Freshmen in friendly QB duel
TODD TRAUBARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
JONESBORO -- Elliot Jacobs walked off the Arkansas State practice field, stripped off his shoulder pads and jersey and began to wind down from the day's workout.
But Jacobs' eyes were still on the field, where Josh Driscoll was paying for an earlier, botched handoff with a solitary series of "slammers," a variation on the hated grass drills.
Jacobs and Driscoll, both freshmen, are competing for the Indians' starting quarterback job and are old foes from high school, yet Jacobs wasn't enjoying Driscoll's pain.
"We've become real good friends. Pretty much best friends," Jacobs said. "This wouldn't work if we weren't friends."
"This" is ASU's effort to reverse its recent run of bad seasons, including a 1-10 mark last year. To do that, the Indians need to find a quarterback to run their new one-back offense, and it looks as if they are getting close.
ASU opened summer camp with five candidates but it is already clear that either Jacobs, the left-handed option quarterback from El Dorado, or Driscoll, the pure passer from Fort Smith Southside, will start the opener at Georgia on Sept. 1.
The two have gotten the majority of the snaps since practice began as the Indians polish their new system under new offensive coordinator Phil Davis.
"We need to give them more snaps in practice if we expect to play them in a ballgame," Coach Joe Hollis said. "Because they're true freshmen and it's hard to simulate what they're going to see in Athens [Ga.]."
Jacobs and Driscoll faced off twice in high school, with El Dorado and Southside splitting the games. But thanks to the friendship that has grown out of their shared experiences at ASU, neither is looking at their current competition as a way to finally settle the score.
"It's kind of a challenge," Driscoll said. "And it's kind of fun at the same time because no matter who's going to get the job we're going to back each other up no matter what. We're going to support one another. It's going to be a fight all the way to the end. We're just going to keep what we're doing, make the right reads, move the ball up and down the field and see how it goes."
By his count Jacobs, 6-2, 210 pounds, threw no more than nine or 10 passes a game while running the option at El Dorado. In a pleasant development for the Indians, Jacobs' arm has turned out to be capable of more, plus Arkansas State has some option plays in the book.
Driscoll, on the other hand, ran an offense very similar to ASU's at Southside.
"The only thing about it is different terminology," said Driscoll, 6-2, 208. "There's a little more to reading defenses, a little more checking off to different plays, but besides that it's the same offense."
Hollis thinks both quarterbacks are athletic enough to play, the question is who will adapt more quickly to Arkansas State's system and to college football in general.
"During camp it's very evident that Elliot likes to run the football, he likes to stay on the move," Hollis said. "Josh obviously has got a tremendous arm. But it's a new game for both of them. The speed of the game, it's totally different from what they're used to. Coverages, stunts, blitzes, the whole game changes for them. At a quarterback position it's not so much physical at this point in time as it is mental."
The Indians have more work to do before Hollis names a starter, and Hollis has said there is also the possibility of playing more than one quarterback.
But Davis, who also serves as ASU's quarterbacks coach, has already set a precedent for taking one freshman and molding him into a record-breaker. At Nevada, where Davis assisted from 1996-99, freshman David Neil passed for 3,500 yards his first season and set seven NCAA freshman records.
"David was such an oddity in the fact that we knew he had some talent," Davis said. "But we didn't know it until we put him in the game."
That could be the deciding factor for the Indians as well. Perhaps Driscoll's and Jacobs' fate will be decided on the turf at Sanford Stadium less than a week from now.
"When you think about it, it's a scary thought, being a freshman and coming and playing," Jacobs said. "But that's what you want. If you don't want that, you shouldn't be playing. Of course you have butterflies but it's how you, I guess, channel those butterflies, how you use them. Are you going to crack under pressure or are you going to use that and have a good game?"
This article was published on August 26, 2001
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