Column: He Needs to Grow More, But Jared Curtis is Far From the Main Issue for Vanderbilt Football
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NASHVILLE — In the final minutes of Vanderbilt football’s game against No. 3 Alabama, it was driving and looking to score one of the two touchdowns it needed to come from behind in the last moment to force overtime.
The Commodores got to a third down with six yards to go on the doorstep of the red zone. Vanderbilt’s five-star freshman quarterback Jared Curtis stepped back, surveyed his progressions and ran it himself for a first down at the Alabama 15-yard line.
The play kept alive any ounce of life Vanderbilt had left before it ultimately lost the game 21-6. But even with a first down on the 15-yard line, the Commodores did not get much further on that possession. Offensive lineman Mitchell Smith committed a holding penalty on second down and put Vanderbilt in an impossible position, where the drive later ended on a missed fourth down attempt.
Who knows what would have happened had Smith not gotten the holding penalty. Maybe Vanderbilt would have scored, maybe not. But that sequence with a little under five minutes to go in the game was a bit of a microcosm of the offense.
It was a game where the offense would take one step forward and two steps back. It was one of those days where it felt like anytime Vanderbilt would do something positive on offense, something would go wrong short after, mostly penalties.
“I felt like we made progress in eliminating these and we’ve played cleaner. Today, it really robbed us of a chance to put pressure on Alabama,” Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea said about the penalty issues in the game.
In total, Vanderbilt finished with 235 yards. Of that, 223 were pass yards and 12 of those were rushing yards. Yes, that does technically include the sacks Curtis sustained in the game, but even factoring out the sacks, Vanderbilt only had 32 rushing yards combined between Sedrick Alexander, MK Young and Martel Hight.
On top of the lackluster run game, Vanderbilt’s offense had 11 penalties for 63 yards.
The point is, Curtis is far from the problem for Vanderbilt. He is not the first nor is he the second or even the third thing if one had to rank reasons why the season has gone the way it has for Vanderbilt.
Does that mean Curtis had an amazing day against Alabama Saturday? No. Curtis completed 25 of his 40 passes for 223 yards. He did not throw a touchdown and he even missed some throws he should have made. But he did not turn the ball over.
“He’s growing and I can’t wait to watch that guy grow. He’s stepping into who he is and I love that even more. And just him quarterback-wise, I think he’s making plays. You see that even on the third down in the red zone. He converted that. He had made a couple guys miss,” Young said.
People may look at the missed throws from Curtis and point to a lack of development or maybe not as quick of a development one would like to see. However, the game against Alabama was the second consecutive week in which Curtis did not throw an interception, which was a sign of growing pains earlier in conference play.
There also is an argument that could be made that part of the reason the offense was sloppy and out of sync Saturday was because of Curtis’ growing pains of learning to make the correct pre-snap adjustments.
In that sense, part of the poor offensive execution falls on Curtis. Regardless, that still does not make him among the biggest problems.
If there was some sort of ranking of what the biggest issues are for Vanderbilt’s offense the two things that would immediately be a bigger problem than Curtis’ performance are penalties the offensive line commits and the nonexistent run game.
When the offense commits about 30 more yards worth of penalties than it ran for, there really is not much of a foundation to help a young quarterback like Curtis to succeed.
For weeks now, Lea has been talking about how the other 10 guys on the offense have to do a better job executing so that Curtis does not have as much pressure on him, specifically in the run game.
There was a sign of improvement against Mississippi State a week ago, but that was not even close to being the case against Alabama. The pressure was on Curtis throughout the day. Not only was there no run game, but it looked like Curtis had to scramble and run for his life quite a bit as well.
Lea will not let that distract him from the positive Curtis did do against the Crimson Tide.
“We’ll need to look at it and say ‘what are the things that we need to do to help him the best we can to put him in good positions to win in those moments?’ And part of that’s going to be the run game,” Lea said. “But with all the doom and gloom of the day, you still saw moments and flashes of him ripping the ball and plays being made on the perimeter. It’s all there.”
Curtis’ performance was not a masterclass by any means. There are probably a few plays he would like to have back and execute better. And maybe Curtis did not make much progress in terms of his development Saturday.
But on the other hand, how much can one really blame Curtis? Considering the fact he was scrambling for his life and there were no other elements of the offense that were taking weight off his shoulders, leaps of progress should not be expected to occur. That does not deny the fact Curtis has to get better.
Patience is a virtue and Curtis’ development feels like something that requires patience. What is for sure is that he should not get much blame for how things have gone.
“He’s different and you guys will see that. We’ll continue to grow with him and I’m just super excited to see where he goes,” Young said.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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