Texas A&M Football 2017: Midseason report card and position grades

Going into the start of the season, there was another quarterback battle in College Station. I told my inner circle that anyone but Jake Hubenak needed to win the job. Had Hubenak won the job what would that’ve done to the confidence of the eventual starter Nick Starkel?

If Starkel did not win the job then when would it happen? Kellen Mond winning the job would’ve been okay with me but it was always going to be tough for a first year player to learn this offense in such a short period of time.

Several people wanted Hubenak to win the job and yes he had his chances down the stretch last year and could not get it done. So moving into the spring, the staff let the entire quarterback room fight for the job and shortly before the UCLA game we still did not know for sure who won the job.

Starkel would start and the team raced out to a big lead and then right after halftime he goes down. The staff then had a chance to send Hubenak out there but instead they chose the youngster. Again I was fine with the choice and looking at the score, everything had to go wrong for us to lose and it did. Yes it was hard to stomach but we recruited him to be the guy so let him play.

Mond had a couple of bright spots but of course he was going to struggle.  What I will work to find out in the offseason is what was the staff trying to do with him early on?  After seven games and seeing all three quarterbacks play I struggle with the grade.  I can argue that the two losses are not on the quarterback, but just like coaches, quarterbacks get too much credit when the team wins and gets too much heat when the team struggles.

With that being said I wrote down B- before the Florida game and looking back at the game and the stats the grade could not go up but I also do not believe we win without Mond sticking his face in there on a couple of designed runs.

Second half notes

What happens with Starkel?  I said in another earlier post, continue to let Mond be athlete, take the shackles off.