Of course we’re not ignoring—it was impressive. But I don’t think it surprised anybody really—everybody knows Nuss has that kind of arm and the willingness to sling it. But you are being intellectually dishonest if you ignore his propensity to put the ball in danger. In a league with so much parity these days with a very thin roster, especially on defense, we couldn’t afford a bunch of turnovers regularly putting our defense back on the field.

And just like I think it was obvious Jayden made improvements throwing the ball (progression is not linear), I think Nuss is probably a lot better today than he was to begin the year, because it was obvious that his play in the Southern game is not conducive to winning SEC football games, and he was coached up to be better with his decision making. And hats off to him for working hard and getting better. But nothing he did Saturday “proves” that he should have been the starter all along. JD was obviously our best chance of winning games in the SEC.

I also think BK was playing the long-game a bit. He knew he wasn’t gonna get the buy-in he needed without wins. JD gave us the best chance for those immediate wins that lead to the buy-in. But also, I think Walker Howard played into that some. Starting a RFR Nuss all year long would have given him a huge advantage over Howard going into next year. I think he would still have opened up the competition going into next spring, but he didn’t want to chance losing Howard if he thinks he has the higher ceiling (and from everything I’ve heard, he clearly does. Better arm, and a unique maturity for his age.)

I’m interested to see what Jayden does. He is 100% our best chance to compete for a championship in ‘23. But playing Walker (or Nuss) obviously sets us up better for ‘24 and beyond. We’ll see what happens.