Jerry Miller
Bengal Adviser
It’s customary when writing a story about someone that a writer or reporter talk to that person, but that won’t happen in this story about new Bengal quarterback Michael Sanders. Idaho State Head Coach Mike Kramer has put the quarterbacks off limits to the press, so there will not be a personal exchange with the guy that Kramer has tasked to replace the record-setting, but departed Justin Arias.
After spring football ended, Coach Kramer insisted that the battle for the starting quarterback spot would be wide-open in the fall, between Sanders, a junior college transfer from Scottsdale Community College, and Tanner Gueller, a redshirt freshman who sat out last year’s 8-4 season while being tutored by Arias.
But in July at the Big Sky Conference football meetings in Park City, Utah, Kramer slammed it into reverse, announcing that ISU’s high-powered offense with nine returning starters was too valuable to turn over to a young 19-year-old who has never taken a snap in a college game, and that the job was Sanders’ to lose. So, who is this Michael Sanders, the guy who gets the keys to the car unless he rams it into a wall?
Sanders, at 6’3” and 220 pounds, is from Phoenix, Arizona where he started at quarterback his senior season at Pinnacle High School, throwing 22 TD passes and seven interceptions.
From there he moved on to Scottsdale where he mostly sat during his freshman year behind Blake Decker, who will be the senior starter this year at UNLV, the team the Bengals play in week number four.
But last season at Scottsdale, Sanders rocked it, leading the “Chokes” to an eight-game win streak on the way to an 8-3 season, finishing second nationally in total passing yards and passing yards per game, and sixth in the nation with 35 touchdown passes.
Sanders created enough ripples that he drew inquiries from both Kansas and Georgia, but in an interview he gave after signing with ISU, he said he made a list of schools that were either graduating a quarterback, or ran high-powered passing games like he excelled in. ISU fit the bill in both categories, and he actually reached out to the Bengals in January.
According to Coach Kramer, former ISU offensive coordinator Don Bailey wanted the team to go with the young Gueller this season, but when Bailey decided to go to Hawaii as offensive coordinator, Kramer sent new Bengal Offensive Coordinator Sheldon Cross to Scottsdale to make the pitch to Sanders. It was just a week before the signing date that Sanders visited Holt Arena and committed to be a Bengal.
Now that fall camp is well underway, Sanders is starting to look more comfortable on a daily basis running the offense. He came to Pocatello and worked out with receivers and running backs during the summer and spent hours watching game films trying to get up to speed with the Bengals rapid-fire, pass-happy offense, which should mirror almost exactly what ISU put on the field last season.
Kramer says Sanders has an advantage because he’s taken hundreds of snaps at the college level, but he also points out that he is expecting far more from Sanders, and even Gueller, than they’ve ever given before.
“We are absolutely precise in what we want that quarterback to be able to do. And it’s not just a quick release, we want ball accuracy on every throw,” said Kramer. “We don’t want you to miss a throw. You can’t miss a read, you can’t miss a throw, you can’t miss a throw, you can’t miss a throw!”
So the pressure is on both quarterbacks to learn as quickly as humanly possible, or maybe even faster.
Listening to Sanders’ coach at Scottsdale, Doug Madoskie, was kind of like hearing someone trying to make a high-pressure sales pitch.
“Mike is ridiculously intelligent! He reads defenses extremely well. He won’t have any problem fitting in with the ISU offense, all he needs is some time.”
He also is totally sold on Sanders’ physical abilities.
“He has crazy good skills. He can throw the ball where it’s supposed to be. He makes everyone around him better.”
Scottsdale has turned into a junior college quarterback factory of sorts, and Madoskie says Sanders didn’t miss a beat.
“It’s so hard to compare the great QBs we’ve had with guys going to Louisiana Tech, Colorado and UNLV, but Mike belongs in the same category as those guys. He’s a keeper.”
How do some of the other Bengals see the quarterback situation?
ISU senior center Christian Diehm says Sanders being so new to the system really means that good communication between him and the rest of the team is an absolute must. But Diehm says so far, Sanders is a good student.
“Mike, he listens. He adjusts well, and I like that about him. If we’re not on the same page we’ll sit down and talk, and he’ll listen to us, then he’ll tell us what he wants us to do, and we just seem to feed off of each other.”
Junior wide receiver KW Williams says the most important thing for him and a quarterback is chemistry.
“This receiving corp is so veteran. We know the offense. So it’s our job to be in the right place at the right time so our quarterbacks can find us and put it on us,” said Williams.
Another junior receiver, Broc Malcolm, says Sanders has good leadership characteristics, and he is really good at communicating.
“If we mess up and he leads me outside and I’m running an in, after the play we’ll come together and we’ll get on the same page,” stated Malcolm.
All three of them like Sanders and his potential, but they’re also very high on Gueller, the redshirt freshman. They all agree that he has a cannon for an arm, will be a great leader and is very hungry to win. Even Coach Kramer knows that having Gueller ready to go if Sanders should falter or get hurt is of premium importance.
“We’ll start Michael and he’ll play the first quarter and then Tanner will start the second quarter to make sure we get him some positive reps. I’ll play Tanner probably the first series of the second quarter throughout the season until we get to a point where I feel like he’s got enough game experience, because no matter what happens on the practice field or in a scrimmage against each other, there’s no substitute for that game rep experience. As many game reps as we can give to Tanner Gueller will make our whole football team better,” said Kramer.
With nine experienced starters back on offense, all eyes will definitely be on the quarterback position.
But even with a new quarterback at the helm, Diehm, Williams and Malcolm are absolutely convinced that this year’s Bengals will be even better than last year. They say this year’s team will be “amazing” with an “unstoppable” offense, and nothing short of a Big Sky Conference title will satisfy them.
