Sullivan | System, not QB, star for U of L

With only a dozen coaching days left before the Belk Bowl, Louisville's Bobby Petrino said Tuesday he had "not even thought" about how many quarterbacks he might use Dec. 28 against Georgia.

As strange as that might sound, and as uncharacteristic as it would appear for a coach renowned for dissecting small details into microscopic morsels, it's also entirely believable. If Petrino has proved anything in the first year of his second term at U of L, it is that his quarterbacks are expendable and almost as interchangeable as AA batteries.

Here, it is the system that is the star.

Will Gardner, Reggie Bonnafon and Kyle Bolin have each experienced shining moments in 2014, and have each been instrumental in important victories, but the Cardinals have been able to win nine games with a new staff mainly because Petrino's old ways still work and are flexible enough to accommodate the disparate abilities of individual players.

"I think it's just the fact that we really believe in our way of coaching the system," offensive coordinator Garrick McGee said. "... We're never going to go from these plays to other plays. We're just going to continue with what we believe in. I think that's the most important part — we have a lot of confidence in what we're teaching and the way it's called on game day."

Game plans will vary depending on the specific talents of particular quarterbacks — the Cardinals are unlikely to call a lot of zone reads unless Bonnafon is in the lineup — but the core playbook is a constant. You don't spend months perfecting blocking schemes and pass patterns through daily repetition and then discard them when the guy at the controls goes down. You depend on the understudies to know the script and you tailor your attack to suit the strengths of the next man up.

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If that means your quarterback gets derided as a "product of the system," that same charge has been leveled at Tom Brady and inflicted about as much damage as a spitball on SEAL Team Six. There are only so many quarterbacks who can succeed consistently on an ad lib basis, and fewer still whose extemporaneous skills translate in professional football. Great as Robert Griffin III and Johnny Manziel were as undergraduates, neither appears to be a candidate for Canton right now.

Given the limited experience and individual limitations of Louisville's current quarterbacks, it's hard to say at this stage whether any of them even projects as a long-term starter. Still, the combined passing statistics of Gardner, Bonnafon and Bolin during the regular season were roughly comparable to those of Dak Prescott, the Mississippi State quarterback who was seen as the Heisman Trophy front-runner in mid-season. Their combined 20/7 touchdown/interception ratio far exceeded the 24/17 rate of Florida State's prolific Jameis Winston.

"When a new staff comes in, there's a different terminology, different plays, different demands on the quarterback," McGee said. "All of those guys are young. They haven't played before. They really trusted what we were teaching in the meeting room, on the practice field and ultimately on the sideline in the game. ...

"We have a way of doing things. We have a philosophy we believe in. We force all these quarterbacks to understand what we're doing and really concentrate on their technique. (Who's playing) is not going to change what we're going to do. We've just got to make sure we've got the right guys on the field."

All of Louisville's quarterbacks became instantly better upon DeVante Parker's return from a preseason foot injury against NC State. All of them were enhanced as Parker's downfield presence helped make U of L's running game more robust. And though Bonnafon's legs made a major difference in the Cardinals' victory at Notre Dame and Bolin's arm proved indispensable against Kentucky, Petrino could probably piece together a decent quarterback out of milk crates, baling wire and ball bearings.

Oregon's Marcus Mariota is the rare quarterback who elevates everyone around him. But most guys are more like Cardale Jones, the serviceable third-string quarterback who helped orchestrate Ohio State's 59-0 mauling of Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship game.

"The quarterback doesn't have to win games for us," Ohio State offensive coordinator Tom Herman said. "The quarterback has to manage games and distribute the football and lead."

The same can be said of Louisville, where the system is the star.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714