Could Looking Ahead Be An Advantage?

Disclaimer: This post is total fodder. So let's have fun with it and feel free to tear apart all ideas expressed here.

I try to keep my focus on the ground game. That's sorta supposed to be my unofficial niche of contribution on STS. And we do face a great RB this week in Andre Williams. So I was well on my way to breaking down his strengths and weaknesses and what our defensive focuses should be in order to limit his effectiveness. But I kept coming back to one theme over and over to the point that I just couldn't ignore it anymore.

Looking ahead. It's been a major subject on STS lately due to all the tepid competition we've been facing. The threat of defeating ourselves by looking ahead is what we're all scared of. Or not scared of. Or somewhere in between. Or infuriated that it's even a topic of conversation. And it's coming to a boiling point because this is the penultimate Look Ahead week with FSU on the immediate horizon. So anyway I got to pondering.

Could it actually be an advantage to deliberately look ahead?

Here's the basic proposition. Spare Tajh the mental headaches of preparing for BC this week. Sit him. Rest his body. And channel all his mental energies over the next two weeks to defeating the FSU defense.

Having two weeks to prepare for any team is a major advantage for a QB.

But could Cole Stoudt handle the offense against BC? He did two years ago. Sorta. When Tajh got hurt in the first drive of the second half the Tigers were up 23-7. Stoudt came in and went 6/10 for a meager 37 yds and a bunch of other stats that don't mean much these days. Bottom line is that we won 36-14, and the Cole of today is a much improved QB. Stoudt is more than capable of running our offense against the Eagles.

But if we announced that it was our intent to start Stoudt then there would be an even more massive target on our chest this weekend. It would be an incredibly rude and underhanded insult to BC. They would be gunning for us all out. And the media would spread the story like wildfire.

Which in my opinion would be a good thing. I mean, say what you want to about positive or negative attention from the media, but I think as long as you're winning and your players aren't getting arrested then all national media talk is good talk. Let Jesse Palmer yak all he wants about us "Clemsoning." It gets the conversation on us. We go out and win anyway. He looks silly. Besides, that little sound byte is nothing more than a shimmering piece of evidence that Jesse Palmer and the rest of the SEC obsessed are greatly intimidated by Clemson's play on the national level. Palmer's insult is fear in word form.

Anyway. If we started Cole Stoudt to give Tajh Boyd two weeks to prepare for FSU it would be talked about all over the place. We would dominate the national media attention leading into the weekend and it would spark a massive debate on how you're supposed to prepare for each team each week. And of course recruits would be part of that audience.

Now of course if we came out and lost to BC we'd look like the biggest doofuses ever. But if we did it and beat both BC and FSU? We'd look like evil geniuses with plots of mass domination. Maybe.

In the end this is probably a very terrible idea. If I heard we were sitting Tajh and starting Cole I would most likely freak the hell out. Doc and FF would both lose their minds. But the main point is to just ponder the feasibility of embracing the natural psyche of Looking Ahead and debating wether or not it could be turned into a benefit in some way.

In the end I don't think we'll come out and Look Ahead one bit. We haven't done so yet and I don't think this'll be the week to start. We'll play BC like they're as undefeated as we are.

Which means we'll probably still see a lot of Tajh running the rock. How many QB Power's get called?