Dave Albee
WEARING A LIGHT gray "Terra Linda Football" T-shirt and a dark blue New York Yankees cap, Joe Ayoob left a weekly press luncheon at Memorial Stadium on Tuesday not knowing if he would suit up as the starting quarterback for Cal in Saturday's season-opener at Tennessee. He won't. So what? Seven months ago, Ayoob didn't even know if he would fly with the Bears to Knoxville much less start for them after coach Jeff Tedford demoted him to the bottom of the team's depth chart. Publicly, Ayoob said all the right things at the press conference on Tuesday, which reflects well of him being a team player. He's cool that Nate Longshore will start ahead of him, a decision Tedford reached and announced following practice on Tuesday afternoon.
Privately, however, Ayoob anxiously wants a second chance to start for the Bears and show he can finish the job he was brought to Berkeley to do. "It would mean a lot coming from spring (practice) being a fourth-string and having concerns about making the traveling squad to this fall starting at Tennessee," Ayoob said. "That would almost kind of be unreal." Unreal? It's the stuff of Disney movies. If Ayoob ever gets a chance to avenge his dreadful performance last season, watch out. "I think he's comeback player of the year in the Pac-10," said Nick Rolovich, the former Marin Catholic High School, City College of San Francisco and University of Hawaii quarterback who is now coaching at CCSF where Ayoob compiled mind-blowing statistics. After arriving at Cal from CCSF with Heisman Trophy-like expectations, Ayoob replaced the injured Longshore in the second quarter of his first game and went 0-for-10 against Sacramento State. He continued to miss too many wide-open passes in subsequent weeks and quickly made enemies in the stands. He said he's a changed man now.
"I didn't understand that last year. It kind of hurt me that, wow, people don't like me," Ayoob said. "Now if I throw a bad pass and they boo me, it's like, well, whatever." Thus, Ayoob is itching for a shot at redemption, fittingly in the Volunteer State. Though he won't start on Saturday, Ayoob might play and it's probably best for him to come off the bench in this case anyway. The Bears will be playing in front of 106,000 orange-and-white clad Tennessee fans who will turn Neyland Stadium into a Big Creamsicle. There would seem to be less pressure and fewer expectations on a back-up quarterback walking into that Rocky Top situation. Yet Ayoob still would prefer to start. "Last year, whether I started or not, I would have had huge expectations," Ayoob explained. "This year I'll do whatever but, if I had my choice and it was up to me, I'd rather start the game and take the expectations head on and just go and play the game."
That Ayoob will play another game for Cal might have been considered an upset at the end of last season. Tedford pushed him behind Longshore and Steve Levy, who will miss the Tennessee game serving a one-game suspension. That decision led Ayoob to a conversation with his father, Joe Sr., in their Lucas Valley home about the possibility of transferring to another school. "He was concerned about getting a good year of football in before I was done (playing in college) and I kind of just thought about 'One year of football (somewhere else) versus a (Cal) education that's going to last me the rest of my life,'" Ayoob said. "That kind of just outweighed everything." Cynics might say Ayoob already has had his education at Cal and he didn't learn much from it. He did. He could have run from failure on one football field for a promise somewhere else far from the Old Blues' wary eye. Instead, Ayoob has matured and become more focused and determined. He has learned that he doesn't have to be a champion to have the heart of a champion. That badge sometimes comes with the journey. "Probably going through as bad a time as you can get," he said. "I feel like things can only go up now."
They should get better, if only because Tedford is inspired by a new quick-passing, wide-open offense - dubbed "Spread-ford" - that new offensive coordinator Mike Dunbar brought with him from Northwestern University. It's similar to the spread offense Ayoob judiciously ran at CCSF. "It has a lot of the same concepts. A lot more complex," Ayoob said. Nevertheless, it gives Ayoob an advantage over Longshore and he knows it. Longshore played only one game in high school out of the shotgun formation before coming to Cal. Ayoob was a fixture in City College's shotgun formation for two years. "He definitely is familiar with it and you can tell he's done it before," said Longshore, who has tried to get up to speed with the offense by playing it through video games on his Xbox. Ayoob, however, has had more hands-on first-hand experience with it. The quarterback from San Rafael gains comfort from that. "Most of my comfort comes from just knowing what it takes and understanding what I have to do now," he said. When Ayoob was at his lowest point last season and this spring, friends in Marin and teammates from high school and college cared enough to take the time to call and encourage him. It's made a difference.
"I'm really proud of Joe's perseverance and how he's bounced back. I have great admiration for him," Tedford said on Tuesday. "There's a comfort level that Joe has of being the guy that played in big arenas for eight games last year." Now all Ayoob needs to do for himself is perform better in those big arenas to prove he can play as well as anyone on the depth chart. It may not come Saturday in Tennessee but, if and when Ayoob gets the call to lead the Bears, the 6-foot-3, 223-pound senior believes he will be as ready as ever. "That's all I ask. Just give me another shot," Ayoob said. "If I go out there and go 0-for-10 again then, hey, if you don't want to play me anymore, that's OK. At least you gave me my shot."
No comments:
Post a Comment