented strategy by giving both Luke Altmyer and Dart an opportunity to start a game. This was of course made possible by the Rebels playing a non-power five foe and an FCS opponent to start the season. The only other example of this I have ever heard of happened simultaneously. Jim Harbaugh did the same thing at Michigan this year. Harbaugh’s decision got more attention because of a bizarre declaration that this strategy was somehow biblical, giving further credence to the theory that he spikes his beloved drink of choice, milk, with LSD.
Harbaugh’s weirdness aside, it’s certainly an interesting and uncommon way to handle a competition of this magnitude. My initial reaction was skepticism: how can you fairly gauge Dart against a Sun Belt program that, while currently in a down period, has beaten the likes of LSU and Nebraska in the last four years, with a Central Arkansas team comprised of players that would struggle to beat Ole Miss’ scout team?
The results didn’t exactly bring clarity, either. Dart went 18-27 for 154 yards with a touchdown and an interception against Troy. Though the end of his debut was underwhelming, I thought it was actually a pretty decent showing upon watching the game a second time. The first half of that game was almost impossible to evaluate. Ole Miss ran wild on a hapless Trojans defense and there weren’t very many opportunities for Dart to throw the football down the field. In the second half, Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. elected to throw the ball more frequently despite Troy playing the same soft zone coverage concepts that allowed the Rebels to pummel them on the ground in the first 30 minutes. Dart made a couple of nice throws. He made a poor read on the incompletion before the touchdown pass to Malik Heath (on the exact same play call, too) and an even worse decision later in the game that resulted in a red zone interception.
“Those throws don’t work,” Kiffin said after the game. “Particularly not in this league. I have told him that. He knows that.”
The end of Dart’s debut skewed the perception of what it actually was, which is strangely on-brand for him. I wrote a long story about that very thing the week before last.
Then you had Altmyer, who finished 6-13 for 90 yards with two touchdowns and an interception in less than two quarters of football against a Central Arkansas team that should be thanking their lucky stars they don’t play in the MAIS. It was a stat line that mirrored the strangeness of the game as a whole. Altmyer under-threw a ball to Mingo down the sideline on the first drive that resulted in a huge gain because of Mingo’s athleticism against a cornerback who might go unnoticed at Jackson Academy. After a touchdown on the opening series, Altmyer then went nearly 11 minutes without conducting another real drive because Central Arkansas’ punt protection was so bad it should warrant an immediate motors skills test for all 11 men on the field.
Once the first-quarter weirdness subsided, Altmyer made several quality throws, particularly over the middle of the field. He delivered the football like a guy who knew the offense well enough to immediately solve his first read. To an admittedly untrained eye, his decision making in some of the run-pass option concepts was a mixed bag, like everything else with both he and Dart in this competition. Then, at some point in the second quarter, Altmyer hurt his shoulder. He started the game by completing six of his first seven throws, then missed on six in a row — culminating in an interception that confirmed his physically-compromised state due to the lack of velocity and accuracy on a fairly rudimentary throw.
Dart replaced him on the next drive and went 10-15 for 182 yards and two touchdowns in what was essentially two quarters plus a couple of minutes. Altmyer never returned to the game. Dart missed a couple of throws in his second outing, but also crafted a handful of pretty deep balls that flashed the tantalizing talent that made him the 2020 Gatorade National High School Football Player of the Year.
With the season eight quarters old, do you really feel like you have clarity on who is the best option based on those eight quarters alone? To be clear, that’s not the same thing as asking you if you have a hunch or opinion as to who the best option is. I am asking whether you can determine anything substantial based solely on these two games. My answer is no, and that begs another question below.
Even if it was the goal, was clarity ever a realistic outcome?
While I do buy the idea that Kiffin hoped that this strategy would bring clarity to this situation, even if his initial hope was that it would never get to this point. But I also have a hard time believing that a guy as smart as Kiffin felt confident that these two games would provide a concrete answer as to who the quarterback of this team is, even if he wished for it.
Does that make it a bad strategy?
The concept of letting each candidate start a game with the other coming on in relief was heavily scrutinized, and I mentioned my own initial skepticism of it, but I also know what I do not know. Situations like this are why I so badly wanted Ryan Buchanan to become a weekly podcast guest. He’s been through a quarterback competition, in the summer of 2015 against Chad Kelly. However close you choose to believe that competition was, he still went through the process. I asked his opinion on the mater on last week’s show. His eyes lit up and immediately exclaimed that he loved this idea and that he wish he was afforded a similar opportunity when he played.
Why? To paraphrase, Buchanan liked the idea of each guy getting their own game (or the bulk of one) to perform freely, without having to worry about how many possessions each player will get in his allotted half, or the lack of rhythm that comes with alternating drives, or the pressure to perform in the face of being pulled in favor of the other guy standing on a sideline. Buchanan is a believer that the more traditional in-season quarterback competition scenarios often work to the detriment of each individual quarterback and doesn’t paint an accurate picture as to what kind of player each guy is. It’s not totally dissimilar to having your boss standing over your right shoulder at your desk with your potential replacement flanking your left shoulder. When you give each guy the better part of a game, one missed read, dropped pass or blown blocking assignment — that can be the difference between a first down, punt or another possession — isn’t as significant as it would be if the coaching staff was trying to cram equal playing time into each of the two games, both of which quickly devolved into a farce because of the lopsided matchup and score, coupled with an array of turnovers and special teams gaffes.
