Lance Leipold made it clear that there’s only room for one quarterback on the University at Buffalo football team.
With less than two weeks remaining until UB’s season opener at 7 p.m. Nov. 4 at Northern Illinois, the Bulls haven’t made a final decision between Kyle Vantrease or Matt Myers as this year’s starting quarterback. Leipold also ruled out a possibility of platooning quarterbacks this year.
“There will be a starting quarterback,” Leipold said Thursday on a video conference with local reporters. “Do I see that there would be times, depending on situations, that the other person could get in? I would be very confident with that. But we have not discussed a two-quarterback system at this time.”
This is the second year two players are competing to become UB’s starting quarterback. Myers, who played at West Seneca West and at Bishop Timon, won the job last year out of preseason camp. He started the first five games for the Bulls in 2019 until his season ended because of a neck injury he sustained Sept. 28 in a loss at Miami (Ohio). Vantrease was UB’s starting quarterback for its final eight games and led the Bulls to a 31-9 win against Charlotte in the Bahamas Bowl in December.
“I’ve been extremely pleased with both of them,” Leipold said. “It’s obviously a lot different than it was a year ago, when you have two quarterbacks that have multiple starts under their belt. Both have good command of the offense and both continue to show the ability to lead our football team.”
Myers, a redshirt sophomore, has mobility, physicality and is efficient at making plays. He’s also proficient in RPOs (run-pass options), which gives a quarterback the option to hand off the ball or throw it, based on where he sees an unblocked defender. Myers, the 2017 Buffalo News high school football player of the year, threw for 602 yards and six touchdowns on 49-for-105 passing, and was intercepted four times. He also ran for 94 yards and two touchdowns on 30 carries.
Vantrease, a redshirt junior, has a strong presence in the pocket and poise when it comes to decision-making, and found a rhythm in UB’s passing game. He threw for at least 131 yards in six of his eight starts in 2019, and finished with 1,193 yards and eight touchdowns on 101-for-172 passing, and was intercepted twice.
“Matt’s probably a little more of a runner than Kyle, but it doesn’t mean we don’t run any more RPOs or potential quarterback runs with Kyle in the game,” Leipold said. “Would we be, maybe, a little more of a naked team with Matt? Maybe. This is a fall camp-type setting we’re in, and the coaches don’t say, ‘These are Matt’s plays and these are Kyle’s plays and we have two different offenses right now.’ That’s not how we ever set it up. It may appear that way, once we get into games, but that’s not how we’re going to look at it right now. We’ll do what we can and put whoever on the field that’s going to give us the best chance to win.”
The starting quarterback will have to command an offense that relied heavily on the run last year – the Bulls ran for 3,256 yards and passed for 1,795 yards – but will return a more experienced group of wide receivers, led by Antonio Nunn (49 catches for 687 yards, six touchdowns) and Daniel Lee (23 catches for 284 yards, one touchdown).
Leipold, however, didn’t narrow a timeline as to when the coaching staff will decide its starter. It could be as soon as Sunday, or it could be closer to the start of the season opener.
“I really haven’t sat down with the staff to talk about that,” Leipold said. “I probably will, at the end of the weekend here, of what we want to do. Whether that is going into game week, depending on how things play out, or if we’re going to do it at kickoff. But I’d see us, as we get ready to put the two-deep together and release that for game week, we could be in a position, at that time.”
No Covid-19 football positives in two weeks
UB athletic director Mark Alnutt told The News this week that the football program had registered zero positive Covid-19 results of 1,362 tests through Tuesday, since the Mid-American Conference instituted four-times-a-week antigen testing for its football programs on Oct. 5.
UB announced Sept. 29 that 25 athletes, including 19 football players and five volleyball players, had tested positive, which paused activities for both sports. Since mid-June, UB’s athletic department has had 59 positives (53 athletes and six staff members) of 3,787 tests, a positivity rate of 1.55%.
“You expect disruptions, you expect positives, but in everyone’s mind, you want to contain it as best as you can,” Alnutt said. “At that time, when we had 19 (football positives), there was definitely some concern, but with our continued education of the student-athletes, they understand the reality, especially as we were getting so close to resuming football at that time, and understanding the various behaviors that they have to do and change the way they typically operate. It’s not the norm, anymore. That resonated throughout all of our teams.”
