Louisville might not have a starting quarterback right now, but the Cardinals do have plans to play both true freshman Teddy Bridgewater and veteran Will Stein when the season begins.
Offensive coordinator Mike Sanford said in a phone interview Tuesday that he does not yet have an idea about how the plan would work, but said it was important to get both players game time.
"In college football these days, you can’t just get one guy ready," Sanford said. "We want to have both those guys ready to play. We think each has a lot of strong characteristics and we can develop them by playing them."
The plan during fall camp is to give equal reps as much as possible. Stein was a little further ahead of Bridgewater in spring because he has had more time in the offense, but Sanford also believes the competition will be open going into the fall. He said Bridgewater, who comes into school with sky-high expectations, looks like a completely different player than the one who enrolled in school in January.
"As spring went on, as he became more familiar with the system, he got better and better and more comfortable," Sanford said. "I really liked what I saw out of Teddy. I love his attitude. He’s a hard-working guy, hard working off the field, cares about knowing all the mental things you’ve got to know at quarterback, wants to understand what everybody does. I do feel like he progressed as spring went on."
As for the dynamic between Stein and Bridgewater, Sanford said, "Stein is a guy who’s been in the program, played before, played last year, has some seasoning to him, a very confident young man and I think in his mind he’s one of those guys who believes he’s the best and nobody is going to beat him out. It creates an interesting scenario. You’ve got a young guy who’s been told he’s good and an older guy who believes he’s good.
"As the thing develops, we’re going to see how it goes. I know one thing going in: We’re going to play them both. How that works I don’t know. I don’t know what the recipe of that is, but that’s something we’re going to do. We’ll see how training camp goes, how the start of the season goes and go from there. We'll play the guy that gives us the best chance to win."