What we know and don’t know about Michigan State’s impending quarterback competition.
The point of this series of blog posts is pretty straight forward; to examine what we do and don’t know about each position group on the Michigan State football team.
It may seem hard to believe, but the college football season is–currently–scheduled to kick off in about three months. Time flies when you’re stuck inside. Whether or not Michigan State and the rest of the country play football this fall, or what that football looks like, is a conversation for another day. Today I want to start taking a deeper look at each position group on the team, broken down by what we know and what we don’t know. These will continue throughout the next couple of weeks until all of the positions are covered. Today we start with everyone’s favorite group: the quarterbacks.
What we know
Rocky Lombardi has the most game experience in the group, although those performances were up-and-down. Lombardi stepped in for an injured Brian Lewerke in 2018 and had a nice debut performance in a win over Purdue. After that it was a lot of shuffling between the clearly-injured Lewerke and the not-ready Lombardi. It certainly didn’t help that the rest of the offense was injured and the scheme was more likely to be laughed at than studied. Lombardi has seen plenty of game action and there’s certainly value to that, even if some of it was downright dreadful.
Theo Day was a highly-touted recruit and has yet to get a real opportunity. Day, a four-star recruit in the class of 2018, is going into his redshirt sophomore season with three meaningful snaps under his belt. On the third of those three–against Penn State in 2019–Day called the wrong play and was summarily benched. A victim of Mark Dantonio’s unwillingness to try something new unless legitimate trust had been built, Day is in desperate need of real reps. Sometimes the timing just doesn’t work out and quarterbacks have to wait longer to get on the field. Day has waited his turn and now he has his first real chance at a starting job.
Payton Thorne is a dual-threat quarterback that impressed on scout team in 2019. Thorne wasn’t super highly-touted, but was impressive enough as a recruit that Michigan State felt they needed to poach him away from Western Michigan prior to signing day in 2019. As a true freshman Thorne was relegated to scout team duties where he reportedly made a good impression. Thorne might be the biggest beneficiary of the regime change, as he would have been a distant third to start the QB competition had Dantonio stuck around for another year.
Noah Kim is a true freshman that was a plan C option for MSU in 2019. He’ll need some time. Kim has talent, but there are reasons he only had three division one offers coming out of high school. He’s still very slight and has to work on some of the finer points of playing quarterback. But he’s a good, playmaking athlete with a strong arm and that’s a pretty good base. He’ll need to develop physically and from a technical standpoint before he sees the field and that’s totally fine and expected. True freshman QBs don’t often see the field in college and the ones who do are usually top-tier prospects. Kim isn’t that, so I don’t anticipate seeing him in 2020.
What we don’t know
A lot. I don’t have much to add here, other than quarterback is one of the position groups with the most uncertainty surrounding it going into 2020. That’s less than ideal. However, if a team is going to be figuring stuff out at QB for a season, the first year of a new coaching staff is probably the best time to do that. The team–and its quarterbacks–will probably be taking some lumps in 2020 and that’s just fine.
Has Rocky Lombardi improved as a passer? I’ve said before that a smart coach could build a really good college football offense around Rocky Lombardi’s abilities as a runner. He’s a big, powerful kid in the mold–“IN THE MOLD” IS NOT MAKING A DIRECT COMPARISON–of Tim Tebow. I want to repeat and clarify even more . . . Rocky Lombardi’s running style is similar to Tim Tebow’s. They’re more fullback than tailback. I think Lombardi could be very successful with a lot of power read/inverted veer type plays. (These are option plays in which the QB either hands off to a fast guy running outside or keeps it himself to run up the middle, hence the “inverted” veer. On typical options the running back goes up the middle and the QB runs to the outside.) That type of offense built around Lombardi would interest me. The question then becomes can he throw any better than the last time we saw him? Lombardi has a very strong arm that was completely uncontrolled in 2018. His mechanics looked refined in spring of 2019, but we never got to see if that was a meaningful change because he didn’t really play in the fall. If Lombardi is a more capable passer, with more accuracy and the ability to throw passes at different speeds, he could be a very effective quarterback in Jay Johnson’s system.
Will Theo Day get a real shot and does he fit the system? Day should at the very least get a shot to compete for the job. That’s something he hasn’t had yet at MSU. I wonder how his skillset meshes with what MSU wants to do on offense moving forward. Day seems like a decent athlete, but that’s a far cry from the more dual-threat guys MSU seems to covet these days. Johnson catered his system to the stiff-as-hell Steven Montez in Colorado in 2019, so there’s evidence that can be done. Is Day good enough to warrant that? With Montez Colorado had a multi-year starter going into his senior season. He was the only option. That’s not the case here. However, Day could be promising enough that MSU wants to build around him for the next two or three years. He’ll only be a redshirt sophomore in 2020 and there’s plenty of talent in him. If it doesn’t work out in his favor, Day might be the betting favorite of which of these four QBs will transfer after the 2020 season.
Is Payton Thorne secretly the best option? There’s a groundswell growing behind Payton Thorne as QB1 for 2020. Part of that must be attributed to the unknown factor. It’s the same as a prospect in baseball. The excitement of what could be far outweighs what the actuality is. Fans are excited about Thorne because they haven’t seen him be bad. But still, there are reasons to be enthusiastic about his potential. As mentioned above, he impressed in scout team work in 2019. His teammates and former coaches noted his ability to make plays with both his feet and arm. New offensive coordinator Jay Johnson said there were positives to take from his 2019 practice film. He’s also a redshirt freshman, which means he has the chance to learn on the fly for a season, take some lumps with the rest of the team, and then be ready to take off in 2021, not that anyone on the MSU staff would classify 2020 as a rebuilding year. Buuuut it is. Thorne may not be the best QB among the group once the season rolls around, but he may have the highest upside and that could be enough to win him the job.
What impact COVID-19 will have on the QB competition. Folks, I don’t know if you know this, but we’re in unprecedented times. Don’t believe me? Just turn on your TV and wait for the first set of commercials. CEO’s from Capital One, State Farm, and Burger King will be there to remind you just how unprecedented these times are. That said, COVID is obviously going to impact MSU’s QB competition. It already has with the cancelation of spring ball. The teams returning the most experience in 2020 will be the ones that can best withstand time apart due to the coronavirus. Michigan State lost a ton of experienced players, got a new head coach and most of a new coaching staff, and is breaking in a new quarterback this season. Big yikes. Does COVID cause the staff to be more conservative with their decision at QB? The thought pattern of “Well, Lombardi has at least played some college football so he should probably start,” is a plausible one. The other end of the spectrum is also plausible. “Hey, we’re going through a pandemic. This isn’t year one. This is year zero. Who the hell cares what happens this year? Let’s get all the young talent as many reps as we can and build for 2021,” could be the path forward as well. Given those two options, I think I prefer the second one. Is any reasonable Michigan State fan going to lose his or her mind if MSU plays a ton of young guys and goes 4-8 this season? The goal posts for success in Mel Tucker’s first season are going to be moving all over the place based on how COVID-19 plays out. Hell, there might not even be a season. I’d rather the new regime take some wild hacks hoping to hit a few home runs as opposed to aiming for singles and occasionally hitting a double. We will see if the QB competition reflects that.
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