Aug. 17, 2015
The second installment of Mick McGrane's season outlook focuses on the quarterbacks.
The Aztec Offense
If there is a single constant in the game of football, it's that winning without a healthy/proven quarterback can be an exercise in exasperation. Such was the case with the Aztecs in 2014, when an injury to senior starter Quinn Kaehler forced SDSU to turn to true freshman Nick Bawden. Predictably, production in the passing game significantly dipped as the Aztecs finished 10th among the Mountain West's 12 teams in passing offense.
As such, identifying SDSU's liability was not exactly a time-intensive study for opposing defenses, which simply crowded the line of scrimmage to eliminate the team's true home-run threat --- running back Donnel Pumphrey.
"When Quinn Kaehler got hurt and couldn't play last season, we really struggled at the quarterback position," said head coach Rocky Long. "And when he did play after he got hurt, he wasn't nearly as effective as he was before he got injured. It limited what we could do on offense and it gave opponents some advantages knowing that we were going to have to run it a lot. But it also proved that we could run it, because other teams were trying to stop it and we were still effective doing it."
How effective? The Aztecs finished No. 26 in the nation and third in the MW in rushing offense, grinding out an average of 216.1 yards per game. SDSU, which may arguably possess the deepest corps of running backs in the history of the program, returns six starters on offense, including three of its five offensive linemen.
QUARTERBACKS
Returning players with starting experience: None
If this position proved a concern for the Aztecs in 2014, it is now an arms race.
Maxwell Smith and Jake Rodrigues, a pair of transfers who have spent time under center at Kentucky and Oregon, respectively, add substantial experience to a competition that also includes talented redshirt freshman Christian Chapman.
The 6-5, 235-pound Smith, a senior from Granada Hills who threw for more than 3,000 yards with 21 touchdowns against SEC defenses at Kentucky before undergoing shoulder surgery prior to the 2014 season, emerged from spring drills as No. 1 on the depth chart.
Chapman, a former standout at Carlsbad High, heads into fall camp ranked No. 2 on the depth chart, while Rodrigues, a sophomore who played in seven games for Oregon as a redshirt freshman, is currently No. 3.
"I think we'll make a fairly quick decision (on a starter)," Long said. "The positive is that we have three guys who could be our starting quarterback, so we have much more depth than we've had in the past. One of them (Smith) has experience being in a "big-time" program in the SEC for two years before he got hurt. One of them (Chapman) is a redshirt freshman who knows our system probably better than the other two, and (Rodrigues) had experience at Oregon. But we've got to decide pretty quickly who the top two guys are so that they get enough reps."
Tomorrow: The wide receivers