Growing Pains Haven’t KO’d Price
If you get thrown into the kind of fires that Wake has faced this football season, it’s impossible to not get singed, if not badly burnt.
Freshman quarterback Tanner Price has played seven games of college football. He was fabulous against Navy and miserable against Virginia Tech. His other five performances haven’t made anyone forget Riley Skinner but they have been sprinkled with some impressive moments. For the season, Price has completed 83 of 156 (53 percent) passes for 879 yards. He has thrown seven touchdown passes and been intercepted four times.
He ranks 10th among ACC quarterbacks with a passing efficiency rating of 110.2.
I asked Coach Grobe at this week’s gathering to eat chicken and talk football to assess Price’s performance going into tomorrow’s game against BC.
“I can’t tell you that I’m disappointed in his play,’’ Grobe said. “I’m really not.
“The best thing that Tanner’s done is he’s handled this really well. He’s really practicing hard. He’s meeting all the time with Coach Elrod. He’s taking advantage of film time. He’s going in and studying film. He’s a student of the game. He’s doing everything he can to play well. So from that standpoint I’m really happy with him. And honestly we’ve kind of had one marquee performance – and that was Josh Harris against Virginia Tech – but we haven’t had a lot of the other guys step up and play great football. I think one of the keys when you’ve got some youngsters out there is they need help. They need the other 10 guys to step up.’‘
For all the incredible numbers Skinner racked up at Wake, the most impressive was probably 31-18—the Deacons’ record in those games he started. Grobe said several times over the past four years how that’s the ultimate measure of a quarterback.
But he also recognizes that given the problems this team has had over its current six-game losing streak, Skinner was never asked to make such a difference.
“We haven’t run the football very well, and that goes to offensive line play,’’ Grobe said. “We haven’t caught a lot of balls. We’ve had a lot of drop passes, and that’s tough on a young quarterback. When you’ve got a freshman quarterback you know that you’re asking him to read defenses and make good decisions. In some cases he’s going three levels. He’s got three reads and he’s going through a progression of who he’s going to throw the football to. The hardest thing is for him to make the right decision who to throw it to. Then if he makes the right decision and the ball hits the guy in the hands and he drops it, now you’ve compounded the problem.
“So I guess I would have to tell you that I’m really pleased with what Tanner has done. I’m not telling you he’s played as good as we’d like for him to or as good as he’s capable of playing.’‘