Mike Yurcich is Fine with Mason Rudolph Being … Average?

UPDATE (5:13 p.m.) Headline originally read “Mike Yurcich wants Mason Rudolph to be … Average?” As was pointed out (in the comments and elsewhere), that was a bit of an unfair headline. It has been updated to reflect what I wrote in the actual post which, I felt, was an interesting stance by Yurcich and a positive thing for the OSU offense as a whole.

Mike Yurcich said a curious thing the other about his starting quarterback for the 2015 season. Something that piqued my interest and raised an eyebrow. Here’s what he said to Robert Allen of Go Pokes about Rudolph’s debut at Baylor last season.

“We wanted to protect and make sure we ran the football and made it so if he played average then we had a chance to win the football game,” said Yurcich.

Average, eh?

“We never want to leave the football field saying we lost because our quarterback played average. You are playing a team like Baylor then your whole team has to play good football. That was our mindset going into it.”

Another way to say this is “you should always win when your quarterback plays average.”

It’s tough to say that Yurcich’s entire goal is to construct an offense that can be successful when the QB plays at an average level because, well, he was dealing with a true freshman in his first start and that would appear to be an outlier. It would also appear to go against what Mike Gundy thinks.

“We get good quarterback play, take care of the football, force some turnovers on defense, and we should have an opportunity to win the league,” said Gundy at Big 12 media days.

Good is better than average.

https://vine.co/v/O1F3qeuHujE

But Yurcich also made no qualifiers. He said you “never” want to leave the football field….

That’s interesting to me. He wants to be able to win and win consistently with an average QB. It makes sense, I suppose, given how much more difficult it is to throw than run in college football. That’s been a stalwart of Mike Gundy teams. They want to run.

Maybe Dana Holgorsen changed that a little bit, but it has always been their calling card. Does running a lot (a lot) mean your QB is going to be average? Maybe in his overall statistics. But he can also perform efficiently (as J.W. Walsh has proven).

“Knowing and recruiting Mason and seeing him in his high school years, we always felt he was a really good player and maybe even under the radar a little bit because he didn’t do all the touring and the camps,” Yurcich noted. “I think we knew he had a chip on his shoulder and had an edge to him.”

He’s also better than just average if the last three games of last year are any indication. Though if Yurcich has his way, it sounds like he won’t have to be much better than average for OSU to have success.