Bench Canfield? Not Yet.

Canfield is a horrible quarterback.  Time for Moevao to come in and take the reigns for a team that desperately needs leadership.  Moevao has the game-winning drives, the completion percentage, the deep throws, and doesn’t commit turnovers.  He’s far-and-above the better quarterback and if he had been playing against Cincinnati…

Oh wait, Moevao does not have a game-winning drive to his name.  Canfield has two. Look up the games in which they have played, and you start to see some things.  Is Moevao a good quarterback? Of course he is, and of course he has the “moxie” that makes a good quarterback into a great quarterback, or an okay quarterback into a good one.  Do we really need to open up the can-of-worms of having a quarterback controversy? 

Fans have short memories.  They still see Canfield as this California kid with all the tools and none of the personality.  Don’t get me wrong, that’s exactly who he was, and if it weren’t for Yvenson Bernard being the real leader of the offense in his first starts, the leadership he lacked would have been critical.  Moevao was the leadership package that you needed to mold a team from decent to quite good and a top-25 performer. 

Sean is the man now, thanks in large part to Moevao showing him the way to lead a team.  Their friendship might have earned Canfield a shot at the NFL, and I’m not exaggerating.  They have both grown in the program and have Oregon State the envy of the Pac-10 at the quarterback position.  Moevao is the best backup quarterback in the Pac-10 and maybe in the country, but he is the backup quarterback.

Lets get into the stats a bit.  I am a bit of a stat nerd, and I realize there is a lot more to playing football than stats, but they tell a lot of the story.  An interesting factoid for all you Canfield doubters: while he may not have had a good day against Cincinnati in terms of yards per completion or yards per attempt, if he continues with the completion percentage he had on that mediocre day passing, he will be the all-time leader in completion percentage in Oregon State history.  He completed 64.5% of his pass attempts, and while that may not sound so out of sight, coming into the game he had the highest completion percentage in the country, period.  Obviously a lot of that is due to the fact that he has possibly the best screen running back in the country with Jacquizz Rodgers.  With James Rodgers double teamed all day long, Canfield did not look good going to his safety valve all the time, but what is concerning is how noone else consistently stepped up to catch passes with James relatively out of commission.  James is a flanker, not the split end and not the possession-based slot receiver.  Double teaming a flanker should mean that your split end goes on a tear, or the slot has the underneath reception open all day long.  And if all those things are not true, but you are a good team, your running back will be averaging 8 yards a carry, because they’ve been forced into a nickel or dime defense.

I mean really, OSU lost Sammie Stroughter, who might have been the most underrated receiver in the NFL draft, and who is now competing for starting time for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers out of the 7^th round.  Shane Morales, meanwhile, was doing his best Mike Hass impression by coming up with critical catch after critical catch to keep the chains moving.  There was no way to truly stop the attack of the passing game unless you managed to get to the quarterback, and the offensive line was quite a dominant one in the Pac-10 last year.

Fast-forward to this year, and who do you have other than the no. 2 option flanker James Rodgers?  He’s supposed to be playing a position that is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, as they use him to block during zone run plays, as a receiver on the underneath routes or once or twice a dead sprint down the sideline, and finally as a running option on the reverse (fly-sweep in this case).  Let the opposition double team James, a good quarterback with good receivers should tear a secondary apart if they’re committing like that against a 2^nd option. 

The real problem?  He’s still the primary option, and getting the ball as a 2^nd read for a short reception that might or might not turn into a first down.  Screens to the outside for James, the fly-sweep, the short underneath routes are not going to work well when the defense is keying on it.  It’s a misdirection-based position.  So his average against Cincinnati, at 8.2 yards per reception, doesn’t look great.  Especially with a long of 26 yards.  One play got him a quarter of his yards, so you can quickly see how those little receptions really worked most of the game.

The next best option for Canfield in the game was Damola Adeniji playing from the split end position.  5 catches at an average of just over 11 per reception.  That’s the average you expect out of a split end, but compare that to Stroughter last year, who averaged around there and averaged more catches than that with the defense paying him a lot more attention week-in and week-out.  Maybe the play from this position improves with Catchings back in the line-up and the starting split end taking his proper place within the offense.  If he manages to get that permanent double team off of James Rodgers, he will have done his job.  If not, and he can only manage what Adeniji has done thus far, it may be a long year.

The slot was non-existent in the game.  Really, read no catches for Kjos and Bishop.  You may want to call out Canfield for this and claim this is the reason to put Moevao in as the starter.  No catches though? Really? Morales made defenses hit themselves over and over again as he would move the chains, while neither Kjos nor Bishop have shown any real presence at all this season.  They both have shown promise but thus far have not shown any reason to be counting on them time and again, and that is exactly what you need in a slot receiver.  The slot becoming a presence on the same side of the field as the flanker would mean every once in awhile forcing a defender to pull off of James Rodgers just long enough to hit a big play or two. 

What about the offensive line? They’re young, inexperienced and have been a bit porous against the pass rush.  Canfield has been sacked 9 times in two games, not a good stat to have, and with the safety valves he has been throwing to, does anyone really believe Moevao would avoid the sack and make a play on many of those? Maybe he gets out of 1 of those a game more than Canfield does, but does he make a bad decision and throw it when he SHOULD take the sack instead?  Did you know that Oregon State was the absolute last team in D1-A to commit a turnover? Part of that was due to the start time being late, but it still is quite a statement.  That single turnover was a fluke play too, and could happen to any quarterback throwing to any receiver.  The ball was deflected up and heads-up play by the Cincinnati secondary turned it into an interception.  Taking the sacks has led to far less mistakes than flinging the ball around, despite how bad those sacks start to look.

At times Canfield has looked slow on his reads, but once again, look at the numbers.  Last Saturday he completed passes to seven different targets, something that evokes thoughts of a Tom Brady or Peyton Manning performance, not a losing effort.  He does not have a problem checking down, even if he takes a little too long with the ball.  As the offensive line matures, wouldn’t you want your quarterback tossing to that many different targets if he has to?  Once again, it would be nice to have a reliable target for a third down situation, but with a bit more time to throw, don’t you think Canfield would find a way to get the first down, given that kind of performance?  Neither quarterback was required to find targets outside of the receivers last year, other than a tight end screen or a check down to a running back now and again.  He showed patience and rather than throw the bomb, he showed maturity by finding a man closer, and more open, to try and make the first.  Would Moevao have done this? History tends to show Moevao will make the gutsy throws, and sometimes succeed at it, but we don’t want Brett Favre or even Derek Anderson when we have such a dynamic weapon out of the backfield as a check down.

When the rest of the offense matures, Canfield will be calm, collected, and leading this Oregon State team to great victories, and by the time we really get to questioning what could have been had Moevao stayed healthy, we will be looking to Ryan Katz and Peter Lalich to bring the debate as to who should be behind center.  Riley will not bench Canfield after a decent performance against a very good team, and he has shown to be loyal to a fault to his starter.  If Canfield gets hurt, Oregon State has the best backup quarterback you could ask for, and fans should just be thankful for that, not requesting a quarterback change.

Go Beavers.