Jeff Blanchette is the real deal at quarterback

This article appeared in the St. Petersburg Times on Sept. 13, 2002.

By JAMAL THALJI

NEW PORT RICHEY -- They don't grow quarterbacks too often out here at Gulf. But they do a pretty good job of grooming tailbacks.

Which is why, more often than not, the Buccaneers have had a tailback under center, doing his best quarterback impersonation while running the option-oriented Wing-T.

Jeff Blanchette has changed all that.

When the former PPAL standout joined the varsity as a sophomore last season, he gave Gulf an athlete at quarterback who can actually play quarterback.

This season, the 5-foot-10, 170-pound junior has allowed the Bucs to take a leap forward in offensive thinking. Without Blanchette, the team could not confidently run its new Spread-I formation, an offense designed to spread the ball and the defense downfield.

Gulf has hitched its future to the Spread-I to score and to Blanchette to win.

"Jeff might be one of the better all-around quarterbacks we've had here in a long while," coach Keith Newton said. "He's a true quarterback, and we've had a lot of quarterbacks here at Gulf who should have been tailbacks. But we had to put them at quarterback.

"He is possibly the truest quarterback we've had here at Gulf since Wayne Barber in the late 1980s."

Blanchette didn't play at Gulf his freshman year, deciding to finish his PPAL career. As a sophomore, he had to make the adjustment to varsity.

"It was different. There was a lot bigger guys here and the speed is a lot more than it was in PPAL," Blanchette said. "It took a little while to adjust."

But adjust he did. Running the Wing-T as he did in PPAL, Blanchette completed 24 of 86 passes for 337 yards, three touchdowns and 11 interceptions, and ran for a touchdown his sophomore season for a struggling 1-9 Gulf club.

Then Newton made the switch to the Spread-I. Jimmy Watson, a former Gulf lineman who went on to play for Florida, came on board as a volunteer coach to install the new offense. Watson and Blanchette started work in the spring, and the work is already starting to pay off.

In last week's 55-18 loss at Land O'Lakes, Blanchette provided Gulf's only offensive spark. He completed eight of 18 passes for 124 yards and a touchdown and had nine carries in the option for 85 yards and two more scores.

"Jeff with one year of experience has made great gains over last year as a quarterback," Newton said. "He's a much more confident passer. He's been a good runner, but we have put a big responsibility on him, and he started working probably a month before spring training on the new offense, and now he does a great job with the ball."

Blanchette said the Spread-I is both an easy and fun offense for him to run, though it requires far more of him as a quarterback than the Wing-T.

"I have to be able to read defenses a lot better than when I did last year," Blanchette said. "Last year, we mostly ran against run defenses. There weren't that many audibles. This year, it's 50-50 whether I want to change the call."

The Spread-I concept is simple: Facing a three- or four-wideout set, teams have to decide whether they're going to give up the run or the pass. The offense then takes what the defense gives them.

"They've got to play the run or the pass," Blanchette said. "If they come up and stack it up front, we're going to pass. If they play back there, we're going to run it."

The team will be using four-wideout sets because of a dearth of running backs, which means Blanchette's running ability becomes an even more important asset in the option attack.

"To run the ball, the quarterback has to be willing to take a hit every time he runs it," Newton said. "He's willing to take that hit for us. He's a tough kid."