MOBILE, Ala. – With a pair of experienced individuals plus two promising incoming recruits, University of South Alabama offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Greg Gregory feels good about his unit heading into the upcoming season.
“I’m extremely confident in this group,” he commented. “C.J. [Bennett] is clearly our number one right now going into the fall, with Myles [Gibbon] our number two but definitely in a position to play. And we feel we have brought two very good freshmen in, I’ve heard a lot of good things about them from the two upperclassmen about how they are throwing the ball this summer.”
Bennett, a redshirt freshman, and sophomore Gibbon have combined to start 11 of the Jaguars’ first 17 games, all USA wins.
The former led the Jags last season, completing 86-of-140 attempts for 1,189 yards and nine touchdowns. Early season highlights for the 6-foot, 220-pound Tampa, Fla., resident included going 4-of-6 for 93 yards with a touchdown in his collegiate debut against Pikeville (Ky.), hitting 13-of-16 passes for 109 yards at Lamar and throwing the 45-yard game-winning touchdown to Courtney Smith with five-and-a-half minutes remaining in a 24-21 victory at UC Davis.
He would earn his first start the following week against Georgia State, a 39-34 win in which he recorded 261 yards of total offense and threw for three scores. In the last three weeks of the season, Bennett was 48-of-79 passing for 683 yards and five touchdowns.
“C.J. showed over the last three ball games last year — when he started and played the whole way — how good a quarterback he can be,” explained Gregory. “He hit over 60 percent of his passes, threw for a number of touchdowns, and the only interceptions he had were when the defense made one great play and the other went right off the chest of our guy.
“Our third-down conversion rate jumped when he was in total control of the offense in those last three games, it went way, way up; we were about 38 percent prior to that stretch, but it went to almost 50 percent when he started, which is extremely good. Was it the level of competition? I don’t think there was any difference between those teams and anybody else we played.”
And with a chance to grow some more during spring practice, Gregory said that he plans on continuing to expand the Jaguars’ playbook with Bennett running the offense.
“We did that as the season went along,” Gregory said. “There was no doubt when C.J. came in here last year, he was playing at a real high level. It just took some seasoning; he needed to make some mistakes and we didn’t want to just throw him in the fire because we didn’t really need to. As the competition got a little bit tougher toward the end of the season, it was good for C.J. to have us put him in there.
“He has a great grasp of football — not just of our offense, but of football,” he continued. “He sees things in pass progression that you don’t always teach and are really outside the realm of the reads. The reads may involve three potential receivers, but C.J. has the ability to see the fourth one if he is there.”
In his first two seasons, Gibbon has posted a 175.81 pass efficiency rating after going 46-of-79 while throwing for 863 yards and eight touchdowns. After completing 29-of-51 attempts for a team-best 538 yards and six scores in 2009, the 6-foot-2, 210-pound native of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, raised his completion percentage to 60.7 in seven appearances last fall. In the 2010 season opener, Gibbon recorded a season-best 145 yards of total offense against PC including a 7-of-8 performance passing for 112 yards and a touchdown; he would go on to throw for a career-high 139 yards and another score in a win over Kentucky Wesleyan.
“I think Myles improved this spring, especially his pocket presence,” Gregory stated. “That’s really important to us, because that’s about a third of our offense; being able to drop back and sit there with no backs and be able to throw the football.
“He knew where his weakness was, which was in the pocket; Myles has a strong arm, on a play-action pass he’s fine and the ball goes way down the field. He knows he has to improve as a runner — which we don’t do a lot of in the spring — in that he has to take the ball north and south to the goal line and use his size. We don’t want Myles to take direct hits, but he shouldn’t try to outrun people going east and west.”
In fact, Gregory believes that both Gibbon and Bennett can use their feet as a weapon this fall.
“Myles has adequate speed, actually he and C.J. are very similar in that way,” he said. “Neither one of them are what you would call exceptional runners where you want to run them 10-12 times a game, but they are both good enough that if you don’t want to take away the quarterback run they can move the football and make plays.”
For depth, Gregory will be able to look to a pair of incoming freshmen — Trey Fetner from Woodland, Ala., and Kolt Peavey, who hails from Bolivar, Mo. Last fall, the former — who is 6 feet and 195 pounds — posted 2,800 yards of total offense and 35 total touchdowns in leading Woodland High to the second round of the state 2A playoffs. The latter, who is 6 feet and 180 pounds, guided Bolivar HS to the state Class 4 playoffs last season after completing 108-of-181 passes for 1,915 yards and 22 scores.
“We will just let them go and compete,” Gregory explained how the coaching staff plans to deploy the two. “The first week of practice C.J. and Myles will split 80 percent of the reps, and Trey and Kolt will split 20 percent. That’s just the way it will go, each of them will get about 10 percent of the reps, so they will have to show something real, real special in the first 4-5 days to even get a real look. Because after you go through the first week, it’s just two guys getting reps from that point on.”
Though the activity from the beginning of preseason camp will be geared toward getting the two returning players more snaps, Gregory maintains that every day will be an open competition.
“C.J. knows going into the fall he is No. 1, Myles knows he is No. 2 and the two freshmen are fighting for the No. 3 position. But whoever plays the best will be the quarterback,” he stated. “C.J. and Myles have seen over the past year or two that I don’t look at the quarterback position any different than the tailback — you produce, you play. If a guy is producing he deserves an opportunity to play, and I have no problem doing that.
“I have no doubt that we will need to play two quarterbacks during the year, and maybe a third one, so we are going to make sure that the preseason allows us to get at least two completely ready and a third one prepared that if one of those first two go down we can quickly get them up to speed.”
One thing for certain at the position is that the quartet has provided a significant upgrade in talent from Gregory’s first days with the program in the spring of 2009.
“It’s just changed,” he recalled. “The first spring, I can remember the morning after the spring game I met with all the quarterbacks; two of them we told they were not coming back and the other one was told he was moving to defense, so we left that spring without a quarterback.
“We brought all new guys in. I didn’t know Myles, I wasn’t here when he was recruited, but he was a good one coming in, and we got Brennan [Sim] and Nick Owens to come here and get us through the first year. We were fortunate to sign C.J., and we really caught a break there because we would’ve never got him if the NCAA hadn’t granted the waiver for those recruits to play a fifth year. He knew he was a Division I player and was already committed to Wyoming, but I had known him for a while and once we found out I called him and his dad and told them they should really consider us.
“So last year was one for him to learn that didn’t count, just like Myles had the year before,” Gregory observed. “We have had a lot of improvement there, though we have had a lot of improvement at most positions on this football team.”
Which is as good a reason as any for Gregory to feel confident going into the Jaguars’ first season making the transition to the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly NCAA I-AA) this fall.
For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).
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