If Tom Allen has his way, no one outside of his program will know who IU football’s starting quarterback will be until just before the season-opening kickoff against Illinois on Sept. 2.
Allen said on Friday he plans to tell his team internally who will be the starter sooner, but he has no plans to make a public announcement until the Friday night contest in Bloomington three weeks from today.
“As a program we would like to know, probably after the second scrimmage,” Allen said on Friday following the team’s first scrimmage.
“I’m not going to announce it until kickoff because that’s the right way to do it. I call the defense, and if I know who the quarterback is, that’s a little bit different than if I’m not sure.
“The bottom line is we will know, and he (the starting quarterback) will know, and the team will know. Game one is Big Ten football, and we all understand what’s at stake.”
Allen described the keys he is focused on for determining who will be the week one starter.
“Command of the offense No. 1, protecting the football No. 2 which we did a good job today, and No. 3 is winning the team over — who does our team believe if that guy’s in the huddle, we’re going to find a way to win,” Allen said.
In a program of well over 100 individuals, the challenge will become making sure Illinois doesn’t find out in the days that follow the internal announcement to the team likely by next weekend, and the first game nearly two weeks later.
Allen is currently referring to the competition as a three man race between Missouri transfer Connor Bazelak, Jack Tuttle and Dexter Williams.
He said all three had good command of new offensive coordinator Walt Bell’s offense in the first scrimmage on Friday, and they all were able to push the ball down the field. But he wanted to watch film of the scrimmage to develop a more in depth analysis of their respective performances.
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