IF Buchner would not have gotten hurt, would he have started vs. NC ?
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Level 1
You gotta ask yourself ... would we have beaten Cal with a Buchner led offense?
This is no different than Wimbush versus Book and Wimbush didn't actually lose in the first 3 games but couldn't make the offense move well enough to beat good teams later.
Pyne obviously is far from a Heisman contender or national championship caliber QB but his strengths and abilities make the offense move better than Buchner.
Injury or no injury, Pyne is the better option to make the offense go.
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Level 2
We have no way of knowing the answer
wrdomerson 2368 postsI get your point about the passing going better with Pyne, and that could be all it is.
We don't know if the OL just clicked and started to play better, or if the poor play was because Buchner was making mistakes in calls that made the OL look bad. If it was the former, then we beat Cal with Buchner because his protection would be better and we would be able to run the ball. If it was the latter, we could still have beaten Cal if Buchner learned from his mistakes and made better calls, leading the line to play "better" against Cal as well, but we have no way of knowing if he would have. If we lost to Cal and were 0-3 with Buchner I do think we would have switched to Pyne for NC, and who knows how that would have gone at that point considering how he played against Cal in his first start.
I'm happy Pyne seems to have gotten over the obvious jitters he had versus Cal in the first half and settled down. Things look much better, especially against a weak NC defense. It is unfortunate that Buchner was injured and that it has cost him his season. It will be hard for him to get better without being able to practice and play. I have not lost all hope for him because he had two bad games with no protection and got injured. No one here should either.
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Level 2
Yes. Probably wouldn't have been close.
(no message)"Put a Riddell on somebody and be the most physical team in the country until the whistle blows." -
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Level 3
Exactly, and there's no reason to think Buchner wouldn't have been as successful vs UNC's defense..
However there is also no reason to keep bringing this up, because Buchner IS injured and despite all the nonsense that's said about him around here one thing that definitely rings true is his propensity for injuries.
Also, I don't want to take anything away from Pyne, he did what he did and what he did was pretty darn good.
"Leave No Doubt." -Marcus Freeman-
Level 4
Agree 100%, but I don't like the way Buchner is getting hammered here. Only reason I said something.
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Level 5
And just like you have an opinion so do we
Pyne is clearly better than Buchner. It’s not close.
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Level 1
Yes
With the offensive line playing better in the 2nd half of the Cal game, I think Buchner would have put up some nice numbers for that game and especially the UNC game.
But, there's no sense in dwelling on the "what if's" at this time, since basically, Drew Pyne is the starter, barring some other terrible disaster.
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Level 1
Definitely. It's clear that the staff (both last year and this year) have a far higher opinion of
Buchner's talents in comparison to Pyne's. In fact, I'd say he's the odds on favorite to win the job next year (although Angeli might insert himself into that discussion)."Put a Riddell on somebody and be the most physical team in the country until the whistle blows."-
Level 2
More Upside
Chasing the QB with upside is how you win NCs unless you have a Georgia-level defense. Buchner is that person, as Jurkovec was before him. Sticking with guys like Ian Book and Drew Pyne may feel good in the moment (and likely would give us a better chance at 10-win seasons), but winning a NC will require either an insane defense or a higher-upside QB.-
Level 3
So much wrong here with this logic.
Yes, you need upside to win games.
But, if you can't win all the gimmie games with that "more upside" alone, then there isn't in fact any upside. It's a distractive facade.
Buchner has not shown the ability to do that. Wimbush could not do that. Golson could not do that (paired with Rees as the savior, he was close). Yes, Book fell short of the upside and so will Pyne. Rees was the weakest of all three at upside, but all three where much greater on the whole and won more games than any of the upside QBs. Because the upside couldn't even when a majority of the games where they could just out-talent the other team.
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Level 4
You're smart enough to see that he had no help in those first two games. Protection was horrible and
he is still not allowed to run the whole playbook, though he couldn't have because the line performed miserably.-
Level 5
Is it that he "wasn't allowed" or that "he couldn't" I see this excuse thrown around a lot.
