Christian Ponder delivers Florida State from its long Weatherfordian nightmare (for the moment)
Most fifth-year seniors with 33 career starts over three years are pretty entrenched, and Drew Weatherford has never been a terrible quarterback -- in fact, after lobbing up a national-high 19 interceptions as a redshirt freshman in 2005 (an ACC championship year for Florida State, by the way), he managed the lowest interception percentage in the nation last year among regular starters.
Still, Weatherford grew excessively cautious, struggled to challenge defenses downfield and was always an underthrown slant away from cat calls for bigger, faster, stronger-armed, better-hyped Xavier Lee. So now that Lee has permanently flaked his way off the team, it's likely no small relief to FSU partisans that Jimbo Fisher and Bobby Bowden finally agreed to go in a different direction for Saturday's gimme opener with Western Carolina:
After months of speculation, Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden finally ended the suspense following Wednesday's practice and named Christian Ponder as the starting quarterback.
"Ponder will start the ballgame and we will go from there," Bowden said.
"His footwork is good and he is throwing good," Bowden continued. "I think that is a big thing. It is so tight, it's a tough decision. You couldn't imagine how tough it was."
We have some idea. As opposed to Weatherford's long, sordid resumé, Ponder has a little over two quarters of underwhelming relief duty in last year's 19-point loss at Virginia Tech, and also had to hold off more athletic D'Vontrey Richardson, so unless he has compromising Bowden pictures -- and if so, Christian, that's what the Internet is for -- the kid certainly earned the distinction.
At least he'll have plenty of time to ease into the offense: after they polish off Western Carolina, the Noles take on the challenge of Chattanooga, the very same Moccasins who were last seen being blown to smithereens by Oklahoma last Saturday. Beware ye optimists: all three guys will play, supposedly, so you're not out of the woods with Weatherford just yet.
- - -
Photo of Ponder via US Presswire.
