Time To Step Up: Matt McGloin

Will help whoever ends up at QB. Please.

And by help I mean

-A veteran RB tripping over the white lines on the field.
-veteran WRs dropping passes.
-an o-line that was acting like they just met each other.

McGloin came in at a time where all of those areas started to improve. Bolden made freshman mistakes but the rest of the team didn’t exactly pick up the slack.

Bolden could move the ball, but virtually never scored. He could grow to be a good player, but I never felt like there was any energy in the huddle with him under center.

That’s really what I hope to see change this year.

that Bolden had one summer with the team before starting, whereas McGloin had two springs and a summer.

Logic dictates that Bolden, the better athlete, should improve at a higher rate as time passes, but we’ll just have to see I guess.

I’ll shoot myself in the foot for saying this, but “whoever gives us a win at the end of the day is who I want as a starter (no, I don’t want ‘the best chance.’ I want the actual win)”.

His problem is a disconnect between the mind and the arm/rest of the body. Dude has an outsized estimation of his own athletic ability. Outsized meaning detrimental to his overall play, meaning he’s just as likely to ruin the game’s outcome with catastrophic mistakes as he is to lead the team by making a few positive plays.

Technically he has a point. But correlation doesn’t prove causation.

I want the best man for the job. If it’s Bolden, Jones, Newsome, or McScruff. Heck, the best QB on the team could be Drake or Brandon Ware; I don’t give a darn. I just want the team to compete and play at the best of their abilities and let the cards fall as they may.

Hence why everyone is expecting Bolden & Jones to pick it up and McGloin to hit some sort of ceiling.

I’m not sure if there’s data to back this up or not, but I know it’s been referenced (and I’m not saying I necessarily agree, just that this is out there).

I would say people think Bolden has a higher ceiling because, despite not being an incredible offensive dynamo, he was a still just a true freshman who showed flashes of real potential. The kid showed up on campus just a few months before the season started, so if he struggled (and he did) people were willing to forgive it.

McGloin on the other hand was a RS Soph and had 2 years in the program. He had worked the practice squad and got some reps in the spring as well. Now you can argue that he never saw any real game time, but as the season went on and he did see some playing time, I never saw him improve on his play. In fact, the bowl game was a complete disaster for him as a QB, and Michigan State wasn’t much better.

Basically, Bolden was thrust into a difficult situation and was struggling just to stay afloat, like any other frosh QB probably would be. McGloin should already know how to do the backstroke, but only seemed to be able to doggy paddle. Perhaps he can review some things in the offseason to make some adjustments, but I don’t expect to see much of a jump in his play unless he completely changes his approach.

Thats my take on it anyway.

and still sucks. That’s why.

its just my opinion. He was having a great game, got knocked to the turf hard, got his bell rung and panicked. He was dressed the following week, and iirc, it was “concussion like symptoms”. To me, that means my head hurts. I basically had a headache for 5 out 12 months for 14 consecutive years.

/Euler’d

McGloin got VERY lucky on a lot of his heaves that the quality of defenses he was playing was…well quite subpar nationally, let alone at a BCS school.

Again, I don’t think his worst throws were a result of poor arm strength. It seemed to me that his crippling interceptions were almost all a result of just stupid decision making.

He doesn’t try to throw the ball beyond his own abilities that often.

as 2010 hadn’t yet happened