Why are so many quick to point out that the OL was only bad for Buchner? We saw this exact same thing with Book. The OL was HORRIBLE with Wimbush. Book came in and it magically got better.
To me, that's a sign of leadership, trust and confidence. The QB that's a leader gives confidence to the other components because they believe he can do the job, so they want to do their job better. It's really simple.
We have too many on this board that are smart enough to know this and look past it EVERY SINGLE TIME.
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Level 6
Why does nobody understand the concept of a QB that can complete passes changes how a defense attack
I don’t get this at all. If you are a running QB that completes passes at a 50% clip then the defense is gonna overload the box and stop the run. This puts a ton of pressure on the OL. But if you can complete passes, long or short it doesn’t matter, at a 70% clip then all of a sudden LBs drop into coverage or you play 5 DBs. It becomes easier to block fewer men. It isn’t rocket science. Then you run AND pass. The defense has to guess rather attacking the 1 thing you think you can do well which is run.
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Level 5
He still only completed 50ish% of his passes rendering the offense one dimensional
Tough ask for an OL to run block when the defense is scheming to stop the run and you can’t complete passes.
Glad it’s seems to be figured out now though.
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Level 2
Even had he lost to Cal, they'd have started Buchner. They don't have a high opinion of Pyne.
(no message)"Put a Riddell on somebody and be the most physical team in the country until the whistle blows."-
Level 3
Sorry, don't believe that. Freeman would have been in a very tough place at 0-4, 0-3 on the season.
TakethetrainKnute 35768 posts(no message)-
Level 4
That doesn't mean bench the starting QB. This team (and QB) goes as the OL goes.
(no message)"Put a Riddell on somebody and be the most physical team in the country until the whistle blows."-
Level 5
May not mean it...but, in my humble opinion, that is what would have happened.
TakethetrainKnute 35768 posts(no message)-
Level 6
The only way it is as bad as the first two games is if the OL played that bad. The way the OL
played against Cal, I'm not sure the game would have even been close with Buchner at QB. We wasted a quarter and a half for Pyne to get rid of his butterflies."Put a Riddell on somebody and be the most physical team in the country until the whistle blows."-
Level 7
Or did the OL play better because the box wasn't stacked to stop the run?
The OL certainly didn't play lights out. They missed assignments and blocks in the first 2 weeks. But they were also tasked with blocking against a stacked box. Once you put in a QB that can complete passes and distribute the ball to the outside, it stretches out the defense. All of sudden there is more room to operate and less people in the box.-
Level 8
So a less mobile QB made the opposing team stack the box less? That makes no sense. Nothing about
Drew Pyne playing (either his throwing or running) scares any team of stacking the box. Like Cal said, "Holy smokes, they got that prolific gunslinger Drew Pyne back there now. We better not stack the box." Hell, most of his passes against Cal didn't even barely get past the line of scrimmage (if they got past the line of scrimmage at all). Like, give me a break.
So let's not be ridiculous. The OL played better because they are getting what HH is teaching better and they are playing some shitty competition. The idea that Drew Pyne is making the OL play better or that teams are so scared to death of Pyne's downfield throwing prowess so as to retreat to deeper coverage is nonsensical.
"Put a Riddell on somebody and be the most physical team in the country until the whistle blows."-
Level 9
I’m not saying the OL didn’t improve. But OSU obviously game planned to stop Buchner and ND from
running.
On the flip side, ND was rushing with success versus dime packages for UNC.
Regardless of how good or bad a defense is or how good or bad an OL is, the strategies deployed against ND were different for Buchner versus Pyne.
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Level 10
Pyne's downfield passing isn't scaring anybody. The OL is getting better and better. Rees calling
better games as well."Put a Riddell on somebody and be the most physical team in the country until the whistle blows."
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End of conversation