Bobby Petrino has never been one to mince words.
“We didn’t come to paint.”
“There was a lady there…”
But one question late in the presser stood out.
It was about the quarterback competition between Max Johnson and Conner Weigman.
Petrino acknowledged that the competition is healthy and is making both players better, especially Weigman, and then added some of his own recollection.
“He (Weigman) really reminds me of the backup quarterback I had at Arkansas, Tyler Wilson,” Petrino said. “Ryan Mallett was the starter and he could do everything. He had such a great understanding of the game. Tyler wasn’t quite there mentally, so we just put these 25 plays together in a package and we knew if he had to come in, these were the plays we were running.”
“That gave him a chance to understand what he was and what he could do, and it gave us a chance to move the football.”
Not sure if that is a shot at Wilson’s intelligence or if he just wasn’t as much of a ‘football guy’ as the late Mallett was, being the son of a coach.
By the way, that strategy worked in 2010 against Auburn when Mallett went down with a shoulder injury and Wilson came in and lit up the eventual national champions in Jordan-Hare Stadium even in defeat.
Either way, it was eye-opening that Petrino went back that far in the memory bank to the Aggie media to expound on the quarterback situation.