[CardinalSagehen]

Elijah is by far the most talented QB we have. He throws a beautiful, accurate, catchable ball. (And, given that our receivers have considerable difficulty gaining significant separation from the D backs covering them, EB's accurate throws are even more important to our O being successful.) Remember how accurate he was against Cal Poly SLO, completing 7 of 7 in Q4.

Sorry, but I am not willing to anoint any QB as "the answer" because he completed 7 of 7 against a clearly inferior team in garbage time. Yes, he did well. There is reason to believe he is in fact a much better passer than either Daniels or Lamson. However his recruiting evaluations seem to indicate that while he is relatively elusive in the pocket he is not a running threat. He was classified as a "drop-back" passer. If we had a better OL that might be just fine. With the one we have, he might not have the protection he needs to excel, or even survive. That may be why he wasn't out there already. We just don't know yet. We will know a lot more when TT is willing and able to put him out there as "the QB". We haven't seen that yet. The injury undoubtedly postpones that date considerably.

I would also like to caution that as KJ Costello proved it is very difficult to have a good passing offense if your receivers can't get significant separation at least a meaningful percentage of the time. Costello was generally pretty accurate. However, 50/50 balls are just that and the defense wins the battle often enough it becomes very difficult to win games throwing those passes. The QB inevitably becomes overly aggressive, because otherwise he would almost never throw the ball at all. For example Ayomanor has great body control, can jump very high, and battles for the ball pretty well. However expecting him to "win" that battle on every play is unrealistic. The losses are often interceptions. Hard to sustain drives that way.

We all agree that Brown needs more playing time so that we (by which I mean, the coaches) can see exactly what we have. Let's get more data to support all kinds of decisions about NIL money and the portal.  

While I agree that we don't yet have enough data to anoint Brown, we do have several indicators outside of the Cal Poly game that he's likely to be the best QB on our roster or in our pipeline.

1) Highest recruiting rating on our roster (score of 92 on 247, 11th-ranked QB). Daniels and Lamson were in the range of 40-60th ranked.
2) Heavy and consistent praise from TT.
3) Playing time ahead of Lamson (as a passer, for a whole drive) and Myles Jackson, who has the 2nd-best recruiting profile on the team at QB and has been in the program one year longer. 
4) Playing time as a true freshman.
5) The eye test during his brief stint vs. Cal Poly. (I might also add that he was impressive in the Spring Game, for what little it's worth. I noted that his deep ball was very accurate. This has been a major problem for Daniels this season.)

Escapability as a QB is important, but it's overrated compared to pocket presence and the ability to process the field and make quick decisions. Our pass protection has been decent over the last few games - we're taking sacks mostly because our QBs are not getting rid of the ball quickly enough. 

In any case, Daniels and Lamson were never expected to be the answer, and it turns out that they are not. The information value of playing Brown is extremely high, and I think we all agree that it needs to happen as soon as he's ready.

[CardinalSagehen]

Elijah is by far the most talented QB we have. He throws a beautiful, accurate, catchable ball. (And, given that our receivers have considerable difficulty gaining significant separation from the D backs covering them, EB's accurate throws are even more important to our O being successful.) Remember how accurate he was against Cal Poly SLO, completing 7 of 7 in Q4.

Sorry, but I am not willing to anoint any QB as "the answer" because he completed 7 of 7 against a clearly inferior team in garbage time. Yes, he did well. There is reason to believe he is in fact a much better passer than either Daniels or Lamson. However his recruiting evaluations seem to indicate that while he is relatively elusive in the pocket he is not a running threat. He was classified as a "drop-back" passer. If we had a better OL that might be just fine. With the one we have, he might not have the protection he needs to excel, or even survive. That may be why he wasn't out there already. We just don't know yet. We will know a lot more when TT is willing and able to put him out there as "the QB". We haven't seen that yet. The injury undoubtedly postpones that date considerably.

I would also like to caution that as KJ Costello proved it is very difficult to have a good passing offense if your receivers can't get significant separation at least a meaningful percentage of the time. Costello was generally pretty accurate. However, 50/50 balls are just that and the defense wins the battle often enough it becomes very difficult to win games throwing those passes. The QB inevitably becomes overly aggressive, because otherwise he would almost never throw the ball at all. For example Ayomanor has great body control, can jump very high, and battles for the ball pretty well. However expecting him to "win" that battle on every play is unrealistic. The losses are often interceptions. Hard to sustain drives that way.

We all agree that Brown needs more playing time so that we (by which I mean, the coaches) can see exactly what we have. Let's get more data to support all kinds of decisions about NIL money and the portal.  

While I agree that we don't yet have enough data to anoint Brown, we do have several indicators outside of the Cal Poly game that he's likely to be the best QB on our roster or in our pipeline.

1) Highest recruiting rating on our roster (score of 92 on 247, 11th-ranked QB). Daniels and Lamson were in the range of 40-60th ranked.
2) Heavy and consistent praise from TT.
3) Playing time ahead of Lamson (as a passer, for a whole drive) and Myles Jackson, who has the 2nd-best recruiting profile on the team at QB and has been in the program one year longer. 
4) Playing time as a true freshman.
5) The eye test during his brief stint vs. Cal Poly. (I might also add that he was impressive in the Spring Game, for what little it's worth. I noted that his deep ball was very accurate. This has been a major problem for Daniels this season.)

Escapability as a QB is important, but it's overrated compared to pocket presence and the ability to process the field and make quick decisions. Our pass protection has been decent over the last few games - we're taking sacks mostly because our QBs are not getting rid of the ball quickly enough. 

In any case, Daniels and Lamson were never expected to be the answer, and it turns out that they are not. The information value of playing Brown is extremely high, and I think we all agree that it needs to happen as soon as he's ready.