Prior to Saturday's game, the national and local media would have had you believe that Colin Kaepernick was the WAC's best quarterback, Vince Young pre-weight room, and one of the most dangerous players in the West.
Now that Saturday's game is in the books, we would like to re-evaluate those descriptions.
- An athletic Nathan Enderle.
- A mobile Tom Brandstater.
- A bizarro Chase Holbrook.
- Diondre Borel with a better supporting cast.
In short, Colin Kaepernick is a WAC quarterback, with all the disappointment, let-downs, and failures that being a WAC quarterback entails.
You can blame the Boise State defense for exposing him as such. With nowhere to run on Saturday, Kaepernick had to resort to throwing the ball, which is a lot like asking a women's softball player to take up the pageant circuit. He could not have looked more out of place and unnatural dropping back in the pocket and chucking balls downfield in the general direction of Marko Mitchell.
Need proof? Look at his mechanics. We're pretty sure that's not how Tom Brady does it.
Need more proof? Look at his numbers:
19-for-50, 38 percent completion percentage, less than five yards per attempt
Even Taylor Bennett would be disappointed with those numbers.
Watching Kaepernick throw had to be painful for Nevada fans. We honestly believe that in their heart of hearts, they know that Kaepernick is not a good quarterback. He is fast and elusive and great at play-action, but when it comes to pure passing, he simply does not have the skills.
We had joked for months about him being simply a running back who takes snaps, but we had no idea that we were right. He exceeded even our expectations of awfulness every time he dropped back to throw.
He seemed to do well hitting backup linebackers standing 10 feet deep on the sideline, and to his credit, they were open. But the receivers on the field running free or running at all were an entirely different story. It is hard to pick his most egregious throw because there were so many bad ones. Was it one of several deep balls that ended up yards into the team bench? Was it the short five-foot flair pass to Vai Taua that was comically off-target? Was it the uncatchable bullets that he threw to open receivers? Picking one is like picking a dessert at the Cheesecake Factory. We can't do it, so we go to Dairy Queen.
Boise State's defensive gameplan was based on the fact that Kaepernick can't throw. From this point forward, that will probably be the basis for every other Nevada opponent's gameplan. The Wolf Pack can still be respectable in the WAC over the next couple years with Kaepernick's running ability, but his winging the ball downfield to no one in particular and his launching ducks into the flats are going to hold the team back.
Kaepernick has been a media darling over the past few weeks because of his massive yardage and touchdown numbers, most of which has come at the expense of some bad WAC defenses. Now that Boise State has uncovered the mystery to stopping the human yardstick, can we all go back to our normal lives of praising people who deserve it?
We have some flowery Kellen Moore posts to write.