Riley Still to Start

If you didn't hear Bronco's post game comments he basically reiterated that Riley would be the starter moving forward regardless of Hill's performance. He said that it's not that Hill needed to do anything more to prove his worth, but that he has more history with Riley. I'm a staunch Bronco supporter and feel that he is the right coach for our Cougars at this time, but I'm dumbfounded by this attachment to Riley. I hope that he's just making it tough for Utah State to gameplan but who knows. :bug:

Too much bromance going on there. I'm way confused. I don't think Riley should be playing anymore. I just don't think he has it anymore.

A healthy Riley Nelson is the best QB on the roster. If they play him again before he is healthy will draw more criticism from me.

frdbtr wrote:
A healthy Riley Nelson is the best QB on the roster. If they play him again before he is healthy will draw more criticism from me.

Agreed. Healthy Riley > freshman Taysom Hill > injured/high-on-pain-pills Riley

You are clueless frd. BYU will likely loose Taysom to the NFL before his senior year. He will not hang around as a 25 year old senior. Did you watch the first three flair passes your healthy rn threw against Washington State? RN is the primary reason BYU is not 5-0 at this point in the season. EZ A has the type of prototypical athleticism the NFL is looking at and by the numbers Hill is not far behind.

Hill had a decent opening game but he still consistently under throws the receivers. A healthy, senior Riley Nelson was making better passes. If he can get back to full health it makes sense to play him. I just don't think he ever will get back to 100% though.

A healthy Riley Nelson is the 3rd best QB on the roster.

tjerbear wrote:
You are clueless frd. BYU will likely loose Taysom to the NFL before his senior year. He will not hang around as a 25 year old senior. Did you watch the first three flair passes your healthy rn threw against Washington State? RN is the primary reason BYU is not 5-0 at this point in the season. EZ A has the type of prototypical athleticism the NFL is looking at and by the numbers Hill is not far behind.

I'm not the one who is clueless here bud. Taysom played a good game against a really bad defense. He still is not even close to Nelson in his ability to get the ball to his recievers. He is the better runner though. (because he is bigger and faster). I look forward to seeing what he can do as he gets more experience and you may be right about him going to the NFL before his sr year but as of right now, Nelson is still the best QB on the roster when he is healthy.

tjerbear wrote:
You are clueless frd. BYU will likely loose Taysom to the NFL before his senior year. He will not hang around as a 25 year old senior.

speaking of clueless, if this happens i will eat my hat and everybody else's hat here.



a running QB is fools gold.



a running QB who hasn't proved he can throw any better than riley nelson (which isn't saying much) isn't any closer to the NFL than you or I.

Hill already reads defenses better than Nelson. He protects the ball better than Nelson. He does a better job of moving the safety with his eyes. He does a better job of keeping the pass play alive before taking off, and when he does take off, he can go the distance on any play. He allows Doman to call outs because he has a strong enough arm to make that throw. Even with a scaled back play book, more people are an option on the plays because he sees the field better and has a better arm.



His errors are not mental errors, but are physical errors that can be corrected. As he improves his technique, he will stop having the under thrown balls. Also, what was with Hoffman's drops tonight?



Lark is also a better QB than Nelson. It's really quite obvious. Nelson is a good football player, who works hard, has plenty of heart, and is beloved by his teammates. Too bad he was a little too selfish to change positions to somewhere his football skills could be put to better use (slot receiver, safety).

stuckinbig10country wrote:
Hill already reads defenses better than Nelson. He protects the ball better than Nelson. He does a better job of moving the safety with his eyes. He does a better job of keeping the pass play alive before taking off, and when he does take off, he can go the distance on any play. He allows Doman to call outs because he has a strong enough arm to make that throw. Even with a scaled back play book, more people are an option on the plays because he sees the field better and has a better arm.



His errors are not mental errors, but are physical errors that can be corrected. As he improves his technique, he will stop having the under thrown balls. Also, what was with Hoffman's drops tonight?



Lark is also a better QB than Nelson. It's really quite obvious. Nelson is a good football player, who works hard, has plenty of heart, and is beloved by his teammates. Too bad he was a little too selfish to change positions to somewhere his football skills could be put to better use (slot receiver, safety).

And Yet, with all this, he threw for 112 yards and 123 per against one of the worst defenses in all of college football. Don't get me wrong, I am plenty excited about Hill from what I saw of him today but he is still a freshman. If BYU would have been able to field a 100% healthy Riley Nelson today, we would have had a 300 yard passing day with a PER of 170+.

Agreed. I read posts all day long and chuckle at the arm chair coaches that seem to know more and have more expertise than the men who are paid to make these decisions. It is so funny to me to read how Bronco Mendenhall is so "blind to how bad Riley Nelson is". "Bronco must not see what is so obvious." These men that are trashed all day long have a hidden agenda that has been uncovered because we were exposed to 3+ hours of game film, we read several articles and posts from some other arm chair coaches, and we know some "people that are close to the players / program". This exposure makes us way more qualified than those men who's livelihood's are held in the balance every other weekend. These men who spend 14-20 hours per day studying BYU football, it's players, it's competition and working on producing a product that will ensure that they have a pay check next week. The hidden agendas, the boy crushes, the king syndromes would all just go away if they saw what we saw right? They must be too close to the program? They can't see the forest through the trees.



