Stand by Your Man – A Defense of Gunner Kiel

I barely retain the composure to write about this team after the meltdown in Houston.  But there is something more irritating to me than the coaching, this team’s mistakes, and maybe more than the American Conference officiating.  Unfortunately, it is our fans.

Fans are wonderful and every team needs them.  In fact, Cincinnati is fortunate to have as many as they do right now given their brief history of success and the in-town competition of an NFL team and an in-state defending national champion vying for allegiance.  So don’t get me wrong, I’m glad so many people have come around to support UC football and quite frankly UC football has earned it.  I suppose it comes with the territory, but we seem to have a disproportionate number of obnoxious fans.  Do you know what makes a fan obnoxious?  Ignorance.  I’m not talking about sounding like a homer, all fans are homers.  We share the same lofty estimation of our team’s ability.  As a college fan, I have a short fuse for really singling out a student-athlete to pick on.  As a football fan, I do not have patience for casual football fans who automatically blame the quarterback for a team’s failure.

Quarterbacks are the easiest to blame because they are the most identifiable position.  The casual fan does not know how to critique a left guard’s job.  Nor do they understand how playcalling effects QB pressure.  And most fans can’t tell when a WR misses his timing route.  The only thing that these pieces have in common is that the quarterback looks like a fool whether it was his fault or not.  He is one man, he can’t do everything.  Cincinnati this year has suffered some horrible defense and special team blunders and yet the offense has propped us up and kept us in every single game except for BYU where, ironically, Gunner was not playing.

Gunner Kiel certainly makes questionable decisions, but he is a good quarterback.  He has been injured a lot, but he still understands the game very well, has a great arm, and is a team leader.  However when fans are calling for Hayden before kickoff then it is not surprising however that when he makes a mistake fans are ready to throw our 5-star quarterback under the bus and move on to our 3-star redshirt freshman.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Hayden Moore.  Hayden will be (and is) a great quarterback, but both QBs need development and that’s part of what college football is about. *

If we as fans hit the panic button and demand a new QB every time something bad happens or if we always assume that “the next guy” is the best guy then we will end up being the Cleveland Browns.  Case in point: Johnny Manziel.  Bad fans are the ones who assume that leadership is always incompetent and that they always know better.

Here is a quick comparison between the ever-hated Gunner Kiel vs. Houston’s heralded Greg Ward Jr. from this past game:

Believe it or not, no one is calling for Greg Ward Jr.’s head.  Kiel was far from perfect today**, but there were some dropped passes.  The team was to blame today.  The safety and pick six  still pale in comparison to the rest of the team’s blunders: An atrocious rushing fumble that cost us 7.  A blocked punt that gave up 7.  An inexplicable and allegedly uncalled-for onside kick.  And the combo of worst defensive discipline and officiating we’ve seen in a long time…er…well…since the Memphis game anyway.

All this to say, Gunner is a good quarterback.  More importantly, he is our quarterback.  He deserves the respect and support of the fans.  Cincinnati loves to turn on its star players whether it’s Ken Griffey Jr., Chad Johnson, Carson Palmer, or last year’s Andy Dalton.  If Andy Dalton can eliminate last year’s mistakes just imagine what next year’s Gunner could look like.  So can we please stop nitpicking Gunner and spread the blame around?  We’re not a great team this year but shooting the wounded is a poor strategy for amelioration.

* I could have mentioned that the dumbest play of the season was Hayden’s frantic-falling-down-sidearm-INT-with-plenty-of-time that ended the Memphis game.  But I took the high road (until now).

**For the record, Gunner still has a higher QB rating than Hayden Moore even after Moore’s 2 starts and 4 in-game appearances.