[fullmetal]

Geez, no one's saying that Hogan's mailing it in.  But it's clear that Hogan is far from the perfection that we tend to retroactively attribute to Andew Luck, and in that gap lies room for improvement, should Hogan keep working for it.

Kessler didn't have to throw for 200+ yds because Stanford's DL gave up 100+ yds rushing.  This is not to say that Kessler is a bad QB--he and Agholor could have given the defense real problems had Sarkisian wanted to pass more (witness the Stanford defense's spate of horrible tackling--Agholor will feast on that).  I would not say that Connor Halliday is a better QB based on production alone (500+ yds passing per game, come on, what a terrible metric).

The fumble seemed to be Hogan's fault.  He didn't pull the ball down in time, and Wright was already there before Hogan could put the ball in front of the RB.  But maybe Wright didn't wait as long as he could have, or maybe Wright wasn't supposed to approach the handoff that quickly.  We don't know until someone confesses or someone tells us how that misdirection was scripted.

Hogan is a gamer.  He will save drives (Oregon 2013) and hang tough despite shortcomings...but it was not enough last Saturday.  Everyone with room for improvement needs to be making those improvements, including Hogan.

[fullmetal]

Geez, no one's saying that Hogan's mailing it in.  But it's clear that Hogan is far from the perfection that we tend to retroactively attribute to Andew Luck, and in that gap lies room for improvement, should Hogan keep working for it.

Kessler didn't have to throw for 200+ yds because Stanford's DL gave up 100+ yds rushing.  This is not to say that Kessler is a bad QB--he and Agholor could have given the defense real problems had Sarkisian wanted to pass more (witness the Stanford defense's spate of horrible tackling--Agholor will feast on that).  I would not say that Connor Halliday is a better QB based on production alone (500+ yds passing per game, come on, what a terrible metric).

The fumble seemed to be Hogan's fault.  He didn't pull the ball down in time, and Wright was already there before Hogan could put the ball in front of the RB.  But maybe Wright didn't wait as long as he could have, or maybe Wright wasn't supposed to approach the handoff that quickly.  We don't know until someone confesses or someone tells us how that misdirection was scripted.

Hogan is a gamer.  He will save drives (Oregon 2013) and hang tough despite shortcomings...but it was not enough last Saturday.  Everyone with room for improvement needs to be making those improvements, including Hogan.