Through 37 years of Pac-12 football, you could make a case that the league’s most skilled quarterbacks coach was Homer Smith, who later installed the UA’s first modern and proven offensive “system” in 1996-97.
From 1983 to 1985, Smith used three first-year starters at quarterback to take UCLA to a pair of Rose Bowls and a 25-9-2 record. Rick Neuheisel, Steve Bono and David Norrie were nobody’s idea of stars — none made the all-conference team — but Smith and his surprisingly effective Bruins QBs did something no one else did until Rich Rodriguez and his QBs coach, Rod Smith, came along more than a quarter-century later.
Getting to three consecutive bowl games with three different QBs just isn’t done.
In Pete Carroll’s rise to power at USC, he inherited future Heisman Trophy winner Carson Palmer for two years, then inserted future Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart for three.
Oregon’s emergence as an elite football school has one theme: dating to 2002, the Ducks have never started a quarterback for just one season. Kellen Clemens, Dennis Dixon, Jeremiah Masoli, Darron Thomas and Marcus Mariota were all multi-year starters.
Arizona has been forced to be more resourceful.
You would need the Elias Sports Bureau or someone from Stats LLC to do the proper research, but it seems impossible that any FBS quarterbacks coach in America has coached seven different starting QBs the last seven seasons (and is still employed).
That’s what Smith has done.
In order, beginning in 2008 at Michigan, Smith deployed first-year starting QBs Steven Threet, Tate Forcier and Denard Robinson. Smith mentored quarterback Edward Wright-Baker at Indiana before coming to Tucson, where he has coached Matt Scott, B.J. Denker and Anu Solomon.
That’s now how you win big.
Washington State got to a pair of Rose Bowls with second-year starting QBs Ryan Leaf and Jason Gesser. ASU reached the Rose Bowl with four-year starter Jake Plummer and three-year starter Jeff Van Raaphorst.
What Smith and RichRod have done with QBs at Arizona — a school that has never had the first-team All-Pac-12 QB — is inestimable.
The first time I met Rod Smith I asked him what it was like to be the quarterbacks coach at 1-11 Indiana in 2011.
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
Ironically, he was more prepared to coach QB-needy Arizona than he knew.
