Arizona Football Coach Rodriguez does not rule out playing 2-3 quarterbacks this season

The Arizona Football team will take on Houston this Saturday, but who will be the quarterback?

The Arizona Football coaching staff has an interesting problem on their hands, do they start Brandon Dawkins or do they start Khalil Tate at quarterback next game or for the rest of the season for that matter.

Coach Rod usually tells the media that he feels there is competition at every position including quarterback for the start each week. I guess it’s a great problem to have, two quarterbacks that you could legitimately start and a couple more extremely eager to prove themselves. Each one is different. The Wildcats proved they could win a game by playing three quarterbacks in one game, but their opponent was NAU, not USC.

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The consensus among fans seems to be that either Brandon Dawkins needs to read the options longer and pass the ball more. Or, try Kahlil Tate for an entire game because he can throw accurately and is not afraid to try. He can run the ball like a mac truck as well.

But does it have to be like that? Why not choose the best quarterback for the opponent? If the opponent cannot stop the run, play Dawkins, if they cannot stop the pass, play Tate. Also, if the opponent is great at both either throw in a third quarterback, the opponent hasn’t seen, or change the quarterbacks throughout the game.

There are a few reasons you wouldn’t want to do this. One is that one quarterback will not come out of the season with a great stat line. If you aren’t playing in half of the games, you cannot rack up yardage, thus getting to the NFL will be a little harder. But more and more the NFL seems to be looking at potential and not necessarily experience like the NBA.

I think they should! Jared Geoff was a starter, and he proved that it is very hard to be a great NCAA quarterback, then get picked up by a team who desperately needs you but has no O-Line, and folks think you are a flop. The mindset needs to change in my opinion.

On this seasons Hard Knocks series, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers told one of the players he was older and more experienced, but they were going with the younger rookie who has more upside. What? Drawing conclusions too early in an athletes career, on potential alone, can also be silly, but it comes down to money for the NFL. I was flabbergasted that they did not go for a proven player. Proven costs money.

I asked Coach Rod on the Pac-12 Teleconference Call this past week if he would consider an unorthodox approach and not select one quarterback to play the entire season, but plan to play multiple quarterbacks. Here is what he had to say:

“Yeah I’ve had several times in the past, I’ve had two quarterbacks that we felt good with and played both of them, I don’t treat that position much different than any other really, but, the only difference is that you can’t play two at the same time generally. But if we have two or three ready to win with, that’s a good thing; I’ll play them all.”

The top three quarterbacks Rich played were Dawkins, Tate (who got a little banged up during the game) and his son Rhett Rodriguez. I asked coach Rodriguez how it felt when his son scored his first touchdown against NAU. Here’s what he had to say:

“First you’re happy as a coach that we scored, but then you’re a proud dad too because I know how hard he’s worked and he’s done a great job, and he’s just a freshman, but he continues to get better every week. The guys up front did a great job really the whole second half, and even the young guys like you mentioned, Michael Eletise came in and did a really good job with our run game because all we did was run the ball in the second half and that was good to see.”

Preview of Houston game with Brian Jeffries in Wildcat Football Weekly:

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I have brought this up before, but I do not believe that I confirmed with Coach Rod this was a real possibility this season in particular with all the hot seat  talk. I like the idea, shake up the NCAA, there are so many quarterbacks deep on each team, why not mix it up and get more players time. It is a team sport after all. At least it throws surprises at Pac-12 opponents and may give the Wildcats a fighting chance this season. And Arizona’s top two quarterbacks are very talented.