Clausen needs to supplant Sharpley NOW.
There is absolutely no benefit for Weis or the team or the program to allow this abomination of a season come to its bitter end with the career back-up and firstbaseman still at the helm, while Clausen sits it out against the weakest 4 defenses the team will face all year. The only thing that can be achieved by doing this is creating (or extending) the QB controversey into next spring.
Play Clausen first against the lesser regarded defenses remaining. If he bombs, then he has bombed his chance to seize the starting job and give Sharpley his second chance too. Neither QB was directly responsible for a win this year against the toughest 8 teams on the schedule, so to give the back-up the first crack at the soft schedule is pattently unfair, and quite frankly another mistake by Weis is a season of woeful decisions...
Weis said that it would be unfair to Sharpley to say that he got his one start and didn't beat USC so he is done, so because of that he would expect Sharpley to remain the starter for the Navy game....
WRONG AGAIN CHARLIE!!!! Sadly, this is starting to remind me of the scene from 'Platoon' where Charlie Sheen tells the DI that he was wrong and the reply is "Wrong? You ain't never been RIGHT!!!"
- You were WRONG to not have any kind of physical training camp to get O-Linemen trained in fundementals at the college level, or at least to reinforce them and build some cohesion.
- You were WRONG to start DJ and then heave him under the bus for a bad 1/2 of play, without really allowing him the chance to throw downfield (and given how anemic the rest of the offense has looked, including the other QBs since then, we at ND will always be wondering 'what-if' on this one now that he has transferred).
- You were WRONG to even attempt to install two separate offenses for different QB packages THIS year of all years given the inexperience and lack of depth on the lines and lack of proven playmakers on offense.
- You were WRONG to announce that Clausen was really the starter all along except for medical issues until Sept. 1.
This litnany of errors is partially (ok, maybe as much as 60-70%) to blame for the season-long house of horrrors we have all witnessed on offense (sorry, but NO ONE is still inexperienced in week 8, 2/3 of the way through a season....
Please, please, please take this bit of sound advice : When you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING!!!!
Here is a more detailed look at why Clausen (as long as he is healthy enough to play) should IMMEDIATELY be reinstated as the starter:
1) Weis SAID he was #1 out of Spring Ball and Fall Camp.
He repeated this mantra several times heading into PSU game. The way it came out in the press and from Charlie was regrettably handled and MAY have contributed to DJ's rash decision to transfer, but it was said clearly and publically. If Jimmy was the best in Spring Drills and gave the team the best chance earlier this year - against the tougher teams on the schedule - then unless he is injured, and physically unable to play, he should logically get the first crack, not the second chance (or possibly no chance if ND actually manages to win these last 4 games), to show what he can do against the weaker defenses on the schedule. Let's say that Evan does reasonably well and the team actually beats Navy....now what? Do you then switch back to Clausen after a win? No, if Sharpley starts against Navy it is a signal that Clausen's season is over and the freshman year was a total loss for him....
2) Weis already threw him to the lions (against the 'meat' of the Bataan Death March portion of the scehdule, including all but the USC defense) and got predictable results - very little production.
The one thing Clausen did fairly well, except for the BC game, was avoid interceptions by throwing the ball away many times. In that BC-game he badly underthrew one deep pass (which leads me to believe the elbow injury is still an issue, or the hip; but something did not look right - and if he is truly injured, then SAY SO!!!!) - and then he threw the second into a tight spot; one where I don't think Carlson believed the ball would actually make it to him, and when it did, he proceeded to bat it into the air for a tip-drill INT. Hardly a cavalier attitude towards protecting the ball...
Clausen looked very ordinary for a lot of reasons, but he did not look like he was costing the team wins. The O-Line was (and still is) as putrid as 6-day old road kill in July. The RB's had no holes and when holes were there for the half-life of a quark, they were unable to hit them or indecisive enough to miss them. The WRs dropped several TD passes and untold numbers of other passes. And finally, Clausen did what many inexperienced people do in all jobs and all walks of life - when in doubt, he hesitated and sometimes held the ball too long or did not pull the trigger on a throw where the intended WR was "open" by college standards but "covered" by HS standards. In other words, Clausen erred on the side of caution a lot and as a result did not try too many forced throws - based on what happened in his last pass attempt (the bullet to Carlson that ended up like a very nice Karch Kiraly set), I don't think any one should really blame him too much for those decisions....
3) Weis then sat him down because Sharpley was supposedly going to be better against USC and give the team a chance to win....well, I was at the game Saturday and if Sharpley looked any better than Clausen did against Michigan I'll eat my hat.
At least the Michigan game spiralled out of control due to turnovers and silly mistakes (shotgun snaps over heads, failing to secure a fumble after first trying to pick it up) and putrid, bordering on down right criminal offensive line protection - anyone remember the photo of Jimmy getting hit by ALL FOUR MICHIGAN D-Linemen???? AT THE SAME TIME??? WHILE ALL FIVE ND O-Linemen WATCHED FROM THEIR ASSES???
Given that Clausen started the Michigan debacle and Sharpley started the USC debacle and BOTH ended in equally feeble 38-0 drubbings, on what basis exactkly can one logically conclude that the second stringer from pre-season EARNED the chance to show what he can do against lesser defenses BEFORE the pre-season STARTER gets a shot at the same defenses?
I think that we can logically agree that a healthy Clausen, whose worst beating was the 38-0 ROAD loss to UM, should be given first crack a softer protion of the schedule than Sharpley, whose worst drubbing was a 38-0 HOME loss to USC...if Clausen's ability to move the offense and produce points does not show a marked improvement, then by all means, it is certainly time to let Sharpley have his chance...but NOT BEFORE you give the same chance to Clausen!!!
If the "best player plays" is the team motto, and Weis had already publically declared Jimmy the best player available, then leaving Sharpley in at the QB position for the Navy game is 100% flying in the face of that argument....and don't think recruits can't figure this out. Clausen paid his dues by suffering through the early season games against the better teams on the ND schedule. He was beaten down by a horrid O-line this long, and now, just when the offense gets a chance to go against a non-top 35 rushing defense and some defenses in the bottom 3rd of the NCAA rankings overall, now you are going to stick with the backup?????
I know all of the other arguments about Sharpley giving the team more 'spark' when he played and how he had more long scoring drives, blah, blah, blah....How many TD passes did he throw that were dropped? How many times did Clausen put the ball on a WR's hands in the endzone and see them treat it like an Ebola-infected rag?
Bottom-line is this....unless he is actually injured and cannot play 100%, then Clausen deserves the chance to show what he can do against poor defenses BEFORE Sharpley does. The alternative is this - people see Sharpley tear up a Navy defense or a Duke defense for 250 yards and 3 TDs and start to say "see, he was the right man for the job all along"....well, no, I disagree. If Sharpley had been the pre-season starter all along, then yes, that line of thinking might be true; but he was not, and to give him the chance to possibly outshine Clausen by leaving him in against the softer defesnes - especially when their performances against top-level defenses showed no discernible edge to either - is a disservice.
If that does happen. and let's say ND beats the last 4 teams on the schedule somehow (although they stink I can't believe they stink enough to lose all of this 4 games)...and Sharpley is the QB...can we honestly say that it is a fair evaluation of the two QBs then? No, we head into the most important spring practice of Weis' career then with a still simmering QB controversey for no good reason other than to save Evan's feelings at being promoted, losing and having to be demoted again.
You are in a hole Charlie.....STOP DIGGING ALREADY!!!!
