Sophomore Taylor Kelly was named the victor of Arizona State's quarterback battle earlier this week and with the news I'll be the first to admit that I was exceptionally wrong.
Wrong for thinking Kelly would be first quarterback eliminated out of the trio, wrong for thinking he didn't have enough natural ability to stand out from the pack and wrong for not believing that head coach Todd Graham would truly choose his quarterback solely based on who "takes care of the football" best.
Perhaps I can blame it on all the preaching of "high octane" football though because right about now, that's just looking like a misleading attempt to put meat in the seats. Let's face it gang, with Kelly behind the wheel, the Sun Devils are a lot closer to Meryl Streep and "Hope Springs" than they are to Sylvester Stallone and "The Expendables 2."
In a way though, that's not entirely Kelly's fault. Graham has pounded this ball security issue so far into each of his quarterbacks' heads that it's nearly impossible to expect Kelly to be a playmaker at this point.
And really, can you blame the guy? If you earned yourself a job by being deliberately cautious, you certainly aren't going to start taking dangerous vertical shots and risk riding the pine.
So for now, it seems ASU football is going through a bit of an identity crisis. Yes, being carefully explosive probably makes as much sense as building ASU's new stadium in Tucson but that's exactly what Graham is trying to manage.
But with the 6-foot-5, 242-pound Michael Eubank still promised to get some in-game action, I'm going to get in line with the rest of the media's headlines of "Kelly is the starter...for now." Not that I don't have confidence in Kelly's abilities now because truly, the man has proved a TON to me as well as the rest of Sun Devil nation in earning the job. I just believe that when Graham finally sees how much more explosive Eubank makes his offense in an actual game setting, he wont be able to resist the temptation.
Of course, he'll have to learn to take the good with the bad because as Brett Favre taught us, you can't expect to get the jaw-dropping highlights without a few head-slapping turnovers along the way. But if Graham is really the Michael Bay-esque, thrill-seeker he claims to be, he wont mind too much.
After all, I'm pretty positive no one has ever called Chuck Norris "a game manager."