30 days, 30 questions/Texas A&M Aggies

(This will be a daily series leading up to A&M's season opener Sept. 5 against New Mexico at Kyle Field. If you have a question you want answered, leave a comment and, who knows? It might be.)

Question #1: Who's the starting quarterback?

That's an answer to be determined, though the answer, if things go right and the team is to improve in 2009, should be Jerrod Johnson. Even though the answer should be plainly obvious, considering last year, Coach Mike Sherman is giving Ryan Tannehill a shot at winning the QB job.

Johnson is one of the most physically gifted quarterbacks in A&M history, right up there with Reggie McNeal and Kevin Murray. He holds the school record for most touchdowns thrown in a season (21) and threw for 2435 years, even though he didn't start two games. And he did this as a sophomore.

So what's the problem?

In Mike Sherman's own words, he was not happy with how quickly Johnson picked up parts of the offense last year, his tempo during the games and, most importantly his number of turnovers. Last year, Johnson too frequently relied on his athleticism to get him out of trouble, which led to forced passes that were picked off, bad sacks or worse, fumbles.

In other words, he played like a rookie.

Sherman has challeneged Johnson to step up his game, and Sherman seems to think he has done so. But he made a deal with Tannehill to allow him a crack at the QB job, even though he's the team's second best reciever right now. Tannehill is apparently a smart guy and has a good arm, which makes the competition more interesting than it should be.

But Sherman has already put a finite timetable on the Tannehill QB experiment--12 practices. That means he's got to be much better than Jerrod right off the bat--not a little better, a lot better.

Sherman has also said he wants to throw it down the field more often, and that screams Jerrod Johnson. At Coach's Night in Houston, Sherman said Johnson throws the deep ball as well as anyone he's ever seen--and he coached Brett Favre.

Bet on Jerrod Johnson being the starting QB opening day, as well he should be.