Print |
E-mail to a friend
MARSHALL SPORTS
Chuck Landon: Offensive shake-up not what it seems
There's a reason Marshall is shaking up its offensive line.
Besides the obvious one, I mean.
Yes, of course, Chad Schofield, Buck Baldridge and Jimmy Rogers are going to play more against UAB on Saturday in hopes of kick-starting Marshall's sputtering ground game.
But the underlying reason for the shake-up is Mark Cann.
Maybe, just maybe, these changes will help the redshirt freshman quarterback get back into his comfort zone.
After all, everything about the offense -- good or bad -- starts up front.
"Exactly right," said Marshall offensive coordinator John Shannon. "If I'm confident, if I feel confident with what's going on around me, I can relax and -- phfft, phfft, phfft -- do my stuff.
"If you watch Mark in practice, he's -- bing, bing, bing, bing, bing -- here and there and doing all that kind of stuff.
"Then, the game gets going and you get hit and all of a sudden somebody is loose and I'm getting ready to throw the football.
"On one pass (against Cincinnati), he couldn't step into it. He had somebody literally hitting him in the knee when he was trying to throw and the ball takes off on him.
"That is unacceptable, but that's the reason."
The bottom line is Marshall's significant struggles on offense during consecutive losses to WVU and Cincinnati weren't all Cann's fault.
There was plenty of blame to go around.
"You look at a game and everybody always wants to blame the quarterback," said Shannon. "And there are mistakes that he made, there's no question about that.
"But a lot of the mistakes that happened to him were due to other people around him, which people don't understand.
"They don't see that."
But the coaching staff does. That's why there will be some new faces in the offensive line against UAB.
"Mark has not played his best over the last couple weeks and he can play better than that," said Shannon. "But for the quarterback to play well, we've got to have everybody around us play well, too.
"Especially a young quarterback like Mark."
That means the offensive line has to adequately pass and run block. The receivers have to run the right routes and get the proper separation. The running backs have to pick up stray pass-rushers.
If those things happen, then it's Cann's responsibility to improve accuracy that has been as up and down as Wall Street.
"That's where you get rid of everything else that's out there and it's me and him," said Shannon. "Nobody else is around here. It's just you and me right now. And that's where my focus is. And that's where your focus is.
"It's the same way on a football field. Once I'm locked in there -- boom -- I'm hitting my targets and I'm throwing accurately."
There's no hocus-pocus. It's all just focus.
"That's right," said Shannon. "He just has to focus on his reads. He has to focus on up-field. Whatever happens around him ... that stuff happens.
"All young quarterbacks, whether it's college or the NFL. ... whether it was Chad Pennington here as a freshman or whatever, those guys go through growing pains.
"Do I like it? No. Will I accept it? No.
"But we're pushing on and we're working to correct all the mistakes."
That's what the shake up in the offensive line is -- a correction.
A correction in the right direction.
Chuck Landon is a sports columnist for The Herald-Dispatch. Call him at 526-2827. E-mail him at clandon@herald-dispatch.com.
