Georgia State University football plays against Georgia Southern at the Georgia Dome Saturday, October 25, 2014, in Atlanta. (Photo/Jason Getz)
In less than 60 seconds, here’s Georgia State’s Luke Huard giving you the information on his position group, the quarterbacks:
In the spring, reducing turnovers was a point of emphasis for the quarterbacks. How are they progressing in camp?
Prior to this practice, we’d only had two turnovers at the quarterback position. Unfortunately today we had two, also. Some of those plays were really good plays by the defense. The two today were not. They were plays that we can’t make, plays we have to eliminate from our game. So overall I would say it’s improved. It’s picked up, it’s gotten a lot better. Our guys are more conscious of it, taking care of the football.
We say take care of the team. That’s what you are doing. As a quarterback you have to take care of your football team. When you are careless with the football you put the whole team in a bad spot. In training camp, the majority of the time they’ve done an outstanding job protecting the football. Today was not to my liking and they know about that.
Coach Miles said before camp that there are some packages for (Emiere) Scaife to run this year so that he can get some playing time. How has he developed?
Emiere is doing a good job. He takes most of the reps with the twos. Certainly with the twos you’ve got younger guys, less experienced guys. We need to get him some reps with ones so that he can get a little cleaner picture. That will be a situation that we will evaluate on a weekly basis. We need to get him some experience because he’s one play away. You have to have 2-3 quarterbacks ready. Being the fact that we don’t have an experienced backup to Nick, we have to get the backup some experience.
Certainly that will be on how the games are going, how the rhythm of the offense is going. Certainly we feel like he needs to get some experience so that he’s ready when his name is called.
Other than reducing turnovers, what has been Nick Arbuckle’s biggest area of improvement?
Going through his progressions and that’s how you reduce turnovers. Sometimes those quarterbacks, we get a little inkling and sometimes that instinct is right and sometimes it’s wrong. So you have to trust the play, the progression. That’s going to take you to the right place to throw the ball. Avoiding that little predetermination of, “I think that this could have happened,” “I think that the ball could have gone here…” We don’t ever want it to be a think.
We want to be good with our feet and our eyes and make sure we validate every throw we make. It has to happen mentally, but also has to happen physically because your eyes and your feet have to travel together. Nick’s done a good job of making sure as he’s moving through his progressions that his eyes and his feet are where they need to be balance-wise so that he’s ready to throw at all points. I’ve seen his improvement.
The <1 minute series
Inside linebackers coach P.J. Volker
Wide receivers coach Tim Lappano
Defensive line coach Tony Samuel