ESU quarterback Andre Sloan El is icing his elbow after practice and Garin Higgins isn’t going to let this go unnoticed.
“Should have thrown more this summer,” Higgins says and then smiles.
The next day Higgins is sitting in his office while ESU’s backup quarterback Zach Rampy, a redshirt freshman, is getting asked in the next room about why he chose Emporia State. Rampy barely gets out his answer before Higgins interrupts.
“Plus the guy calling the plays is 5-9 himself. I’m a little biased towards the 5-9 guys,” Higgins says.
“I’m 5-10. Maybe,” Rampy responds.
“With shoes on.”
“Cleats. 6 foot with cleats.”
And so it goes with Higgins and his quarterbacks. This year the coach has a comfort level with his quarterbacks that he has not had for awhile. Since 2004, Higgins has had to break in a new quarterback into his spread system each and every year. But this season he has two quarterbacks who have spent a year learning the system, and Sloan El even has playing experience.
“If i could say one position where I know for a fact, we’re farther along, it’s quarterback,” Higgins says. “Those guys have had a great camp. I don’t want to anoint them the Brett Favres of the world right now, because they’ve still got a long ways to go, but they’ve had a very good camp. And they’ve really kind of carried over from how they finished the spring. I felt like in the springtime they showed some glimpses of doing some really good things and they really kind of carried it over to this fall.”
The biggest difference for Sloan El, a junior, this season — maybe other than knowledge of the system — is that he’s healthy. He missed most of training camp in 2007 with an abdominal problem and then missed the final three games of the year with a knee injury suffered in the first half against Missouri Western.
When Sloan El was on the field, he was effective. In his five starts, he averaged 175.8 yards passing and 37.4 yards rushing. His 213.2 average total yards of offense in those games would have ranked him fourth in the MIAA.
Sloan El was the leader in camp for the quarterback job, but Rampy has not been far behind and Higgins says he’s willing to play more than one quarterback.
“Competition is always good,” Sloan El said. “Zack pushes me. I push him. That’s definitely good for both of us.”
While Sloan El has more game experience in college, Rampy has more experience in the spread offense. Rampy ran the spread for three years in high school at Blue Valley, playing for his father. Rampy was the Simone Award winner his senior year, an award given to the top high school football player in the Kansas City metro area. He threw for more than 2,000 yards in both his junior and senior seasons and had 53 career touchdown passes and 28 rushing touchdowns.
Despite his success in high school, Rampy wanted a year to adjust.
“Last year coming in as a freshman I was wide-eyed, kind of nervous, didn’t really know what to expect,” Rampy said. “This year after having a year under my belt, I feel more comfortable.”
The quarterbacks’ comfort level should also be raised by their new weapons. Redshirt freshmen Adrian Abner and Brian Murphy, a KU transfer, add speed out of the backfield, and the Hornets also added two potential impact receivers. Danny McEvoy is a 6-foot-4 transfer from Hutchinson Community College and Matt Coursen is a redshirt freshman who was the only freshman last season expected to play. Coursen took a redshirt after he came down with mono before the season opener.
“It makes our jobs as quarterbacks a lot easier,” Rampy said. “It’s nice to be able to throw an out route for three yards and have one of those guys take it down the sideline to the house. It’s something that we didn’t have as much of last year that will help us a lot this year. It’ll be fun playing on offense.
Senior Sean Partridge should be Sloan El’s main target for the second straight season. Partridge led the Hornets with 27 catches in 2007. He also had two touchdowns. His production should only go up with other quality receivers taking some of the defense’s attention away.
“This is one of the best groups since I’ve been here that we’ve had,” Partridge said. “We have a lot of young firepower that’s going to be here for a long time.”