Monday, August 24, 2009

Daily Cal: Tedford Names Riley as Starting Quarterback

By Matt Kawahara

Jeff Tedford started to walk off the field after practice, then turned back and spent a few minutes addressing the quarterbacks. When he came off the second time, he brought the resolution to the Cal football team's quarterback competition along with him.  Tedford announced Monday that junior Kevin Riley will be the Cal football team's starting quarterback when the Bears open their season Sept. 5 against Maryland.

"I think they've all shown flashes of doing really great things," Tedford said. "But it's evident that you can tell by all of the things that are going on at the line of scrimmage and in the huddle and things like that that Kevin's experience-he's comfortable with the amount of offense that goes in every day."

That has been the overarching sentiment for the last few weeks regarding Riley's camp: In his fourth year in Cal's offensive system, the redshirt junior's comfort level is higher than ever. Riley and Brock Mansion shared time with the first-team offense early in camp, but Riley never saw his reps with the ones decrease. Rather, he took nearly all of the first-team snaps in the second half of camp.

Unlike last season, when Tedford started Riley against Michigan State but planned for Nate Longshore to enter the game in the second quarter, Riley is the undisputed starter for 2009. Last year's indecision -- there were some weeks where Tedford did not announce his starter until the actual day of the game -- appears absent from this year's competition.

Link to rest of article.

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