Saturday, April 23, 2011

QB Focus: Brandon Weeden, Oklahoma State’s old gun

Assessing 2011's field generals, in no particular order. Today: Oklahoma State junior Brandon Weeden.

? Typecasting. The easy way to classify Weeden is as the Dust Bowl's answer to Chris Weinke, minus the prematurely receding hairline. After five years of pro baseball out of high school, Weeden (a native Okie) transferred home in 2007, bided his time for three years behind Zac Robinson and took over as the full-time starter last fall at age 26. He's a tall (6-foot-4, 220 pounds), lumbering slinger with and NFL future. He'll turn 28 in October, the same age Weinke was when he won the Heisman Trophy in 2000.

In fact, hardware notwithstanding, Weeden might turn out even better than that: He passed for more yards and more touchdowns last year as a first-year starter than Weinke did in either of his final two seasons at Florida State, or any other quarterback has in a single season in Oklahoma State history. He also won more games: With 10 wins in the regular season, the Cowboys cracked double digits in the first column for the first time since Barry Sanders was on campus in 1988; with the bowl rout over Arizona, they cracked 11 for the first time ever. And with box score-devouring All-American Justin Blackmon back on the receiving end, he'll be fully expected to keep OSU in the thick of the Big 12 title chase —�and himself hovering around the top of the awards lists —�through the final gun.

? At his best... Weeden's numbers speak for themselves, even more so because of their consistency: See multiple touchdown passes in eleven different games, an efficiency rating above 150 in nine games, at least 350 yards passing in seven. Most importantly, see at least 35 points on the board for the Cowboy offense in ten different games — including 41 in both losses — leaving OSU as the No. 1 offense in the Big 12 in passing yards, pass efficiency, total yards and scoring. Individually, Weeden ranked among the top ten passers nationally in yards, touchdowns and completion percentage en route to a first-team All-Big 12 nod. Et cetera.

So it probably goes without saying that the guy throws a really, really pretty ball:

His rapport with Blackmon was entirely unexpected and entirely lethal: The two hooked up for an NCAA-best 20 touchdowns and 19 completions covering at least 25 yards, with at least one 40-yard connection in 10 of the 12 games the Blackmon played.

? At his worst... The most glaring void in Weeden's game is his total lack of mobility, but that didn't stop him from emerging as the least-sacked starting quarterback in the conference by far, despite dropping back 40 times per game, and has four starting offensive linemen back. Scouts may wonder about his effectiveness downfield when he doesn't have Blackmon going up to pull down every ball in a three-mile radius, but as far as Oklahoma State is concerned, Blackmon-as-safety blanket will be just fine. The real test of Weeden's independence is how well he functions in the absence of Dana Holgorsen.

The offense was ravaged coming out of 2009, down a three-year starter at quarterback, a 1,200-yard rusher, first-round draft picks at left tackle and wide receiver and a single returning starter on the line, and had imploded with a single touchdown in back-to-back losses to close the season. The rebuilding effort to the former Mike Leach prot�g�, who took play-calling duties from head coach Mike Gundy for the first time since Gundy returned as OC in 2001 and immediately turned one of the greenest lineups in the country into one of the most prolific. Going back to his "Air Raid" days at Texas Tech and his two-year stint with Case Keenum pulling the trigger at Houston, 2010 was the fourth straight season Holgorsen pulled the strings on one of the top two or three attacks in the country, with three different quarterbacks at three different schools. The man's got the touch, and he's currently applying it in West Virginia.
Holgorsen's replacement, longtime NFL position coach Todd Monken, vowed when he arrived in early February he had no intention of escrowing around with one of the most successful schemes in the country —�but he also had to learn one of the most successful schemes in the country, which has reportedly left Weeden in the teacher role for much of the last three months. At best, that's a discouraging equation for growth; at worst, the new puppet master struggles to keep the old strings from devolving into a tangled mess.

? Fun Fact. You wouldn't know it to watch him throw now, but Weeden — a second-round pick by the New York Yankees in 2002, with the Bombers' first pick in that draft —�was forced to give up baseball in part because of a bad pitching shoulder. The other part was ? What to expect in the fall. Andrew Luck and Kellen Moore are returning Heisman finalists, and Landry Jones is likely to suck up a lot of the instate oxygen as the face of the overwhelming preseason favorite for the national championship. But Weeden is going to occupy the same stratosphere statistically, and has a trio of midseason road trips — at Texas A&M on Sept. 24, at Texas on Oct. 15 and at Missouri on Oct. 22 —�to push himself and his team to the front of the national stage, ideally setting up a winner-take-all Bedlam showdown with Oklahoma on Dec. 3. The defense and the transition under Monken will have a lot to do with making that happen, as will the running game in the absence of immensely productive tailback Kendall Hunter.

But assuming it makes it through another season in one piece —�and assuming Monken doesn't discover a sudden affinity for the spread option or something — Weeden's right arm looks like one of the safest bets in America, for your fantasy team and T. Boone Pickens'. The difference being that a championship in your fantasy league doesn't hinge on the Cowboy defense.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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