With four-year starter Joel Stave departing Wisconsin to pursue a career in the NFL, head coach Paul Chryst and the rest of his staff ventured into the off-season intent on finding the right man to seize the starting quarterback job. After a closely contested position battle, which carried all the way into August, the team officially named Bart Houston as the starter against LSU, sliding Alex Hornibrook over to a spot on the second team. To paint a better picture of how Wisconsin stands at the quarterback position, here is an examination of both players.
Bart Houston: After spending the past three seasons slotted into the reserve role, fifth-year senior Bart Houston will take a long-awaited turn at lining up under center with the first-team offense.
A four-star recruit from California, Houston was regarded as a top 10 quarterback prospect when he committed to Wisconsin in 2012, but most opportunity to earn playing time has been stymied by the presence of Joel Stave at the top of the Badgers’ depth chart. Although Houston has never made a collegiate start before, the newly crowned starter has seen limited action in portions of 15 games during his time at Wisconsin. He mostly worked in mop-up duty in blowout games or in cases of injury to the starter.
His most extensive outing came in a relief appearance of Stave, who suffered an injury last October at Illinois. Amidst hostile territory on the road, Houston led the Badgers to victory, completing 22 of 33 passes for 232 yards, two touchdowns and a pair of interceptions. Probably the most striking positive attribute of Houston’s skillset that we saw in that game, and have continued to observe over summer, is his robust arm strength, a quality which allows him to sling the football into small openings and pick tightly covered areas apart.
While his arm is indeed quite strong, his accuracy isn’t always equally as sharp or consistent. At times during camp, he frequently struggled making relatively simple passes that have no excuse to fall incomplete. Errant throws and poor decision making also cost Houston in his appearance in Illinois, where poorly placed passes and lapses in judgement culminated in two turnovers, a statistic which could have probably been higher if a few more ill-advised pass attempts fell into the wrong hands.
Whatever Badger fans may say about Stave, his reputation as a quality Big Ten quarterback was born out of his sustained dependability as a poised game manager and a winner. Every now and again, he would have a game where nothing was working, but for the most part, he was smart with the football and kept his teams in games by staying out of potentially troublesome situations. Houston has the physical gifts to succeed, but he will have to take after his predecessor and cut down on poor choices in order to make a positive impact under center.
Alex Hornibrook: If anyone wants an explanation for why the quarterback controversy dragged on until the final days of camp, they need not look any further than the play of redshirt freshman Alex Hornibrook.
Hornibrook , a 6-foot-4, 219-pound southpaw from Pennsylvania, worked his way into the starting quarterback race after a strong finish to the spring season, performing especially well in April. As an early enrollee, Hornibrook hasn’t played in an actual game since the fall of 2014, his senior year of high school, but his fitful flashes of talent over the course of the preseason continued to turn heads nonetheless.
One of his best performances took shape in a spring game in late April, where Hornibrook showcased his ability to throw the homerun. He connected on a number of long-range passes, three of which went for 35 yards or more. However, the momentum that Hornibook gained from the latter part of spring season didn’t translate into summer camp, where Houston outperformed him and ultimately won the starting job. While Houston may have the more powerful arm of the two, Hornibrook bests his counterpart in overall athletic ability, where he can use his agility to attack an opposing defense. Although Hornibrook will sit on the sidelines for likely the entirety of the upcoming season, his valiant efforts this offseason certainly lend an encouraging glimpse into the future.
