Brehaut: Refreshing the Picture and Staying Level Headed

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Well, last years’ argument is just about ready to reappear. I felt as if this issue should be brought back up sooner or later, so here it is. In a prelude to his 2010 career, here is what went on last year:

There are two phases to the Brehaut (starting) tale, the first, was against Kansas State. UCLA ended up winning 23-9, with our starting quarterback being Kevin Craft. Richard Brehaut was given reps in practice, but wasn’t given a chance in the game. Norm Chow said this about Brehaut:

"Yeah, he certainly deserves a chance, but so do a lot of other guys, like the backup linemen. Everyone deserves a chance to play. You have to understand the idea is to try to win and do the best you can.”

The second phase was against Oregon State, which was past the midway point in the season, Brehaut was given a somewhat unfair chance to play QB in a neutral situation, or not desperation situation. Brehaut had been given a few other chances to strut his stuff, again, unfairly:

"Every time I've gone in, I've gone out there and just been slinging the rock all around," Brehaut said. "But I haven't really had a chance to go through the whole game plan and have my run checks. Every time I've gone in, we've been down, so I've been throwing the ball. I think defenses were keying on that, and that's why I've struggled a little bit. They were just bringing guys.

These chances came when Prince had particularly bad outings (Oregon, Arizona) and the Bruins were down by 2+ possessions.

When Brehaut was openly given the opportunity to compete for the starting spot against OSU, he was only given 30 percent of the reps in practice.

But, remember this, Brehaut made some major, and I mean major, mistakes in his passing fundamentals and timing in not just one, but all of his outings. These mistakes carried over to summer camp, with the sole exception being the scrimmage.

So how can we really analyze Brehaut’s position as a starter?

The way I see it there are two really, really bad ways that you could go about boosting Brehaut:

1. You could say, “Scrimmage, baby! Scrimmage"

2. You could bash Prince.

Perhaps that’s a little simplistic.... here is a better way to look at it:

Well, he had a great scrimmage. 11-16--186---3 td-1 int is not to shabby of a day for the young guy. He looked plenty poised, very balanced, and showed flashes of good speed for that Revolver offense. What about scoring? 3 TD’s in one game is already almost 40% of KP’s career TDs.

But what about the chances that he has been given?

It makes perfect sense to say Brehaut has never gotten a good, fair, game-time evaluation chance to attempt to “take” Prince’s job.

Against Oregon, Brehaut got in for 22 plays, and dropped back to pass on all of them. He was sacked 4 times in those 22 plays, intercepted once, got an offensive pass interference call, and fumbled.

Against Oregon State, Brehaut played one drive, and did not pass the ball once.

Against Arizona, Brehaut passed the ball 3 times for 11 yards. 

Against Washington, Brehaut lost a fumble inside of the Washington 20.

Against Washington State, Brehaut took 5 snaps, passing the ball twice for 10 yards.

From what I can see, Brehaut should not be held towards any kind of scrutiny for what happened last year: His errors came from situations of great disadvantage.

Oh, so Brehaut is good to go right? Way better than Prince?

Hold on there cowboy... no one should go and say that Brehaut is better than Prince just yet. Until Prince got hurt, Brehaut was a definite back up. Depending on these next few days, or until Prince is back up to speed, Brehaut’s the guy... but all in all, Prince shouldn’t be ruled a backup until he is given the proper chance to suit up and go full speed with the “1’s"

But don’t get me wrong, I’m just as excited as the next guy about Brehaut; if he can lead the team, then so be it, but I’d be saying the same thing about Prince right now if he was ready to go. 

We all need to take a step back and refresh the image of Brehaut in our heads. Brehaut appears ready to get a “W” in Week 1, but everyone needs to remember that you can’t get carried away with the mesmerizing idea that Brehaut is a much more developed, exciting player than Kevin Prince. I mean, you can argue all you want that Prince has bad decision making, or is a sucker for injuries, but honestly, there is a reason why Brehaut was #2 and Prince was #1.

In my opinion, Brehaut still needs to step up and prove that he has become more composed, mature, and can fully understand the playbook before anyone can really start vouching for him to take KP’s spot atop the depth chart.