Separately, I was re-watching Iowa's B1G champ game from last year. Beathard's passing release was twitch quick, go back and look for yourself. Much different than this season.
I think that the importance of receivers is terribly underrated.
Just think about it. Plays in college football develop so quickly, and in many cases, quarterbacks have to release balls before receivers even
think about coming out of their breaks. Or on fly patterns, you really have to have an innate understanding of your receivers' speed to perfectly time a ball.
Or in other terms: with a receiver moving down the field at X miles per hour in X direction, the ball traveling through the air at X miles per hour, with a release angle of X degrees, combined with defenders moving across the field in coverage and the pocket collapsing around you, you can see how even being one
microsecond too early or too late can throw off an entire play.
So I think that losing players like VandeBerg, Krieger-Coble, and Tevaun Smith, players that CJB had spent the majority of his career developing a repertoire and understanding with, really made
all of the difference this year in terms of his confidence and ability to connect with receivers.
This theory applies to every level of football. I really think that one of the reasons that Peyton Manning was such a successful quarterback was because of the consistency he had at receiver. Throughout his 12 years with the Colts, guys like Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Brandon Stokley, and Dallas Clark were
staples of the offense and there was very little turnover. All of the aforementioned (particularly Harrison) were great players, but their value was enhanced ten fold because Manning understood the
timing and executed it over and over. Conor McGregor said it himself:
precision beats power, and timing beats speed.
Slight marginal changes can be detrimental to an entire scheme and the ripple effects can be spread out across an entire team.
We have some decent receiver in Riley McCarron and Jermanique Smith, but I just don't think that CJB was ever on the same page as them given that the focus coming into the year was on our "star" receiver: VandeBerg.
