You can make a case for either guy at quarterback, and Thomas will be a perfectly good starter with the staff and his teammates behind him, but it drives me crazy when people have a take that starts with how unimpressive Costa was at UCLA. Anyone remember how overmatched and ineffectual Masoli looked in his first several games as starter, going back to 2008? Until the drive in the Stanford game he was exasperating. In fact, the first three games of 2009 he was utterly awful again.
My point is, if you judged most quarterbacks, including Dennis Dixon in his sophomore and junior years, on their first game or couple of games you will make a very distorted evaluation. Remember DD at Cal in 2006? Not pretty. A quarterback has to get comfortable in his offense and his abilities to play his best, and no matter who starts in 2010, there will be growing pains. It’s imperative that Duck fans understand this, and stay behind both quarterbacks regardless of who the coaches choose to be 1A. Booing and backbiting and running the guy down is a foolproof recipe for 8-4 or 7-5. If you want to negate the best home field advantage this side of Texas, boo your own starting qb.
You can say Thomas will start or Costa should start, but please, don’t start off with some bombastic know-it-all salvo about the UCLA game. Costa was fresh off knee surgery, starting in an emergency, and he won. The pick he threw was one of the most athletic plays I’ve ever seen, by an unblocked blitzer. I think the spring game is a much more accurate depiction of Nate Costa’s upside as a starter. He’d be a perfectly effective and efficient quarterback for this team, and so will DT. It’s crazy how we can fume and obsess over an offense that’s produced about 38 points and 5500 yards a year for the last three years. It’s as though we have some irrational fear that Frost, Greatwood, Helfrich and Kelly have suddenly forgotten how to coach without our help.
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