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Gardner: U of L teammates "trusted me" at QB

Jeff Greer
@jeffgreer_cj
Quarterback Will Gardner drops back to pass during practice. August 5, 2014

As Louisville coach Bobby Petrino tells it, the new staff this past January started with an open-ended challenge. In fact, it sounds almost like a psychological experiment.

Instead of picking out the presumed starting quarterback, Petrino and his staff would just call out the quarterbacks and watch who ran to the front of the line or took the lead in drills.

It was redshirt sophomore Will Gardner every time. None of the others ever really disputed it.

"I knew I had to," said Gardner, who was 8 of 12 last season and appeared in six games as Teddy Bridgewater's backup.

"Guys on the team were counting on me and trusted me. I had to show them and prove to them I could do it."

Gardner surprised Petrino with how well he tested in physical and mental drills when the new staff first started working with its players. His arm strength, his physical maturity and his increasingly vocal presence stood out. Then he ran a 4.55 and a 4.58 40-yard dash.

"For a kid that's 6-5, 220 pounds, that's a pretty fast 40," offensive coordinator Garrick McGee said Thursday, adding that the playbook requires quarterbacks who can run and throw.

The transition from off-the-field intangibles and athletic testing to actual quarterbacking is taking a bit longer. Expecting anything otherwise would be unrealistic.

Gardner was fantastic in the spring exhibition game against his own teammates, throwing for 542 yards and four touchdowns in an offense that looked as explosive as it could have in that setting. But the defense was limited in that scrimmage, unable to blitz or pressure the quarterback in certain situations.

Summer workouts didn't change Petrino's opinion of Gardner. Neither has the emergence of talented freshman Reggie Bonnafon, who showed up at Louisville this summer and looked even better than Louisville's staff thought he was when August practices began.

But even with all the praise of Bonnafon -- "He's calm. He makes the throws. He's got a good arm," Gardner said -- the job is Gardner's to start the season.

No matter how much some in the media or fans clamor, sometimes, for the freshman. No matter how rough Gardner's first two days of camp were.

"I can't worry about things like that," Gardner said. "I just have to go out and get myself better and compete every day to do my best. If I'm the starter in Coach Petrino's eyes, I'm ready for it and I'll make all the right decisions. I just have to control what I can control."