Brink eager to prove himself
PULLMAN – On a team with so many other areas of concern – Who will play cornerback? Who will kick? How will the running backs fare? — Alex Brink’s play at quarterback has been, well, under the radar.
And one year after fall camp was consumed with nothing but talk of the quarterbacking situation; it’s been a welcome change for the junior captain.
“It’s been a little less stressful,” Brink said.
No one is calling Brink an elite quarterback, but at the same time it seems that the Oregon native did enough as a sophomore to at least prove that he has a chance to develop into one. And with 16 starts under his belt, it would appear that there’s not much Brink can do in a practice to change the general perceptions about him.
Come game time, it’ll be put up or shut up for the signal-caller.
“He’s really developed a lot,” head coach Bill Doba said. “Not only as a leader, but he’s throwing the ball really well too. He knows the offense, he’s making the right checks. He’s becoming another coach on the field.
“That’s what you need. That’s how he won the job in the first place.”
His junior season will not start with the easiest of tests, however.
Auburn’s defense was ranked 19th in the nation last season and figures to be equally good, if not better, in 2006. And as 2005 was a year for offenses in the Pac-10, the Cougars didn’t face a team with a defense ranked higher than 44th in the nation.
Only once has Brink gone up against a defense as well-regarded as this Auburn unit, that was against USC in 2004, when the Trojans sported the sixth-ranked defense in Division I-A.
“It’s hard to compare teams, especially out of conference,” Brink said, asked if there would be any similarities between this Auburn team and the better ones he’s seen already. “Everybody runs the same coverages. It’s understanding what they’re trying to do to you as an offense. The SEC, their players are physical enough that they’re going to try to jam us and stop the run and be physical. Others teams do that, but it’s something they’ve been doing for a long time.”
As a freshman going up against the Trojans, he was making his second career start. The number of people in Martin Stadium that day who gave Brink a legitimate shot to challenge that USC defense likely could have been counted on one hand.
Since that game in 2004, the bar has moved dramatically for Brink.
Now, he’s expected to lead the charge against this hard-nosed defense, led by safety-turned-linebacker Will Herring. And without veteran poise from Brink to combat that defense, the Cougars stand little chance to pull off the upset.
“The thing about inexperience is you see things,” Brink said. “You go through the scout team stuff and you see stuff through the week. But really, until you go through them in a game, you never really see the exact same look twice. So you can go out there and you don’t get taken by surprise.”
In fact, it appears to be a consensus at Auburn that it’s Brink and the Cougar passing game that represent the greatest threat to the Tigers.
“It’s nice to be respected from that standpoint,” he said. “To know that people have an expectation for us is a good thing.”
Notes
Kicker Loren Langley left practice early because of an illness, and Doba said after the practice he hasn’t decided on his placekicker just yet. … The Cougars practiced in their normal game-week style – with scout teams going up against starting units for much of practice – for the first time on Sunday. Doba said that for a first practice with scout teams, it was one of the best sessions he’d seen.