Buchanan also cited Kiffin’s maturity and experience with developing quarterbacks, as opposed to his relatively inexperienced coach, Hugh Freeze. In other words, the Jackson Prep legend was preaching the gospel of Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers: just trust the process, man.
The other piece of Buchanan’s case in favor of Kiffin’s philosophy is what ripped my skepticism to shreds. How can you really tell anything from Dart and Altmyer shredding inferior defenses? So what if one plays better than the other in a pair of blowouts? Buhcanan smartly pointed out that a lot of the things that both of these guys are being evaluated on are things that basically none of us in the stands or watching on TV can pick up on. Thats not denigrating anyone’s football acumen, it’s just incredibly hard to do unless you’ve played at a high level, in a similar offense, or somehow stumbled your way into obtaining a copy of Ole Miss’ playbook. If the latter is the case, send me an email. We can extort both Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr and split the profits.
What Buchanan is referring to are the subtle reads within an offense that hinges heavily on run-pass options and perimeter match ups. To use a hypothetical example, let’s say Dart runs a first down RPO play that results in a handoff to Quinshon Judkins, who runs up the right side for eight yards. To everyone watching in real time, that’s a hell of a gain on first down. But that doesn’t mean it was the correct read. Perhaps the Rebels had three receivers to two corners and a shaded linebacker on the left side and Dart missed it, or the linebackers scraped inward, leaving tight end Michael Trigg wide open in the middle of the field (think of the Bo Wallace to Evan Engram little eight-yard dump pass you saw so many times through those years). A favorable result does not always mean the decision making was sound. There are likely dozens of examples of this within this scheme, and I am nowhere near smart enough to even pretend to try to tell you what they are. The point is that there is an element to this competition that is nearly invisible despite the mechanics of it being plain sight.
But now, as we sit here, nearing the eve of the first real game of the season, it’s pretty clear that clarity wasn’t achieved. I guess it’s possible that Kiffin is putting up one hell of a smoke screen in preparation for a Georgia Tech club that could end up being one of the five worst power five teams in the sport. That unlikely alternative aside, it warrants revisiting the previously posed question: was substantial clarity ever a realistic outcome in these eight quarters of football?
Was it even the goal? That doesn’t seem realistic. But again, I, nor any of you, sit in the film rooms with the two candidates. But I have a theory.
Maybe Kiffin was looking for confirmation more so than clarity. Maybe the transfer quarterback (and former national high school player of the year) he landed doesn’t have as firm of a grip on the intricacies of the offense as the rising sophomore in his second year in the program. It’s pretty understandable. Dart has endured a lot of change in a short amount of time (as I covered here two weeks ago at length), both in life and in football. He’s barely 19 years old. Altmyer got to sit behind Matt Corral for a year. It’s also worth mentioning Altmyer was an early enrollee and went through spring practice in 2021, too.
Perhaps Kiffin aggressively pursued Dart for the tantalizing upside he’s flashed in a handful of deep balls and extended plays in the small sample size we have to work with — the same skillset that allowed him to thrive despite being engulfed in a sea of dysfunction at USC — with the intention of him the starting quarterback. But Dart has yet to separate himself partially due to an inability to digest a full portion of the playbook in a truncated amount of time, a lack of chemistry with a new receiving corps, and the fact that he’s learning his second offense in less than a year. Again, this is all just a theory and isn’t based on anything sourced, but I’ll ask you again: who do you think starts on Saturday afternoon? Whatever your answer is, have these two games changed your opinion?
The Altmyer injury on Saturday was the latest subplot in a saga that is becoming harder to understand by the day. He was unable to go back in the game after the interception midway through the second quarter. Kiffin said he asked Altmyer if he could go and that Altmyer told him "that he could, but that he was not 100 percent.” I also found it interesting that Kiffin said in the postgame presser that the medical staff did not remove Altmyer from the game. That, coupled with the bizarre media relations update during the game stating that Altmyer was removed from the game due to the interception and not because of an injury, makes for a head-scratching anecdote.
According to friends in the press box, that update was eventually walked back. Was it simply a communications blunder? Or was it an unintentional tell? I am not doubting whether or not Altmyer was injured. That much was as plain as day. And I’ll acknowledge that I may be reading too much into a simple miscommunication, but should it be dismissed altogether? How does that happen? Or, maybe a better question, how often have you heard of that happening? Altmyer has practiced all week, according to Kiffin and “should be fine.”
I don’t know what to make of that, or if there is anything to make of it at all, but it’s also not really the point. The point is that achieving clarity through eight quarters of football never really seemed likely, and that the more likely purpose extending this competition in the way it was extended was to confirm a hunch. It’s hard to fathom Kiffin not having some sort of lean regarding who his quarterback will be entering the regular season — or, really, entering fall camp. This method was inarguably the fairest way to conduct business, too. Whether or not it confirmed the hypothetical gut feeling remains unknown as of this writing. I just have a hard time seeing how anything that happened in these first two games would serve as a foundation to go against the initial instinct. And it’s far more likely that initial instinct favored the candidate who started the first game against the better opponent — the one who Kiffin sought out as a priority to land from the time he entered the portal and the offseason began.
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We’ve got plenty of podcasts out
Weldon Rotenberg returned from a European vacation to evaluate the Rebels through two games.
Here’s last week’s pod in which Buchanan made the case for Kiffin’s ‘one start each’ strategy.
Michael Borkey and I reacted to the Central Arkansas win and much of what we just covered above.
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