Count Nick Patti among those impressed with Bo Schneider's poise last Saturday at Stanford.
While it was a tall order to replace Justin Holman, one thing the true freshman didn't do was get flustered.
"That's the first thing I was kind of looking for with him," Patti said. "All of us, the jitters were gone. We had a whole drive under our belts. We're ready to get going, then you throw in a quarterback that was his first go-round. We kind of have to take a step back also. But he was good. He was cool, calm and collected. I was very surprised and very impressed with him. He had a lot coming at him. (Stanford) was a good football team. They did some tricky stuff on defense. Bo handled it well. He handled it very professionally and very maturely. He got better and better as the game went on as did Tyler (Harris). Both those guys impressed me."
With Holman out for at least the next couple weeks if not longer, Patti agrees the wide receiver corps needs to step up and be more reliable. George O'Leary was none too happy with the six dropped passes in the Stanford game.
"There were some really catchable balls we dropped in key situations," Patti said. "It goes without saying it's the most important thing that we need to work on. We certainly need to get better in that facet. Had we helped Bo out a little bit more he would have been a little more successful in moving the ball. We continue to work on that and continue to get better."
While Holman last year struggled with touch on his passes, Patti says that's never been a problem for Schneider.
"Bo throws a nice ball. He does throw a real catchable ball. That's one thing we do like from Bo. Moving forward, I think our passing game suits Bo. It suits all our quarterbacks, but I think it does suit Bo just to kind of spread the ball around. We're going to try to help him as receivers as much as possible. Bo throws a great ball. It's going to get better and better. I think you guys will see a rapid improvement from him."
