Idaho will be more healthy at the quarterback position this week.
Paul Petrino announced during his Monday press conference that junior Josh McCain should be ready to go, and will probably back up senior Taylor Davis on Saturday when Idaho takes on Old Dominion.
McCain may have been available last Saturday during Idaho’s 37-21 loss to Texas State. The quarterback was fully suited up, along with redshirt freshman Chad Chalich.
Neither were present during pre-game warm ups, Petrino didn’t want to tip his hand as to how healthy either of the quarterbacks might be. The goal, of course, is to protect the redshirt of Matt Linehan if an injury occurred to Taylor Davis.
“That was going to be a call as it went, I didn’t really want them out there throwing before the game and having the opponent see how well they could or could not throw,” Petrino said. “So if I did have to put them in the game they didn’t know ‘hey, did you see those guys in warm ups? They couldn’t throw so let’s just blitz them.'”
“It was something where they just warmed up on their own instead of in front of everybody and they were dressed and possibly one of them could have played. That was going to be a gut check to decide what we were going to do if that situation presented itself.”
Petrino also addressed his second half 4th down decisions that proved critical to the outcome of the game.
He decided to go for a 4th down on his own 38 on Idaho’s first possession of the second half. Davis hesitated during the scramble and came up short of the marker. Texas State scored on the next possession to go up 30-14.
“That was just something, I felt like we didn’t have the ball much in the first half, I looked up at the clock, a lot of time was already off in the second half,” Petrino said. “It was the formation we played the play before, saw a play, thought it was there, called it, we didn’t execute it. I’d call it again if it was the exact same situation right now because I thought it was there, we just have to get better to execute it.”
Later, in the fourth quarter, with the same scoreline Petrino was faced with another 4th down decision. This time with only ten minutes left in the game facing a 4th and 3 on the Texas State 30 Petrino elected to kick the field goal. Austin Rehkow missed the kick, and Texas State scored on the next possession to make it 37-14.
“I just thought that if we got the field goal right there we’d have a chance to come back and have a chance to get the ball and go. I don’t know if it was the best decision or not but I wanted to get points on the board and build some momentum,” Petrino said. “I thought was as easy than saying we’re going to get two scores and score two two-point conversions. That’s definitely one that I sat up that night and thought maybe I should have went for it.”