Spring Football Game-Hartline post

Yesterday I drug my wife to the spring football game about four hours after she finished her first mini-marathon in Louisville. For the record, she ran it in 2:01.36 and I'm way proud. This is someone who was running her first 5K less than a year ago. Go Jenni.



This was my first spring game. It was nice to see an announced crowd of 20,020 (seems generous) there. People were tailgating, doing the whole bit. In fact, I missed an angle yesterday that will never escape me again. After sitting down for about 10 minutes, I commented to my wife that I smelled beer. The people behind me were drinking. My wife said, "No ticket takers, no ushers, no security". How did I not think of this? To paraphrase myself, I am never going to not bring beer to the spring game again.



The game itself was a mixed bag. Any time you split your squad up, every play has to be dissected twice, and was probably good for someone and bad for someone else. In the end, I think I would have wanted to see clean, mistake free football. This was not quite that.


Don't get me wrong, the game had bright spots. The reports from spring practices from Herald were money. Outside linebacker Danny Trevathan had a breakout game. Eleven tackles. Randall Burdon had his name called at corner several times. The best news of the game, though, was that Randall Cobb looked like a #1 receiver. Everything from getting open deep to catching balls off his left shoulder in a timing route, Cobb showed it. Oddly, Cobb and Hartline were split up, so Will Fidler was the one getting him the ball. More on that in a second.

I hinted at this on Friday, and since I've barely posted recently, I hate to repeat a theme. This one, unfortunately, bears repeating. The Cats cannot have a breakout year with Mike Hartline as a starting quarterback. He looked no better yesterday than he did a year ago. Hartline is trying to shed the reputation as a "game manager", someone who avoids mistakes but isn't called upon to make big plays. The problem is, right now he should aspire to be a game manager. Hartline, as usual, did not throw the ball well and led several empty possessions. But two plays that really were not primarily his fault spoke volumes about where this is all going. Some time in the second quarter Hartline threw a somewhat errant pitch to Alphonso Smith, who then juggled it for a good five yards, only to have it stripped an run back for a touchdown. Later, Hartline checked down through a series of progressions and threw a screen pass behind a receiver with a defender draped all over him. By the time the dust settled, the pass was complete, for -16 yards. Maybe the most damaging "successful" play in the history of football.

From an ardent Cats fan's perspective, the realization that these things do not happen to good quarterbacks certainly hurts. But these things don't happen to game managers, either. That is the real killer. Hartline has plateaued, and is probably about the guy we'll see in 2009, and if he is on the field in 2010. I hate to be so critical, but how bad a criticism is that? The list of human beings who are good enough quarterbacks to lead a talented but sometimes overmatched Kentucky squad to multiple SEC wins is amazingly small. Two hundred and fifty living souls, maybe? I am certain that Mike Hartline is a lot of great things. He just isn't one of those people. There are 250 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who don't have enough juice to be one of the top 250.

This said, I am not at all critical of the decision to make him the team's starter. To chalk this up as a mistake would presuppose that there is some better option. There doesn't appear to be. Will Fidler looked great for a couple of series' yesterday, but to hear Coach Brooks tell it, Fidler has consistently been light years behind Hartline in his progress. Randall Cobb looked good at times last year, but didn't have any more success in the SEC games. Cobb also loses any close battle. That is what he gets for also being the team's best receiver. Ideally one of the freshmen would step up in the fall and end up being "the man". (Realistically, the person to do it would be Morgan Newton). But that would be asking for a lot of progress in a short time, thus its no plan A. Brooks and Co. are stuck, and I am sure well aware that they are picking from 4 imperfect options.

All of which is a bit frustrating. This program has a lot of momentum, and one would think a shot to bite a couple of teams and get to 8 regular season wins.

As is often the case, I hope I'm wrong. But I don't think Mike Hartline gets us there.

Probably be back on blog silence for a while, but that is where we stand here at the end of spring practice.