Nate Johnson the future of the team?

[chinngiskhaan]

I gotta say it. If Nate was good enough to be the guy to take us to the next level of football success, you’d think he would be good enough to beat out Bryson Barnes… Right? Clearly the coaches aren’t sold on his ability to be a QB at this level, otherwise he would have played.

Hopefully he gets there eventually… He clearly isn’t there right now.

[UteFanatic]

You never know about a player until they get a shot under the lights. The coaches don’t always get it right. Just like when they started Brewer over Rising last year when that was obviously a terrible decision in hindsight.

I’m frustrated because we know what Bryson is, and he was never going to lead Utah to a victory in that game. I would rather the inexperienced, yet athletically elite player with a high ceiling get a shot.

[Tednab]

Need to start playing these players .. Hiding them for the sake of “redshirting” them is BS .. don’t have the luxury of that any more

[EagleMountainUte]

That literally is the next step. A lot of these top teams bring in guys and they are impact guys. Utah has a family mentality but also you gotta earn it.
It won’t change under Whitt. I mean guys like Clark come in and make impacts. But Trust is a big part of the culture. Which is usually earned.

[Tednab]

And I agree with that by and large .. However it was painfully obvious barns wasn’t gonna get it done .. give Johnson a crack at it

[EagleMountainUte]

Or you send NJ out there and he gets injured. I just don’t think the players or coaches trust NJ. Clearly the Oline gave up and Barnes had quite a few free hits on him. Less than ideal for sure.

[No]

I don’t particularly think it’s a matter of him not having the abilities to beat out Barnes. In the off-season QB2 battle it was really just between JJ and Barnes. The coaches made it clear early on that it would be one of those two based on experience with the program and offense. With Barnes getting the nod just based on experience over JJ. At least that’s what the coaches said was the deciding factor. I don’t think Nate ever had a chance to earn QB2 throughout the year as Barnes’ experience was the reason he was there as a game manager and Nate was turned into a gimmick package after JJ moved from QB3 to RB. If the coaches had a straight up QB battle and threw out “experience” being the main qualifier then there’s no way Barnes is QB1 next year over Nate or Rose just on ability. We can’t get by with a game manager QB. From my outside perspective, they went with Barnes as a game manager because he was similar in many ways to rising, and you don’t want a completely different offensive system between QB1 and QB2. Think Lamar and Huntly in this context. Where Nate would probably be quite a change to the offensive scheme after he had been only practicing his limited gimmick package. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nate got the nod in the off-season and the entire offensive scheme changed to match his ability next year.

[Extra Medium]

Don’t discount Rose. The coaches are really high on him and what he did with the scout team this year. We’ve also got another 4 star QBs coming in. No guarantees for anyone if cam decides to try the NFL.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Glover moves on. With JJ embracing RB1 Glover is relegated to a lesser roll behind him. It would suck to lose him because we saw how important the depth is at RB this year. Hope he decides to stick around and compete.

[DataUte]

Agree. Even with talent or ability, Rising was getting #1 reps and Barnes #2, so only scraps or special plays for NJ. Still think it’s Johnson or Rose competing for QB1 and Barnes probably either is 2 or moves to 3 or see if he wants to try a different position. But schemes will be mich different for Johnson (or Rose) but there just weren’t enough reps to go around to just put Nate in and expect much.

[Author]

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