Story Photos
 Quarterback Nic Thacker hands off during a recent Mark Morris practice. Thacker led Sequim to back-to-back league titles before transferring to MM for his senior year. Greg Ebersole / The Daily News
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New kids on the block: Nine teams breaking in new QBs
Thursday, September 4, 2008 7:44 PM PDT
By Ben Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleScott Grabenhorst’s dream quarterback doesn’t have Joe Montana’s intelligence. Or Peyton Manning’s study habits, Tom Brady’s touch, Brett Favre’s improvisation, Terry Bradshaw’s courage, Fran Tarkenton’s scrambling ability, Carson Palmer’s arm or Tony Romo’s girlfriend.
At the most glamorous, treacherous, pressure-packed position in all of sport, Toutle Lake’s 30-year head coach wishes merely for a reliable caretaker.
“It’s definitely a good place to have some experience,” said Grabenhorst. “My dream quarterback? I think it’s a kid who doesn’t throw interceptions, hits the open receiver and understands the offense. Someone who really knows what everybody is doing on each play, which is more than just knowing what a play looks like. It’s definitely a guy who doesn’t make mistakes and can run the offense without turning the ball over.”
In other words, Grabenhorst prefers a safe driver over a slick car.
Momentum and a winning mentality may be elusive, intangible quantities. But they are dearly coveted by every coach, and as the one player who touches the football on his team’s every snap, a quarterback is the most crucial trustee of such assets.
Toutle Lake began the ’07 season with a sophomore and a senior — one who had skipped his sophomore and junior years of football — competing for the quarterback position. The sophomore won the job, and after a sketchy start to its season, Toutle went all the way to the Class 2B state championship game.
The sophomore, Cody O’Connor, threw a perfect pass to Sage Chapman on the first play of overtime in the state semifinals for the winning touchdown.
Clatskanie went all the way to the Oregon Class 3A semifinals in ’07 with junior K.C. Taylor at quarterback, and having Taylor back has helped make life easier for first-year Tigers coach Tim Strong.
“The transition is going as good as I could have hoped,” said Strong. “K.C. can go in there, make a call, get all the verbiage out and is very capable of running our offense. Having good athletes at key positions always makes things easier.”
But Toutle Lake and Clatskanie are the exception this fall. Nine of the area’s 13 programs, including those with playoff streaks at stake such as Castle Rock, Kalama, Woodland, Rainier, Mark Morris and Naselle, graduated their starting quarterback from 2007.
Of those programs, Mark Morris is probably in the best shape for a transition, with an excellent and experienced offensive line in place to protect the player who is anointed under center, plus the serendipitous arrival of a two-time league champion QB by way of Sequim (senior Nic Thacker).
Meanwhile, Kelso moved up a classification to 4A and graduated its starting quarterback. Toledo and Ilwaco face the prospect of rebuilding in tough 1A leagues with brand-new QBs.
Only Toutle Lake, Clatskanie, Wahkiakum and R.A. Long have continuity under center. The Mules are counting on senior Joel Fudge to help them return to playoff glory, while the Lumberjacks will look to junior William Yordy to help pull them out of a two-year, one-win swoon.
“It’s not all on his shoulders,” RAL coach Erik Bertram said of Yordy, “but for us to do well, he needs to do well.”
That’s a common theme preached by head coaches. They want safe and solid — and not necessarily great — at the quarterback position.
In 2006, Toutle senior Dustin Elam went into the season as the prospective starter even though “he really hadn’t been a quarterback,” Grabenhorst recalled. “But he was a guy who could improvise when he had to, make some plays, run the offense we needed him to run and who didn’t make mistakes.”
What excites Grabenhorst now, or at least gives him confidence, is O’Connor’s ease with the nuts-and-bolts minutiae at the position.
“It’s real noticeable early in the season,” he said. “Cody has a real good feel for the offense. He doesn’t have to think about it.”
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