QBs again the center of attention in GT Camp

College football fans love a good quarterback battle and Georgia Tech has a stacked deck of young signal callers on the roster after adding two talented freshmen in the 2020 recruiting cycle. Both Tucker Gleason and Jeff Sims enrolled early and got a jump learning the offense that could even the playing field some against veterans James Graham who helmed the offense much of 2019 and redshirt freshman Jordan Yates.

Offensive coordinator and quarterbacks Dave Patenaude weighed in on the competition after three days of camp, a partial spring, and several weeks of OTAs (non-padded walk-through practices). He said there are multiple factors he will be looking at before making a decision on a quarterback.

"Can you get us in the right play? Can you check us the right way? Are you athletic enough to run it in the run game? Do you know where you are going in the passing game? That is all critical before the ball is snapped," Patenaude said. "Can you protect yourself? Can you change protections? That is one piece of it. Then when the ball is snapped, can you make a great decision on where to go with the ball number one? Do you throw on target and do you throw on target with velocity? Those are the three things from a throwing standpoint once the ball is snapped. So it has to be a combination of all of those types of things and the guys have done a really nice job "

Graham despite having the most game experience at Tech in this offense actually has the least amount of career work in this style of offense of any of the four scholarship quarterbacks. That led to a long road to playing time from spring ball through the season that was significant for him overcome.

"James who got the predominant amount of snaps at the end of last year is a young guy from a football standpoint. He was a redshirt freshman last year who had never run that type of offense and had a huge learning curve and he happened to get thrown out there against really good ACC teams and had to figure it out on the fly," Patenaude said. "The cool thing for him is he was able to do that and so he has game reps under his belt. He is extremely athletic and has a live arm. He has a better understanding of what he is doing with the ball which is critical for him. The biggest thing for him is to be able to throw the ball consistently in the intermediate passing game. For us to be successful, that is a hallmark of what we do. Overall I thought he was good with the deep ball, but the intermediate pass game is where he has to do a better job."

For Yates, the knowledge piece is in place and he has the skills and understanding of the offense, it is more of a question of execution in Patenaude's view.

"With Jordan Yates, he is very smart and understands well and is very smart in the classroom. He has got a little savvy to him. He can throw off-platform. He is short, so that is a little bit of a drawback when he has six-foot-six and six-foot-five linemen in front of him and he is five-foot-ten. He doesn't always see some of the things that some of the other guys can see. He is able to frame throws and throw around people and move his feet to scramble and find throwing lanes," Patenaude said. "He will throw it behind his back or over his head. He had a jump pass yesterday in practice, an old-school jump pass. He is good at improvising and he is very smart. He will get you into the right play. He understands what you are doing overall schematically. I was talking to him today and he told me, 'I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what we are doing, but my understanding of defenses, blitzes, fronts, and that type of thing is so much better.'"

Gleason was the first quarterback committed to the program picked by Patenaude and hand recruited out of high school since the staff arrived in Atlanta.

"Tucker Gleason has a very strong high school background. He has a strong understanding of football and was well-coached in high school. He has a great understanding of football. He is 225-pounds and six-three and-a-half. He is very athletic for a big guy and he just has a really good feel for football. He is a very smart guy, I think he is a 3.8 (GPA) in the classroom. He understands concepts and is very smart with where to go with the ball," Patenaude said. "We are tinkering with a few things with his delivery right now to drive the ball a little more instead of opening up his hips. He has handled things very well.

Sims was the last to join the group of quarterbacks as a late pickup after the coaching change at Florida State. The Jacksonville native is impressive in-person with his giant frame and big arm.

"Jeff SIms is a very good athlete. Everyone talks about Jeff because he was this star or that star, but he doesn't handle himself like that at all. He didn't come in here as a privileged kid at all. He is a worker and is very smart and understands football," Patenaude said. "For a kid that is that big, he can really spin the ball very well. We are working with him on a couple of things technically too. He has a little savvy to him and is extremely athletic for a guy who is as tall as he is. I didn't even think he was as good athletically as he is when we recruited him. He can do all the things in the run game that we want him to at six-foot-four and a half to six-foot-five."

Patenaude said he feels better about the quarterback situation overall than he did a year ago.

"Overall we have guys who can play. It is a little bit of a different situation. In a perfect scenario, we would have a guy and he would get 75-percent of the reps and we would be headed toward Tallahassee with the guy. Instead, it will be a continual work in progress," Patenaude said. "The plan is not to have to play two, three or four guys and we would love to settle on one guy and have him have a tremendous year, but we will give all those guys ample opportunity to figure it out."