Let's see now...Thorson threw for 1465 yards, 7 TD's and 7 INT's. He also rushed for 374 yards and 5 TD's. He's accounted for 1839 yards of offense up until now. Thorson is NOT "merely a conduit" to our RB's. As a RSFreshman on a team with an excellent defense and RB's, he's being asked to limit his passing to avoid turnovers. That's just common sense with a young QB. The first thing a QB has to learn is NOT to hurt the team with turnovers. He's done that pretty well this year. Before one rips his play, remember: 1) he's being constrained by the coaches to minimize mistakes, 2) he does not have an abundance of talent to throw to, 3) we can win running the ball and playing great defense (which are major factors for a football team's success).
He doesn't run the ball as much now because teams have found out he can kill you running the ball (Stanford, Nebraska) and they've game planned to stop his running.
I've seen progress in Thorson over the season. He is much more settled in at QB than he was and has done a good job of not forcing throws. It's very clear he is being asked to do a lot less than what he'd like to do right now. He even stated so after the Illinois game. He needs to work on his accuracy, but much of his lack of passing stats is attributable to the coaches' game plans and other personnel issues on offense. I think you'll like his play more next year when he's much further along in reading defenses, finding open receivers, and the coaching staff eases up on the reins.
Guys like Persa, Schnur, Kustok, and Bacher hardly played as redshirt freshmen, and were horrible when they did, let alone won games against ranked teams and Big Ten teams. Thorson is doing fine so far.
