Now this is solely my own opinion pieced together over the years with tidbits of info from a wide variety of sources. I sincerely hope that the moderators don't take any of this as an attack on any student athlete...I don't intend it as such and I hope certain items aren't taken that way.
When Chan first arrived, we had what we fans thought were two quality QBs in stock - AJ Suggs and Demarius Bilbo. Suggs beat out Bilbo for the starting job, but after a whole season of starts his Junior year it became obvious he was not going to be the QB we all hoped he would be. He would stare down his primary receiver, made poor decisions all too often and was fairly immobile. During the bowl game against Boise State for the last play of the first half Suggs was instructed to throw a bomb IF the defense was lined up in a certain formation, if not throw it away. The defense was NOT in the specified formation, but Suggs attempted to complete the pass anyway resulting in an interception run back for a TD. AJ never started another game for GT.
Bilbo played sporatically during that season and finished out the bowl game; although it was obvious he was a tremendous athlete, he didn't appear to be much better an option at QB than Suggs, but the job apparently was his to lose. Unfortunately, although Bilbo had a cannon and was fairly accurate, he was reportedly unable or unwilling to learn the playbook and to read defenses. After Bilbo consistantly made mental errors in practice, the coaches decided to start true freshman Ball, for better or worse.
Ball wowed the coaches with his athleticism, evasiveness, and running ability along with being a quick study on the playbook. The coaches decided that with a limited playbook, a good line and coaching to get him to play within himself he could succeed and so he did as a freshman.
Once Ball got a year's worth of experience under his belt, it became very difficult to unseat him as QB. His performances were at times dismal and at times brilliant and no QB who had come in showed consistantly in practice the ability to learn the playbook, to run as well or to throw as well. Yes, some were more accurate, but they couldn't run, or some could make better decisions, but wasn't accurate. Ball just was able, with his accumlating game experience to just hang onto his starting role. I do have to say that ineffective line play during Ball's soph and Jr year didn't help him any.
There was one point, year before last, forgive me because I can't recall the game, where Gailey was ready to burn Bennett's redshirt, but Ball came back and played a good second half. As far as I know, that's the only time Ball came close to being pulled for his performance.
Some of the QBs that were recruited were moved to other positions, notably Landry (now a pro!) and Bilbo. At least one transferred (Carter) and the rest have just not been able to unseat a veteran player.
Now there are those that loudly and vehemently declare that no one could be worse than Ball, but that's far from certain. Ball has won many more games than he's lost, and he's always given it all on the field and in game prep. The coaches are aware of his limitations and attempt to call plays and design game plans around those limitations and have done so with various degrees of success.
Ball has improvement incrementally over the years, but not dramatically and sadly his performance against UGa this year was perhaps the worst of his career. IMO, he was not all that bad in the ACCCG. Yes, a better performance would have won the game, but some more astute playcalling would have as well.
Bottom line, we have had in the past four years a number of QBs with decent, but not outstanding talent. Any one of which probably would have made as good, perhaps better, a QB as Ball, but once Ball had all of that invaluable game time under his belt, none of the other QBs could convincingly demonstrate that they should start over Ball. The coaches know what Ball can do and was unwilling to go with an unknown.
Now, if the coaches would listen to me, they would have given Bennett one or two or three series in every game this past season, but OTOH, there were 3 or four games where that might not have been a good idea. Then again, two or three where it might have helped.
I feel that the coaches got stuck in the situation by chance and circumstances and with flunkgate and scholarship restrictions made a decision to put a higher priority on recruiting offensive line and defense players to build for the future over recruiting a top QB. Fortunately that's now changed. We have in house a QB who's been in the system for 3 years and knows the offense inside and out. Another one who is very talented and was redshirted this past year. We have a transfer QB from Auburn coming in. AND we have two top rated 4/5 star QB recruits on the way, one of whom is enrolling this next semester.
