Four Weeks, Four Questions: Who's the QB?

It's always a fun day when the Virginia Tech athletic department releases the spring football prospectus.

Media members and then Hokie fans race through the 10ish page PDF like a kid tearing through wrapping paper on Christmas day, racing to get to the depth chart. It really is big news, the first time anyone outside of the Merriman Center can lay eyes on even the slightest bit of a tangible plan for the next version of Tech football. Believe me, as someone who worked on a Blacksburg radio show for two years, you can talk for a looooooooong time about whatever's on those pages.

When it happened just a few weeks ago, the normal chaos ensued. New safeties, new linemen and the prospect of new freshman contributors carried much of the talk over the next few hours. But the biggest news, of course, was saved for the most important position on the field.

In the little box on the spreadsheet intended to list the starting quarterback, there was not one name, but two. Michael Brewer and Brenden Motley found their names squeezed together on that sheet, which could mean only one thing, full on competition.

Combining the word competition with the word quarterback is often enough to make a seasoned Hokie football fan grimace, and for good reason. Ever since the departure of Michael Vick, Frank Beamer and company haven't had the best track record of dealing with a tumultuous situation surrounding their signal caller. If you look at it, there seems to be a direct correlation with QB unrest and the number of losses in a certain year.

In fact, it's downright easy to pick out the seasons with inexperience or instability at the position. Outside of 2012 and 2013, where major coaching changes and a less than stellar roster plagued the squad, you can simply do it by the win-loss record.

To illustrate the point even further, let's break down each year there was some sort of controversy or upheaval in the backfield.

2001: Vick leaves earlier than most in the program expected, leaving Beamer with Grant Noel and true freshman Bryan Randall to vie for the job. To the chagrin of many, Randall only saw the field in garbage time (yet still played enough to burn any chance at a redshirt) and the staff rode it out with good old Grant. For those of you too young to remember anything about Noel, he was kind of like Brewer but with a worse arm and a look on his face like he was one free rusher away from turning his white pants brown.

2002: Noel tears his ACL in camp, an event that was so important in a certain fan's life that he still has the Collegiate Times article about it scanned on his computer to this day. No, that certain fan wasn't me, but he may be the editor of this website. Randall takes over and, let's just say that he got a ton of practice handing the ball off.

2003: This was an exact replica of 2001, except Randall was the veteran and Marcus Vick was the new, highly touted freshman. The only difference is instead of wasting Vick in meaningless minutes, the great offensive puppet masters decided to pit the two guys against each other, pulling them in and out constantly. I'm really fighting the urge to make a grossly inappropriate Marcus Vick joke about the last part of that sentence.

2006: Thanks to Vick being suspended in '04, yet being brought back in '05 there were two full seasons of QB stability. But then Marcus gets permanently booted, leaving a drastically unready Sean Glennon to compete with an even greener Cory Holt for the job. Glennon wins, but the team falls short of expectations.

2007: Though Glennon took every meaningful snap in '06, the coaches play highly touted freshman Tyrod Taylor as well (are you sensing a theme yet?). I am of the opinion that this was because against LSU, Glennon experienced the closest thing to a public execution anyone had seen in over 70 years. Tyrod was needed to simply allow Glennon to leave Baton Rouge on the plane, not in a body bag.

2008: Glennon/Tyrod, Tyrod/Glennon, sometimes they'd split games and sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes you'd see one of them for all four quarters, but the not for the next three weeks. Trying to figure out that rotation was tougher than trying to figure out the color of that damn dress.

2014: Big jump. Two years of Tyrod, three years of Logan Thomas and all of a sudden we found ourselves spoiled because there had only been two quarterbacks over a five year stretch. I'm sure that had nothing to do with the last string of solid success (2009-2011) that the team has seen. We all know what happens this time, but just as a refresher: Brewer wins the job in fall camp over Mark Leal, with Motley kept out of the race with a back injury. Brewer beats Ohio State, hilarity (or something) ensues in the following months.

With that all being said, I think it's safe to hope that someone wins the competition outright in the next few weeks. If history tells us anything, it's that the more time a QB can spend as "the guy," the better.

But that then gets us to the root of the question. Who's going to win the job?

Just to be clear, I haven't just narrowed it down to Motley and Brewer because they're tied atop the depth chart today. It's really because I think they're the only two guys who have a shot to legitimately win the battle. Andrew Ford still needs to eat his Wheaties (and maybe take diet tips from Wade Hansen) and Durkin seems to be built more like a bowling ball of destruction than a quarterback at this point.

And yes, I know that it's nice to fantasize about Dwayne Lawson stepping off of a plane and being college ready, but let's be honest here. It's tough for true freshman to succeed anywhere, but at that position? Yikes. The schools that could even consider playing a wet-behind-the-ears high school grad (even though at 20-years-old, he might be physically ready) under center are the ones that can surround him with talent at every position.

(Or, apparently Wake Forest. Because nothing says 'Go Deacs!' like rolling some poor kid out there and ask him to win with nothing but the ashes of what was Jim Grobe's trillion dollar lifetime contract.)

So after that, we're back down to just two.

Truthfully, I have no idea who I think would be better for the team. I know it's easy want to go with Motley, but what do we know about him other than watching the 20-25 wildcat snaps he ran in November? If Loeffler wants to use a system where his QB runs a lot, like he did in 2013, Mot would seem to be the better fit. But do you really feel comfortable giving the starting job over to a guy who has thrown a total of three career passes?

But three passes may be better than what we saw at times last year from Brewer. He was having his own little interception party during the first six games, and that was before his numbers fell off a cliff. The gunslinger averaged 5.45 yards per attempt over the last half of the season, and was obviously shaken over that stretch as well.

But are we sure he wasn't hurt? The guy took shot after shot each Saturday, and just didn't seem to hold up physically after September. If he was healthy and had more than a single summer of playbook knowledge doesn't it stand to reason that he's bound to take a major step forward?

Motley has the physical tools, including the necessary speed to create a play when the pocket breaks down. Brewer has that knack to come up with a big throw in a clutch spot, and has the ability to instill confidence in running things like no-huddle. Both are nice, but neither is the total package.

Change for the sake of change is never good, and would not once be the reason to move on from one guy to another, which is why I feel uncomfortable thinking that Motley could win this thing. He has a lot of nice attributes, but is it just my fan-ADD being attracted to whatever's new and shiny?

Whoever it is, they'll have a massive job ahead of them and have to shoulder a huge load. The weapons are improving, sure, but slowly. On top of that, the line is still rebuilding and won't be able to be counted on consistently again this year. It's going to fall at the feet of whomever's job it is to throw the football.

They're going to be tasked with forming an identity right out of the gate. This year there's no William and Mary to get everything in order before the big game, it's coming to their doorstep week one, whether they're ready for it or not. It would sure be nice to have a confident starting quarterback walking in to Lane Stadium by then.

Will it happen? Your guess is as good as mine, but history says that whatever decisions the coaches make, they should do it soon.