It was nothing near an ideal situation.
The starting quarterback goes down. The backup quarterback is already hurt. In comes the walk-on third-stringer.
It can be both the stuff of legends and the stuff of nightmares.
Saturday, it was the latter.
When Ben Olson went down with a knee sprain toward the end of the first quarter, walk-on McLeod Bethel-Thompson came in with the game tied 6-6.
The last time the redshirt freshman played ““ against Washington in the fourth quarter of the fourth game of the season ““ he did nothing more than hand the ball off to Kahlil Bell and Chris Markey, who picked up the offensive slack without too much difficulty.
With three quarters to play against Notre Dame, however, that was not a possibility.
Bethel-Thompson had four interceptions and three fumbles (only one of which was a turnover) in his three quarters of action. He did not appear to be comfortable from the beginning, and his coaching staff did not adjust the calls much. Bethel-Thompson kept throwing despite a running game that was getting fairly consistent yardage.
“What happened in the game is something you don’t really anticipate happening … and it did,” coach Karl Dorrell said. “It was unfortunate that Ben went down early in the game. (Notre Dame) put pressure on our offense and pressure on our pass protection. Offensively, we made too many mistakes. (Bethel-Thompson) did a nice job given the circumstances. He kept fighting through it.”
Fight and throw he did. Bethel-Thompson still went out there and threw the ball with confidence, and given a more run-heavy game plan, his final stat line would likely not have looked so ugly.
At least two of his interceptions were on balls that were tipped, either by a lineman or one of his receivers. With the game still in reach about midway through the fourth quarter, he lofted an accurate pass to Kahlil Bell in the corner of the end zone that Bell dropped. Earlier that quarter, he threw a touchdown pass to Joe Cowan that was called back because of a holding penalty away from the play by Logan Paulsen.
In short, despite his final stat line, this loss doesn’t just fall on a walk-on quarterback’s shoulders.
“I don’t even know what was going on (with our pass protection),” left guard Shannon Tevaga said. “I’m speechless. (Bethel-Thompson’s) a soldier. Mac has the biggest heart on the team. The job he did to come in, on the third string, break the huddle ““ he’s a soldier. I’d go to war with Mac any day.”
The Bruins allowed five sacks ““ not an enormous total ““ but Bethel-Thompson was often pressured as well.
With two weeks to prepare for Cal, the Bruins will be working to figure out their quarterback situation. As third string, Bethel-Thompson might have had his confidence shaken by this loss, but lined up behind him is a former quarterback who is now playing wide receiver (sophomore Osaar Rasshan) and a talented freshman the coaches were intending to redshirt and still has weight-training to do (Chris Forcier).
Rasshan will begin to move back to quarterback on Tuesday.
“Now, it’s really just my time to go and help the team,” Rasshan said. “I talked to Coach Dorrell, and he said they need to put me in the game this week. So I’m going to get my playbook, and be able to help the team out.”
Rasshan last took snaps at the quarterback position in spring practice, but in his post-game comments Dorrell said that anything was possible as far as the quarterback position was concerned.