Quote Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve View Post
Look we all know Shapen is the starter this year, you can agree or disagree with it but it's a fact. But we also can be honest and say that the chances of him playing every game are very slim given his injury history. So how do you play this season? Basically do you tailor the offense to protect him? Let him run it with no restrictions? And if/when he does get injured what do you do and who do you turn to?

Me personally, I don't change anything with the offense. I think the way we were running the offense from Florida on is how we need to run it, especially with the talent we have in the RB room. I think we can run, basically, OM's 2021 offense. Booth and Bothwell will probably have 120-140 attempts a piece. Who ever is the 3rd back(whether that be Daniels,Gayten, or Wilson) will have around 100 carries and the QB will have probably 75 ACTUAL rushing attempts. I think you also have goal line packages designed for Kromenhoek due to his size and strength. That would take a few hits away from Shapen as well. With Kamario, and I have been saying it for a year now, the BEST CASE SCENARIO is that you let him play in 4 and R/S him, maybe even let him run the goal line package against someone like Alcorn.

On Shapen, if/when he gets injured I think you'd have to tell me for how long. If it's 1-2 games, I roll with Kromenhoek. He's started at the P4 level and has taken those hits. I know his body can hold up. If it's longer, or if it's the season, then you have a decision to make. At that point, you have to decide if you're ok with losing one of the QBs because the odd man out is probably going to transfer. So you better be damn sure you're picking the right guy. And look, people better understand that could be Luke Kromenhoek. People are just throwing him to the side and anointing a kid who's never played a snap of college football as the savior. Kromenhoek isn't a scrub. He was the 7th ranked portal QB accd to On3 and was the 6th ranked QB on 247. I mean he was a high 4 star coming out of HS. This isn't some throwaway 3 star that we just threw an offer at.
I think the best thing to do is just let Shapen run the offense the way it is intended and the way he plays. I get that he is extremely injury prone. But when you limit a player to try to maximize safety it seems like it never really works and the guy gets hurt anyway. Now I definitely think that they should do some things to help him make better business decisions out there as Deion Sanders used to say. But that's only really going to go so far.

One thing that I think really hurt the offense last year was we really were rarely able to run tempo. With a marginally better defense we could improve a bit if we are able to actually implement that more.