End The Terrelle Pryor Bashing!

We have all heard it.

He stinks.

Classic overrated recruit.

A bust.

His fundamentals, mechanics, field vision: horrible.

He makes way too many mistakes. He can't read defenses.

A knucklehead.

The only thing worse than his accuracy is his decision-making.

His coaches should cut their losses and move him to wide receiver, where he has a better NFL future anyway.

Yep, those comments — and worse— about sum it up. About Terrelle Pryor?

Er, no.

Instead, they were said about Vince Young as late as halfway through the 2004 season that ended with Texas going 11-1 and Young winning the first of two consecutive Rose Bowl MVPs. How quickly we forget that the same guy who a lot of people consider one of the best QBs of the decade — in a short list with Tim Tebow and Matt Leinart— was almost benched and moved to WR after playing horribly in a 13-0 loss to Oklahoma.

And it is not just Vince Young. The same things were also being said about guys like Troy Smith (also Ohio State), Michael Robinson and Daryll Clark of Penn State and (an old name for you) Charlie Ward of FSU.

Terrelle Pryor is either better or more accomplished than all of those guys were in their second years in college. Again, going back to the Vince Young comparison, Young didn't even win the QB job outright until his third year in Austin. His first year was a redshirt, and his second year he time-shared the position with a future Arena League QB. Young's final year at Texas was the first in which he threw more TDs than INTs, an accomplishment that Pryor (16 TDs, 10 INTs this year) has achieved already.

Unless they are running primarily option-oriented offenses like the old Nebraska veer or the Rich Rodriguez offense at West Virginia, it is very common for dual threat QBs to struggle to pick up the college game.

However, strugles are not limited to dual threat QBs. Dropback passers often have the same problems. The list of recent dropback QBs who played very well as true or redshirt freshmen or as true sophomores basically begins and ends with Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers.

That's why it is so common for teams to do their best to let dropback passers sit until their third year. Dual threat QBs, however, often play earlier because of their ability to make plays running the football.

So why all the negative scrutiny on Pryor and QBs like him when it is common, indeed expected for QBs to struggle their first two years in college? And why single out Pryor in particular, knowing full well that his already offense-challenged team lost their top 2 WRs and top RB to the NFL and their projected starting RB missed the season due to injury? It isn't as if Pryor can be accused of exploiting a loaded team filled with guys who are going to be first round draft picks at WR and RB the next two years.

The answer should come as no surprise: Pryor's critics are those who simply don't like dual threat QBs.

They say "He'll never be a good QB, he should move to WR" because they are unlikely to admit that ANY dual threat QB is any good. Dual threat QBs are accepted as necessary evils at programs like West Virginia and Georgia Tech, but this is Ohio State we are talking about. 

These are the guys who feel that all the top programs that represent college football should stick with the passing game even if it means never winning anything with it. (That's the REAL reason why the media is doing their best to run Rich Rodriguez off from Michigan despite knowing full well that he is rebuilding with true freshmen and sophomores. Do you know who these same people were promoting for the Michigan job before Rodriguez was hired? Jeff Tedford of Cal!  The same one who runs the #4 program in the Pac-10!).

The "he should give it up and move to WR!" crowd say that because they feel that Pryor — and all like him — should be playing WR to begin with, even if the guy throwing him the ball is mediocre at best (like, you know, every Ohio State QB since the great BOBBY HOYING).

That doesn't apply to everyone, however. The rest are simply misinformed. These are people who only saw guys like Vince Young, Troy Smith, Darryl Clark, Michael Robinson, and Charlie Ward when they were upperclassmen winning conference and national titles, and assumed that those QBs were always that good. They had no idea how up-and-down those guys were until they became upperclassmen.

And even this group often has their opinions shaped by pocket passer chauvinists who ignore that Carson Palmer didn't do squat until nearly halfway through his 5th season at USC!

So ignore the Pryor bashers. They are either misinformed or don't want the guy to succeed in the first place. Which one describes you?

Now I am not saying that Terrelle Pryor will ever be a great college QB. I am saying that the people who are pretending that he should be one already either don't know that it takes dual threat QBs a couple of years to develop just like dropback passing QBs, or would rather Ohio State keep playing Todd Boeckmans, Justin Zwicks, Austin Mohermans and Steve Bellisaris no matter how good Pryor gets.