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Steven M. Sipple: Frost should be able to find enough receiver help to keep McCaffrey at QB | Column



But what if Martinez, a 27-game starter, again wins the job? Might McCaffrey then consider helping the team as a receiver? He’s a high-energy, team-first player, which helps explain his immense popularity with teammates. On the other hand, every snap at receiver cuts into his development as a quarterback.

I go back to a conversation I had with Frost in March, right before spring practice was shut down by the pandemic. He said then that if, come fall, McCaffrey wasn’t “the guy” at quarterback, a move to receiver could be in play (he had one reception this season while playing the vast majority of his snaps at QB). I wondered in March if McCaffrey could even play receiver at a consistently high level in a conference as competitive as the Big Ten. Wouldn’t that be pretty hard to do?


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“No, not really,” Frost said, citing McCaffrey’s overall athleticism and knowledge of the offense. “We didn’t practice him at receiver at all before the Maryland game (in 2019), and he just went out and did it because the quarterbacks know what everybody’s supposed to do.

“But I want to emphasize that he’s not a receiver; he’s a quarterback. We don’t even entertain thoughts of (McCaffrey playing receiver) until … he’s not the quarterback and we determine we need another receiver. That’s the only reason we’d even think about it.”  

Is Frost thinking about it now, with Wan’Dale gone? Nobody asked me, but if I were in Frost shoes, I would work hard to get young players such as Alante Brown and Will Nixon ready to play key roles in the slot, and allow McCaffrey to continue to play the position he grew up wanting to play.



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