There is no way on God’s green earth you can pinpoint one position on the Indiana State football team and say, ‘that’s where the problem lies.’ ISU’s problems are way too deep-seeded and spread throughout nearly every phase of the game to boil ISU’s 0-8 start down to one position.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The quarterback has more influence over a team than any one position on the field. And the “influence” coming from that position throughout the season for ISU speaks volumes.
Chuck Dowdell, Calvin Schmidtke and Matt Seliger are all young and they’ve all shown it. For various reasons, not the least of which is an offensive line that has trouble protecting passers, none of the three have been able to bring a calming influence to ISU’s offense.
More importantly, no one taking the snaps has been able to bring consistent first downs that keep opponents’ offenses off the field, and for the most part, all have struggled throwing the ball. It has led to embarrassing games like ISU’s 14-yard passing performance against Illinois State, or the 21-yard day against Western Illinois last week. Enter Ryan Roberts.
The freshman from West York, Ill. — an unincorporated burg located on the Clark-Crawford County line — should be familiar to Wabash Valley fans, but probably isn’t. When one toils in the relative obscurity of tiny Palestine-Hutsonville football, that tends to happen, though Roberts was instrumental in getting the Pioneers to IHSA playoff appearances in 2006 and 2007.
Roberts was recruited as a quarterback by ISU coach Trent Miles, but was a natural athlete that could play anywhere, and he was switched to defense in training camp. Roberts even started against Illinois State at linebacker. But when ISU’s quarterback problems became acute — especially in the wake of Schmidtke’s suspension on Oct. 12 — Miles turned to Roberts to give it a second try at quarterback.
“I just got the defense pretty well memorized … now I’m playing quarterback. It was a learning experience for sure,” Roberts said.
Clearly, Roberts is a quick study. He was thrust into option situations against a good Western Illinois defense last week after having only a handful of practice repetitions at quarterback before the game. He moved the ball with reasonable enough consistency to get all of the second half snaps, even in passing downs where he had not practiced at all.
Roberts worked with the first team offense all week in preparation for South Dakota State, but for the most part, he practiced plays that keyed off the option — rollouts, etc. One would have been hard-pressed to envision a scenario where Roberts came out throwing.
Yet he did … and he did it well. Roberts completed 15 of 24 passes for 124 yards. Roberts didn’t do anything spectacular, he took what he was given, which was a lot of underneath passes to running back Darrius Gates and a few shots downfield to receivers Bryant Kent, Jeramie Gray and Ryan Patrick.
South Dakota State coach John Stiegelmeier was impressed with Roberts’ play.
“I thought their guy competed well and he threw it better than we thought he was going to. We thought he was a long-time option guy, we thought he’d run or do a lot of rollout three-step [drops], but he did more than that. He appears to be a winner,” Stiegelmeier said.
Taking what Roberts was given was reason enough for ISU’s coaches to be encouraged. None of ISU’s quarterbacks to date have done it, either because they didn’t their reads effectively enough (Dowdell), have been too willing to bail out of the pocket and gamble with low-risk passes (Schmidtke), or haven’t
been able to find open
receivers (Seliger).
“Those are the things we always preach, don’t try to force something, dump it down,” Miles said.
True that, but yet, Roberts seemed to put a calming influence on ISU’s offense that had been a rare commodity to this point in this season, whether in passing situations or on option plays, where Roberts took a beating to rush for minus-8 yards against a well-prepared SDSU defense. It didn’t seem to faze the freshman. Where in past games, it seemed ISU’s was pressing just to get first downs, with Roberts, there was a more relaxed vibe.
“He had pretty good command over the offense. He’s a natural leader,” Gray said.
Roberts gave the credit to the veterans for his seeming
“The first series I was real nervous, but once I got going, I had these older guys helping me out. Darrius was telling me what to do and what to check down. I tried to go through my reads and not force anything,” Roberts said.
Gates said Roberts applied his lessons well.
“He did better in the passing game and did better getting the ball out of his hands. I gave him some pointers, but he did the rest. It’s hard to come in at quarterback in the middle of the season after playing defense, so I give a lot of credit to him,” Gates said.
Gray and Gates’ comments speak volumes. When a player is thrown into a sink-or-swim situation as Roberts has been and shows he can keep his head above water, it creates instant credibility among his teammates.
“I think they understand he has natural leadership ability. We’ve been begging, we’ve been searching for that.” Miles said.
For all of those reasons, Roberts should be the man at quarterback for the remainder of the season for the Sycamores. The man of many positions has found one that suits ISU best.
Todd Golden is sports editor of the Tribune-Star. He can be reached at todd.golden@tribstar.com or (800) 783-8742, ext. 6-272 after 4 p.m.
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