Running The Backup and Crashing

Without their starting QBs, Oklahoma and Oregon self-destructed while Hawai'i is still rolling

College Football Preview: Week 13

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Top 25 Game Previews ----- THURSDAY ----- No. 11 USC at No. 7 Arizona State ----- FRIDAY ----- No. 17 Boise State at No. 14 Hawai'i ----- SATURDAY ----- No. 3 Missouri at No. 2 Kansas No. 20 Connecticut at No. 4 West Virginia No. 6 Georgia at Georgia Tech No. 8 Virginia Tech at No. 16 Virginia Oklahoma State at No. 10 Oklahoma Florida State at No. 12 Florida Miami at No. 15 Boston College No. 21 Clemson at South Carolina Utah at No. 23 BYU No. 24 Cincinnati at Syracuse Alabama at No. 25 Auburn  Team Capsules  ---------- Air Force Akron Alabama Arizona Arizona St Arkansas Arkansas St Army Auburn BYU Ball St Baylor Boise St Boston College Bowling Green Buffalo California Central Mich Cincinnati Clemson Colorado Colorado St Connecticut Duke East Carolina Eastern Mich Florida Florida St Fresno St Georgia Georgia Tech Hawaii Houston Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Iowa St Kansas Kansas St Kent State Kentucky LSU La Tech Louisville Marshall Maryland Memphis Miami Fla Miami Ohio Michigan Michigan St Middle Tenn Minnesota Mississippi Mississippi St Missouri NC State Navy Nebraska Nevada New Mexico New Mexico St North Carolina North Texas Northern Ill Northwestern Notre Dame Ohio Ohio State Oklahoma Oklahoma St Oregon Oregon St Penn St Pittsburgh Purdue Rice Rutgers SMU San Diego St San Jose St South Carolina South Florida Southern Miss Stanford Syracuse TCU Temple Texas Texas A&M Texas Tech Toledo Troy St Tulane Tulsa UAB UCF UCLA UL-Lafayette UL-Monroe UNLV USC UTEP Utah Utah St Vanderbilt Virginia Virginia Tech Wake Forest Washington Washington St West Virginia Western Mich Wisconsin Wyoming ----------

Nov. 20, 2007

By Carolyn Braff

CSTV.com

	Carolyn Braff Carolyn is an assistant editor and writer for CSTV.com. E-mail here!

        ---   Column Archive   --- SOFTBALL 01/24: Modeling The Right Role FOOTBALL 01/15: Getting Somewhere 01/07: The Home Team vs. The Road Warrior 01/01: Singing The Maize And Blues 12/27: Up-Downs For Texas 12/18: Lying In Wait 12/11: Warrior Green: The New Boise Blue 12/8: Best Of The Rest 12/4: A Winning Preparation 11/27: Easy Road To The Big Easy 11/20: Running The Backup and Crashing 11/13: Least Common Denominators 11/6: Throw The Ducks A Bone 10/30: Boise Is Back 10/23: They've Got Guts 10/16: Kansas Full of Cupcakes 10/9: Pay Attention To The Men Behind The Curtain 10/2: Not-Such-Surprises 9/25: Irish Inflation 9/18: The Star and The Slump 9/11: Four's No Crowd 9/4: Unmatched Matchups 8/22: No Peterson, No Problem For Oklahoma 8/22: Catch Him If You Can 8/21: Running A Reverse 8/20: Big 12 Conference Preview 8/8: Still No Cigar 8/8: Going and Coming 8/8: C-USA Conference Preview 6/17: Pennsylvania Wins Not-So-Big 33 LACROSSE 5/5: Tigers Limp Into Playoffs 4/7: Home, Sweet Home 3/3: Hoyas Hold On For Another Win 2/16: Accelerating Development 2/15: One More Chance For This Mid 2/12: Wildcats Favored For Three in a Row BASKETBALL 3/21: Winona State Still Streaking in Postseason 3/19: Cruising to Perfection 1/14: Penn Has The Tempo To a T 1/12: Columbia Thwarts The Three, Downs Princeton FENCING 3/25: A Rematch to Be Remembered 3/23: Columbia Hopes to Take Two CROSS COUNTRY 9/7: Luck Be A Lambie 9/4: Bringing Charm To The Farm 9/4: Breaking In 9/3: Room to Run GOLF 6/13: Looking The Part

Even in this topsy-turvy year of college football, the great teams are still built around great quarterbacks. Running back Jonathan Stewart puts up big numbers for Oregon, but the offense runs on the arms and legs of Dennis Dixon. Oklahoma has a triple-threat run game, but Sam Bradford is the most efficient passer in the nation. Take the signal-caller out of the equation, and these teams are toast, lost against the likes of Arizona and Texas Tech.

Unless the team in question is Hawai'i. The Warriors have played two full games this season without star quarterback Colt Brennan, and backup Tyler Graunke has managed to do what Brady Leaf and Joey Halzle could not - lead his team to victory.

