Utah Football: QB’s in 2014
Oct 12, 2013 Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Utah Utes fans and players celebrate a 27-21 victory over the Stanford Cardinal at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports
I thought we’d spend today looking at Utah’s QB situation, since it is the position that everyone looks at. As of today, these are the QB’s on the Utah roster (in alphabetical order).
Brandon Cox FR
Connor Manning FR
Adam Schulz SO
Matt Stewart SO
Micah Thomas FR
Travis Wilson SO
In addition to that Donavan Isom joins us from Louisiana in 2014 and Chase Hansen will return from his mission in 2015.
I think we can safely say a couple of things here. Matt Stewart didn’t have a number and if he is ever playing meaningful minutes at QB for Utah, we’ve got bigger problems. I would also guess Micah Thomas, who is a hell of an athlete will be changing positions.
Second, we know what Adam Schulz brings to the table. I think he’s a solid back up, a nice guy to have in your program, but lets all hope he moves down the depth chart.
And that brings us to the first million dollar question, What will the health of Travis Wilson be? Now, having talked to medical people, and not having heard what they actually saw in Travis’ scans, my thought is that it’s more likely he’ll play again than not. Better than 70% probably. Since they told us it wasn’t life threatening and he did not need a procedure, the best guess is that in a CT scan they saw old blood. In those scan’s a radiologist can tell the difference between old blood and new blood. In the angiogram, they saw the vein that was bleeding had healed. So if the scan in three months shows that the site is stable and nothing has changed, Travis plays again. And that is the likely outcome here.
Now for who backs Travis up. Next season Manning, Cox and Isom will be the QB’s behind him. Unless Isom comes in and just lights it up, I’m guessing the idea would be to bring him in an redshirt. I mean they did it with Manziel. That means Cox and Manning will fight for the backup spot, with Schulz in the mix somewhere. Now Cox did not have a good fall, and Manning really took to the playbook, hence Manning moving up the depth chart. But people in the know say that Brandon Cox was coming on over the last few weeks. So it looks like that battle will go on into the spring and fall. And if Wilson can’t go, it’s the battle for the starting job.
Also, and I don’t know what the chances of getting him are since a 100 other schools have offered, but Utah has an offer out to Randall Cunningham Jr. FWIW.
So ideally, the depth chart will be Wilson, Manning/Cox or Cox/Manning, Schulz and then a redshirt for Isom. 2015 would be the exact same except adding Chase Hansen to the mix. And 2016 would be Jr’s Manning and Cox, So.’s Isom and Hansen competing for the job. That’s a pretty solid QB situation for the next few years.