Photo Credit: Telemachus

Spent some time on the other boards over the weekend, during the games and after. Also read what was being said here in the chats and in the aftermath threads. Later on, I chatted with Nestor and talked to a couple of friends about the game.

And I have to say, there was one theory or line of speculative thinking that I came across (on another board) that I found sort of intriguing. Actually, there’s two, though I’ve seen them discussed separately they have some merit when combined.I have to say upfront, that it’s going to be met with some opposition and I’m not exactly sure even how much I buy into it – though I’ll tell you right now that I don’t reject it out of hand and think there may be something to it.

Here’s part one:

We’re told that Craft is starting at quarterback because "he looks better in practice." The unspoken support for this explanation is that we, as fans, can’t second guess the Neuheisel/Chow  decision making duo because "they’re the coaches and they know more than we do."

OK, they’re the coaches and they know more than we do. But does that mean they know more than the players do? The players are conditioned from the time they put on pads that the better player plays. Talent and skill trump seniority and maybe just maybe "knowledge of the play book."

So, this is what "they" were saying:

When Craft starts, the other players try, but their effort is muted by their knowledge that they can’t win with Craft or by the knowledge that, for whatever reason, the better quarterback isn’t playing. This doesn’t mean they aren’t doing their best. It does imply that Craft’s starting dampens enthusiasm and cuts the emotional peak necessary to win college football games particularly on the road.

There’s a lot of ways of interpreting that. What I get from that is that the author of that theory is saying that when Craft plays the other players basically feel (whether they want to feel it or not) that the team can’t win and therefore it throws them off their emotional game and impacts their performance.

Part Two goes like this:

A lot of people were wondering why Brehaut never got to play later in the game, when a rally was needed for victory.

The theory there suggests that if Brehaut had looked good in the fourth quarter, then the coaches would have had to explain why he didn’t start or come into the game earlier and it would also have created a quarterback controversy, something the team doesn’t need especially with Prince attempting to come back this week against Oregon.

I’m not sure how much I buy into this, but it’s intriguing. Soften it a bit and it says that the coaches basically felt like they made a decision to go with Craft and they weren’t going to back down from that decision no matter what. That’s a little easier to swallow than saying they refused to make a chance because if the change worked they’d look bad.

As we head into Oregon week discussions, these are a couple topics worth looking at.