How? He came prepared.

Before taking the reins of Oklahoma's offense on Saturday, Halzle had spent little time with the first unit.

"He's been very limited in games," coach Bob Stoops said. "Even in practice, twos don't really get the snaps that the ones do. For the time he's had through 10 games, I thought he stepped up and did some decent things."

In the Big 12, decent does not cut it. Not even against Texas Tech.

With Bradford under center, the Sooners held a 7-3 lead in the first quarter and everything appeared to be in order. That is, until the redshirt freshman suffered a concussion that pulled him out of the game and took the Sooners' offense out with him.

Against the nation's No. 50 defense, Oklahoma's No. 4 scoring offense managed just 27 points, 16 fewer than their season average. Chalk some of that up to Halzle's not-quite-Bradford completion percentage - the starter connects on 70 percent of his passes, while Halzle was 24-of-41 (58 percent) with two touchdowns and an interception.

But it wasn't as if the JUCO transfer came to Lubbock expecting to play. Halzle enrolled at Oklahoma in the spring 2006 semester and served as a backup last season, completing all of one pass on the year. This fall, he lost the position battle to Bradford and had attempted 10 career passes - completing five of them - before taking over the offense in a Big 12 game with the stakes suddenly Texas-sized.

"Your backup never has the number of snaps the other guy has," Stoops said. "But Joey did a good job of hanging in there and continuing to play."

At Oklahoma, as is the case at Oregon, time in the system does not mean time with the offense.

When Dixon's already-torn ACL gave out in the first quarter against Arizona, the Ducks never recovered. Leaf came into the game with far more experience than Halzle, and with the coaching staff well aware of Dixon's injury status, the senior should have been prepared. But the Oregon offense is designed for a mobile quarterback, which Leaf is not.

More specifically, the Oregon offense is designed for Dixon, and it does not function when just anyone takes over, even with two weeks notice.

"It's obviously not a happy deal," coach Mike Bellotti said, furnishing a candidate for the understatement of the year.

Oregon's offense, ranked No. 5 in the nation, was feeble against Arizona's No. 63 scoring defense, and not just because Leaf completed only 22-of-46 passes with two interceptions. On a week when he knew he had a good chance to play, the backup was out of practice and asked to run a system designed for someone else.

Oklahoma and Oregon were not alone in the QB-goes-down, takes-team-with-him saga. Michigan's Chad Henne struggled with a shoulder injury against Ohio State, throwing most of his passes high or wide and nearly all of them off-target. He sat out an entire series in the third quarter to deal with the pain and finished the afternoon 11-of-34 for 68 yards, getting no help from his supporting cast as the Wolverines managed 91 yards of total offense.

"You could tell in warm-ups he was not throwing the ball like he was two weeks ago," coach Lloyd Carr said. "He tried. He took some punches out there."

Hawai'i took its punches, too, but threw the one that counted, relying on the arm (and experience) of their backup quarterback to maintain a perfect record.

Dan Kelly kicked a 45-yard field goal to seal the Warriors' 10th win, but it was Graunke who kept Hawai'i alive. Brennan played just one snap in the first quarter and one in the second after sustaining a concussion in the previous week's game, and Hawai'i had the confidence in its backup to let him go out and get the win.

"Everybody thought it's just Colt Brennan - we have a lot of great players," head coach June Jones said. "Graunke is a gamer. He plays well under pressure and he's a competitive kid. He did just what he practiced to do."

The key word in that phrase? Practice.

While Halzle and Leaf idled with backup teams and bench warmers, Graunke was taking snaps with the first unit. Graunke also benefited from stepping in for Brennan on Sept. 22, when the starter was sidelined with a sprained ankle, and seeing significant playing time as an underclassman.

The plug-and-chug system June Jones runs at Hawai'i undoubtedly makes life easier on the quarterback than the Dixon-shaped mold Leaf attempted to squeeze himself into in Eugene. But while Oregon, Oklahoma and Michigan are feeling the bitter sting of embarrassing conference losses, the Warriors can take that plug-and-chug formula all the way to an undefeated season, should they defeat Boise State.

Perhaps the Warriors are on to something with their involuntary QB rotation. This week's quarterback casualties were far from an anomaly - just ask West Virginia, which lost its only game of the season after Pat White suffered a game-ending thigh bruise against USF. USC and Cal can also commiserate, but the stories of Oregon and Oklahoma are most painful because the national championship was involved.

Should teams start sacrificing their starter's precious practice hours in favor of giving reps to the backup? Certainly not. But there is a way to work in the second-teamer without forfeiting wins. An inexperienced backup, or an offense designed for just one man, can ruin national title aspirations just as quickly as a torn ACL.

The moral of this story? Prepare your backup. You never know when you'll need him to save your season.