The Football Brainiacs

Image via Tulsa World

If by some chance you’ve been living under a rock for the past 48 hours and haven’t heard, Oklahoma announced over the weekend that backup quarterback Cody Thomas was leaving the team to focus on playing baseball full-time. It’s the second such time he will have done so and just like the first, Bob Stoops says the door remains open for a possible return should Thomas choose to do so.

However I feel like the odds of that happening this time are debatable considering the timing of this particular decision and the path to his playing next year being relatively clear. Baker Mayfield has been known to make some, shall we say, questionable decisions with regards to his own personal safety, so Thomas was only ever one snap away — though to be fair the same can pretty much be said for every backup QB — from seeing the field in 2016. So the decision to leave the team now seems like a bit of a curious one, though absolutely all the well wishes in the world and hopefully he finds great success on the diamond.

But Thomas’ leaving could, some might even argue will (based on previous history), have an unintended affect on Mayfield and this OU offense. Because as most of you have probably heard/read ad nauseam, the Sooners are now left with just two eligible scholarship quarterbacks heading into 2016. Mayfield of course being the first, and true freshman Austin Kendall being the second. And while it certainly works in Kendall’s favor that he is already on campus as an early enrollee and will take part in spring practices, he’s still a true freshman who has yet to ever take a snap at the D-I level.

I’d point you back not a long time ago, to the 2014 OU season, as to why having a No. 2 QB as inexperienced as Kendall will clearly be is relevant. As you’ll likely recall, during that 2014 season the coaches appeared to be so nervous about their backup quarterback situation, they seemingly put the shackles on starter Trevor Knight. It looked as though he’d been coached to stay in the pocket almost at all costs to avoid any increased chance of injury. The coaches took away arguably the most effective aspect of his game, athleticism, and tried to turn him into more of a pocket passer. I feel safe in assuming you don’t need to be reminded how that all worked out.

I only bring it up again now because the OU coaches once again find themselves in a similar situation. One has to believe the proposition of a true freshman QB being forced into action is a potentially scary one for any team, let alone one who will come into the 2016 season with legitimate national championship aspirations.

And yes, there is certainly an argument to be made that if Mayfield were to go down for an extended period of time OU would be screwed regardless. Because while Thomas at least had some experience on the field, without being too harsh, he also had yet to really instill with his play a ton of confidence in his ability to lead this offense.

So with a true freshman behind Mayfield, will we see the coaches again try and limit him outside the pocket? Or the better question might be is that even possible?

Mayfield’s game seems to be one somewhat dependent on his instinctual and, at times, uncanny ability to make something out of nothing. Is that something you can coach a player like Mayfield not to do? Even if you can, wouldn’t there have to be some potentially significant concern as to how it would affect him on the field? I mean we saw what it did to Knight. And while he and Mayfield are clearly very different players, there would have to be at least some trepidation that a similar ‘stay in the pocket!’ mandate could again have negative effects.

If we’ve learned anything about Bob Stoops in recent years, it’s that the ‘Riverboat Gambler’ days of old are long gone and, in my opinion, he has become much, much more risk-averse (one need look no further than the punt return team). So it’s somewhat difficult to believe he’d just throw caution to the wind and let Mayfield do a lot of the same things we saw him do this past season, or at the very least try to prevent/minimize such things to the best of his (and Lincoln Riley’s) ability.

Now maybe Thomas comes back in the fall and this is all a moot point. However if that isn’t the case, then you have to kind of wonder if this isn’t another one of the more pressing question marks surrounding this team heading into a 2016 season with some pretty high expectations.