Super Bowl Update

Spring practice on Tuesday

This story can be found in Wednesday's Dothan Eagle, or on dothaneagle.com HERE.

Story and interviews were written before I saw the depth chart, which had Dallas Tidwell at No. 2 ahead of Deon Anthony at No. 3. Depth chart was released Tuesday. Robinson and those two looked like a clear top 3 in practice Tuesday. It's a deal where Robinson's your starter, and it could be that Tidwell is the true No. 2 and Anthony's the change of pace guy. Or, there's still 10 more practices and more stuff could happen.

BY DREW CHAMPLIN
dchamplin@dothaneagle.com

TROY – Rising junior quarterback Corey Robinson now has some quarterbacks ready to challenge him for playing time, and the two-year starter has stepped up to the challenge early on in spring practice.

Robinson is being pushed by junior college transfer Deon Anthony and a pair of redshirt freshmen in Dallas Tidwell and Luke Barnes. Tidwell is slightly ahead of Barnes since he has gotten more reps in practice, but all three are competing for the backup spot and even to push Robinson.

“Corey is for sure way ahead right now, just from a command presence,”Troy offensive coordinator Kenny Edenfield said. “I have seen good things from Deon and I have seen good things from Dallas Tidwell.”

Robinson surpassed 7,000 career passing yards in his first two years and is on pace to shatter every Troy career passing record if he stays healthy. He had some competition from Jamie Hampton, but Hampton got hurt in each of the last two years and Robinson was able to stay healthy so coaches didn’t have to burn any redshirts.

Now that the other three quarterbacks are able to get more live reps with the first unit, the hope is that the game will start to slow down for them.

“You can know what to do on the board and you can know what to do on the drill board, but when the team starts going, you have to be able to slow it down,” Edenfield said. “That comes with experience. You want to give them reps, but you don’t want to do it at the expense of your No. 1 quarterback.”

Despite Robinson having two years left, Troy coaches still signed Anthony, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound quarterback who played at Hinds (Miss.) Community College.

At the worst, Anthony’s role could be as a quarterback in the Wildcat package, one where teams use a more athletic player than the starting quarterback to take snaps.

“He’s a guy that, if nothing else, can give us competition for Corey and give us a hybrid guy or a wildcat guy that can throw,”Troy head coach Larry Blakeney said. “We’ve got plenty of wildcat guys who can’t throw.

“I know he’ll compete and I think he will. I think he can give us some added problems for defensive schemes if he’s a guy who can run on the field. He’s also a guy that can give us two quarterbacks on the field. He can motion out (wide) and we’ve got other things he can do.”

Anthony narrowed his choices down to Troy and Pittsburgh. He was set to visit Pitt, but then head-coach Todd Graham left for Arizona State.

“It was either Pittsburgh or here, and once the coaches left, I knew I was going to Troy,” Anthony said.
“Troy had been on me since the beginning. They were one of the first schools to come at me, and I knew I had a place here.”

Anthony, who is originally from New Iberia,La., knew the quarterback situation coming in, and signed with the intention of playing.

“I saw last year where they had a down year and in previous years, they were pretty good,” Anthony said. “If they had somebody to push the other guy, it would make the team better.

“They didn’t have a quarterback with the speed to pull down the ball and run if the defensive end cracks down, so I can give them that.”