Bronco is amazing! He has produced an incredible product, in spite of the hand cuffs he has. We are lucky to have him. I would bet that Bronco is contacted regularly for opportunities to coach that are more lucrative, and that he turns them down because he is more committed to his goal of winning a national championship at BYU.



Doman is still new. In my opinion, he has a lot of room for improvement.



Riley is the best QB on the roster when healthy. Had we played Hill against Utah we would have lost by 30 and we would have jeopardized the mental future of our program. Lark would have been murdered. Hill struggles in the passing game. He probably has better running ability than Steve Young, but he hasn't proven to be able to throw a ball that allows our play makers to make plays. Did Friel catch a ball last night? Hawaii is terrible, and Hill did nothing with his arm to expose that. I think the future is bright with Hill. He needs to work on his passing game.



Our O-line cost us our BCS dreams. I liked what they did tonight against Hawaii, but until they perform against more solid competition, they are the downfall of the 2012 season.



The defense is special. In my opinion, the best ever at BYU.

The RN Haters forgot midway through the first drive that the Nevada offense shredded the UH defense a week ago. They also forgot that RN lit up UH in Honolulu just last season - WITH HIS ARM. They hardly noticed that Hill under throws receivers, throws picks vs a horrible defense, put the ball on the ground, and did not see several wide open receivers. Speaking of wide open receivers - they were wide open. And the OL was blocking much better vs the overmatched Warriors.



I liked what I saw. BYU is fun to watch. Some fans are idiots. The Blue White striped thing did not look that great. The white looks great, but the blue looked weak, faded, etc. Some guy behind me kept screaming at Hill to get rid of the ball.



IDK why one guy has to be great and the other guy therefore has to be evil, horrible, and selfish.



Bandwagon. I saw some promising players step up vs a porous defense. It was really fun to watch. The shutout was even more fun to watch.



The USU game will be much more fun to watch.



I am giddy all over to see Hill play well, Lark get some more PT and Munns get a chance to mop up. Ditto for all of the others that got to play.



BYU fans are divided. Some seem addicted to their need to hate.



The team is not divided. Not at all. They are all you could want from a team - ok 4 points short of ALL.



Be happy. Celebrate. And hope the injuries slow down.



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I have no problem with Bronco continuing to say that RN is his starter as long as he's healthy. It forces the other team to have to review tape on two quarterbacks---a leftie and a rightie with different habits. I'm also a bit skeptical that Hill is as eye-popping as the worst running defense in the country playing with 3 DTs out the game made him look.



What I will have a problem with is Riley Nelson seeing the field again before he's 100%, because apparently his 100% would be a layman's 90%, and I think that has to be your threshold when you have an adequate backup, which Hill has shown himself to be.

I could count at least four passes that WR and Friel dropped for no good reason, except maybe they were thrown much harder than they are used to seeing from RN. The longer throws that were underthrown will come with some experienceand timing. One of them, Hll just lofted (not to be confused with floated duck-style). Those will come. And when they do, the field will be stretched even more.



THE GAP IS CLOSING. A few more games and Hill will be indisputably better than a healthy Riley.



And certainly, Hill >>> than an injured Riley. Utah a 30 point winner if Hill plays? Now that is flat out blind partisan assessment. Who scored the only touchdown in that game? All Riley could do was turn over the ball and run. Hill >>>> runner than RN, PERIOD. Of the game is reduced to qb running,game over.

My assessment of a 30 pt. loss to the U with Hill at the helm was more an charge against the o-line than Hill. Even while getting punched in the mouth on every play, Riley almost willed us to victory. In my opinion, a FR TH regresses under duress and makes FR mistakes. TH wouldn't have had the running success against the U that he had against HI. He would have been forced to throw the ball, and I have seen nothing in his body of work (arm) that tells me that he can place a ball where a playmaker can make a play with it. I always stress that I am sharing my opinion. I have no agenda, no inside sources, and don't believe in coaching conspiracy theories. My assessment is opinion, and my opinion is that A healthy Riley provides us a better chance of winning than any other QB on the roster. That being said, games are won and lost in the trenches, and I pin our two narrow losses on a poorly performing o-line, and a Sophomore OC before I pin it on Riley.

I agree that a healthy Riley gives us our best chance vs the pressure of Utah. Two VERY, VERY, significant problems with your assessment: one, Riley was not healthy. He was AT BEST, 65%; and two, Riley turned the ball o fer often and fumbled even more often but we got lucky and recovered the ball.



AND, didn't a Senior's mistakes look much more like a Feshman's mistakes vs Utah and BSU? Think about it.

The standard that Bronco Mendenhall lives by is this: You cannot lose your starting position due to injury.

It is a good one.

Basically, he want players playing aggressively, without the thought in the back of their mind, "if I get hurt, I'll lose my starting job."

However, at this point of the season, I doubt that Mendenhall/Doman will allow Nelson as much time to prove he's ready to go.

Great standard. But let's not confuse losing a starting position with SO INJURED YOU SHOULDN'T, EITHER FOR YOUR OWN HEALTH, HEALTH FOR FUTURE GAMES OR THE TEAM OR WINS, for that matter. big big difference. Double standard when compared to other players on the team who are partially injured and need to sit out a game.

Any one who thinks Hill was throwing with more heat than RN does when he's healthy is obviously wrong. Hill did a good job, but he floats his passes and continually failed to put enough zip on his passes to even get them to the receivers at chest level.



Besides if the arm chair guys are now going back to the battle cry that our receivers can't catch because the passes are thrown too hard then we have already lost as an honest people and fan base.