As the head coach of Plant High School in Tampa, new Toledo quarterbacks coach Robert Weiner had a varied experience in dealing with offseason quarterback competitions.
During a stretch about 10 years ago, Weiner coached three straight high school All-Americans in former Miami and Purdue quarterback Robert Marve, former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray, and former Toledo quarterback Phillip Ely.
“We had three All-American quarterbacks in a row and they really lined up kind of sequentially,” Weiner said. “There was never a battle at those particular spots. One followed the other followed the other. When we got into our sixth and seventh year there, we had won four state championships with four different quarterbacks.”
Then a couple years ago at Plant, Weiner had a major quarterback battle with up to five candidates for the starting spot, led by Georgia Tech early enrollee Tucker Gleason.
“We had several major battles, including one not this past season but the season before,” Weiner said. “My junior starter Tucker Gleason, when he first came to Plant as a transfer we had a major quarterback battle going on at that time. We had three guys here who were legitimate contenders. We had two guys who came in and one who already had major offers and then Tucker, who would soon get major offers across the country.”
While Weiner brings that varying experience to Toledo, he inherits a three-man competition for the starting quarterback position between senior Eli Peters, sophomore Carter Bradley, and redshirt freshman Dequan Finn.
Weiner says it is a unique situation that he is walking into because despite losing last year's starter in Mitch Guadagni, the three aforementioned quarterbacks got meaningful game repetitions last year to evaluate.
“We have three guys who had significant film from last year, whether that is fortunate or unfortunate for the Rockets,” Weiner said. “We had injuries at that position last year and there are three guys back who had significant reps last year. It's kind of unusual when you have an outgoing quarterback to be able to evaluate and learn from so much actual film of the quarterbacks that are back in your room. So I did have a little bit of an advantage coming in. Then I was able to study and evaluate and get kind of a point of attack as far as where we need to go with each one of them individually.”
Peters has the most experience with appearances in 17 games the past two seasons with 2,665 passing yards and 24 touchdowns.
“Eli is a super smart guy,” Weiner said. “Having so many reps in our offense both in practice and in games, he's had an opportunity to experience things both good and bad that are going to make him successful going forward. He has real great ability to know everything well enough to do the other things well within the context of our offense. He's a guy who definitely can apply his knowledge and experience to what it is he is doing physically.”
Bradley has appeared in 10 games over the past two seasons and has thrown for 556 yards and one touchdown.
“Carter is a really strong-armed kid,” Weiner said. “He's a guy who is putting together the other parts of his game to go along with that strong arm. He is very eager to get as much information as he can and learn how to process and be able to match that up with his ability to throw the ball, which is really an incredible ability.”
Finn appeared in three games last season and was able to maintain his redshirt season. He showed off his dual-threat ability with 86 passing yards and 90 rushing yards in limited action.
“Dequan is a guy who has tremendous ability, both throwing the ball and athletically,” Weiner said. “He's a guy who can really put the defense on their heels because they have to account for him, as well.
“Dequan is someone that really has a lot to offer.”
After only getting three practices in this spring due to the coronavirus outbreak, Weiner put together a customized playlist of every rep for each of the five quarterbacks from those three days, whether a drill rep or a scrimmage rep.
He hopes that the three quarterbacks — as well as early enrollee Gavin Hall and walk-on AJ Gucciardo — can learn from the film and can also learn to count on each other to help each one reach their full potential.
“If you want to be the best that you can possibly can be, your best friend is someone who is standing next to you who is really good and who is going to compete really hard,” Weiner said. “That's going to make you step up your level. That's kind of a deeper level of thinking for young people to grasp. A lot of times in competition, guys are spending so much time looking at the other guy that they are not looking at themselves and getting better in the things they need to do. That's what we established in our room at Toledo, is that the talent in our room is going to make each other better and in turn make Toledo better.”
Weiner says that an offense led by head coach Jason Candle places a lot of responsibility on the quarterback's plate. Aside from grasping the ins and outs of the offense, Weiner wants his quarterback to be able to display mental and physical toughness to his teammates, whether that is hanging in the pocket to complete a throw or extending a play for a first down or a touchdown.
“In our quarterback room, we create our unit as a family,” Weiner said. 'The quarterback family is very important because there is not a position in sports in which more is put on one guy's shoulders. The lion's share of the credit and the lion's share of the blame always falls on the head coach and the quarterback. Those [quarterbacks] have to be thick as thieves together and thick as thieves with the coaches, as well.”
First Published April 19, 2020, 6:49 p.m.
