Scarbinsky: Chizik dares to (sort of) compare Cam Newton, Jason Campbell, Vince YoungPublished: Sunday, August 22, 2010, 5:30 AMKevin Scarbinsky, Birmingham NewsAUBURNBefore I could mention Vince Young, he mentioned Vince Young. Ditto for Jason Campbell and Daunte Culpepper.It might seem like a dangerous thing to ask a head coach who has a big, strong, athletic quarterback - who hasn't accomplished a thing - to compare him to three big, strong, athletic quarterbacks who accomplished everything from undefeated seasons to All-American honors to first-round draft status.But I didn't have to ask."I've been around some great quarterbacks as a defensive coordinator, starting with Daunte Culpepper," Chizik said. "You've got Jason Campbell. You've got Vince Young. You've got Colt McCoy."No one ever accused McCoy of being big, strong or athletic, but it was Chizik who changed the subject to great quarterbacks."I've been around ones that were great college players, and I was around them day-in and day-out," he said. "It wasn't like I saw them on TV here and there. We practiced with them every day."True that. He was around Culpepper as a senior at Central Florida, Campbell his last three years at Auburn, Young as a national championship junior at Texas and McCoy as Young's understudy and successor.What did they have in common?"I think that the great quarterbacks aren't necessarily the ones that drop back, their first thing's open, bang, they hit it," Chizik said. "It's the ones that, the first one's not open, the second one's not there, and now what?"That's what separates those guys. The great ones just kind of have that. They're able to do something with that third look where maybe another guy's gonna take a sack or throw a pick."The 6-foot-6, 250-pound Newton has the size of Culpepper (6-4, 260), Campbell (6-5, 230) and Young (6-4, 233), and then some. What about his presence?"I think he's got a lot of growth left," Chizik said. "These (practice and scrimmage) situations are as close as you can get to being real, but they're not real. It's not the same thing. I don't know that we're really gonna know about any of our quarterbacks until we get them into that situation."Uncertainty at quarterback has become as much of an Auburn tradition as the Tiger Walk. Chizik acknowledged that Newton is "blessed" and "gifted," that "he does love football" and "he does want to be good at football." Otherwise, in this discussion of the most promising starting quarterback at Auburn since Campbell, the head coach decided to keep it down home by offering more questions than answers."How do you respond after you throw an interception?" (With that arm, he'll be tempted to laser the ball into tight spaces. At times, picks will happen.)"What are you gonna do after you have a bad game and everybody's all over you?'' (Welcome to Alabama. August humidity is nothing compared to the heat of October. Ask Greg McElroy.)"Do you choose to listen to the radio talk shows? Do you choose to listen to the Internet? Do you choose to read the newspaper? If you do, how does that affect you? It's an unknown entity right now."For all the things we won't know about Newton until we do, there's no debating that Chizik knows how to identify a quarterback and Gus Malzahn knows how to develop one. They've got one a lot of people suspect is special.I saw Newton in the spring game, and it looked like Jason Campbell and Vince Young had had a baby."Physically, he's kind of a mixture of them," Chizik said. "Kind of a mutation of a lot of those guys. I don't know. It's hard for me to say until I see game day."Good plan. Say almost nothing in August. Lose to almost no one from there.
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