There was a jam-packed Big Game news conference in San Francisco this week, with Jeff Tedford and Jim Harbaugh, plenty of media and several amiable, interesting Cal and Stanford players. There was buzz. There was energy and anticipation about the happy double bowl implications entwined in Saturday's meeting in Berkeley. But through it all, you couldn't help but wonder: What happened to the big-time Big Game quarterbacks? What happened to John Elway vs. Rich Campbell? How about Kyle Boller vs. Chris Lewis?
At various times over the past 30 years, Stanford vs. Cal has included those memorable throwers plus Steve Stenstrom, Todd Husak, Troy Taylor, Mike Pawlawski, Gale Gilbert, Aaron Rodgers, Chad Hutchinson and Trent Edwards. The point here: In the Bay Area, the amount of attention we give to Cal, Stanford and the Big Game, for good or bad, is largely determined by whether their QBs are good or bad. Last year, however, it was Stanford's T.C. Ostrander vs. Cal's Nate Longshore. Not quite marquee level. This year, it's Cal's Kevin Riley vs. Stanford's Tavita Pritchard, who both have strengths but are sketchy enough that their coaches openly talk about job competition when they come back for 2009. As usual, there are bright prospects on both teams for the coming years — Stanford's red-shirting Andrew Luck and Cal with Riley competing against Brock Mansion. But almost all of the schools' recent bright prospects have failed to fully bloom, including Longshore, Kyle Reed (now at San Jose State after transferring from Cal), Ostrander and Stanford's Jason Forcier, who transferred from Michigan with laurels but could not win time this season.
For all of Tedford's many triumphs in his seven Cal seasons — and his well-deserved reputation as a QB mentor — it's odd that QB has probably been the worst-managed position the past few years.
And for all of Harbaugh's pizzazz and program building, in addition to his many years as an NFL signal-caller, it's notable that the one thing the Cardinal does not do well is challenge defenses through the air.
So yes, this is possibly the bleakest era of Cal-Stanford quarterbacking in recent memory. When I asked Tedford about his QB situation this year, seesawing between a declining Longshore and an up-and-down Riley, Tedford spoke in measured terms about the "back and forth." My follow-up: Does this offense severely miss Boller- or Rodgers-level of QB play? "Yeah, well, you're talking about first-round draft picks," Tedford said with a shrug. "Of course. Of course, those were great players. And I'm not going to put our quarterbacks down. Of course, Kyle (Boller) did a lot of great things for us. And he had his struggles through his career. And he gave us one great year. Then Aaron, of course, had a very successful time here.
"Those guys were great players. So you're always looking for quarterback play like that, yeah." It's not Harbaugh's style to admit even that much. He talked about Pritchard's improved play throughout the season, he said Pritchard "missed one throw the entire USC game" on Saturday, and he said that Stanford's offensive philosophy is to do whatever it takes to win. To Harbaugh's credit, he has gotten much better play out of his entire team than another supposed QB guru — predecessor Walt Harris — ever got. "(Pritchard) saves our butt," Harbaugh said. "Countless times in games where nobody sees it, he gets us out of a play, gets us to the right play, handling the snaps, handling the reads." But running back Toby Gerhart is the star of this team and the offensive line is the backbone. Mention Luck and Harbaugh begins to give us hints about 2009. That's if — despite the recent reports of an extension — Harbaugh is still at Stanford. And if Luck wins the job in competition with Pritchard and Forcier, and if Luck is as good as Harbaugh thinks he is.
"We've had him on our campus now for five months — he is the real deal," Harbaugh said. "Our players call him 'the Truth'. I feel that that's a good thing. "I would compare him, from what I've seen, to Tom Brady, because of how smooth he is in his mechanics, his accuracy, his ability to see the field." So maybe next season, Luck turns the Cardinal into an aerial dynamo again. And maybe Mansion or Riley looks more like Rodgers than Joe Ayoob. Maybe next year's Big Game will be a QB derby. We don't know. That's the problem — for the first time in a long time, Cal and Stanford are both in a QB rut and there are no guarantees that it'll come to an end soon.
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