Arm strength is over rated

Shepard has not even been given a chance to play the position and people say he will never play QB because he doesn't have the arm strength. It takes a hell of lot more to play QB than arm strength. I believe playing the position successfully is more about intagibles: leadership, confidence, and inspiring others to have confidence in you.

You want an example, and I give you Rohan Davey / Josh Booty. Both guys had cannons for arms. But Rohan had that "it" factor and Josh didn't. It's not something you can coach or instill. A guy either has it or he doesn't.

About the arm strength, there are many successful college QB's who never even sniff the NFL because of arm strength. This is about "college" and succeeding at this level. My God, we just had a prime example of guy who may never play QB in the NFL, yet may lead his team to 3 national titles, play in our stadium! Give me the guy who wins games over the guy who can throw it 70 yards on a spiral. Besides, throwing the football is much more difficult when you have 300 lb lineman and 250 lb lb's trying to take your head off. Nobody can throw a football lying on their back.

Onto Shepard, most people equate him to Herb Tyler. Herb Tyler was a damn good QB here at LSU. Just to show you how underrated and underappreciated Tyler was at LSU, here are stats that may surprise you.

Tyler was one of the most accurate quarterbacks in LSU history, finishing his career with a 60.7% completion percentage, making him the sixth quarterback in LSU history to finish with his career with a completion percentage above 50% (minimum 400 attempts), and the second quarterback in LSU history to finish his career with a completion percentage above 60% (minimum 400 attempts), behind Alan Risher (62.0%). Tyler's 60.7% completion percentage on 715 pass attempts beat legendary Bert Jones's 52.6% career completion percentage on 418 attempts. It also beat Matt Mauck's 58.6% career completion percentage on 529 attempts and Rohan Davey's 59.8% career completion percentage on 478 attempts.

With 63 combined passing and rushing touchdowns, Tyler had more touchdowns that any dual-threat option quarterback in SEC history since Auburn's legendary Pat Sullivan's 71 touchdowns (53 passing, 18 rushing) during 1969-1971.

Tyler was the second quarterback in LSU history to pass for 40 or more touchdowns, behind Tommy Hodson (69 touchdowns).

With 6,654 combined passing and rushing yards in 36 games, Tyler was the third player in LSU history to finish his career with more than 6,000 yards of total offense, behind Tommy Hodson (8,938 yards) and Jeff Wickersham (6,705 yards).

With an average of 184.8 yards of total offense per game, Tyler was the second player in LSU history to surpass 180 yards of total offense per game, behind Tommy Hodson (203.1)

With an average of 6.61 yards of total offense per play, Tyler was the first quarterback in LSU history (and the fifth quarterback in SEC history) to average above 6.0 yards of total offense per play (minimum 900 plays).

Here it the link to Herb's bio. LINK

I could only hope that Shepard is another Tyler. I will take that any day, especially over what we have right now. The sad thing about Tyler is that he should have been fondly remembered for all that he did accomplish. Instead, his senior year was marred by Dinardo's ghastly Lou Tepper experiment. I may also add that Herb was not highly recruited and nobody had a clue who he was.

I'm not saying Shep is the savior. I believe he needs to have opportunity to play QB though and the issue will be settled. Either he can or he cann't. Don't indict him because him because of arm strength. By all rights Herb Tyler never would have seen the field at LSU based on arm strength. That is a mistake.