Bret was asked about the quarterbacks today a couple of times. Here were his answers, with some light editing on my part for clarification:
"I would say Austin Allen just from last week to this week to be involved in practice from Tuesday forward - last week he didn’t get to practice on Tuesday, but did this week. (Allen) got a little more reps (Tuesday), but Cole is getting a little more today than he did (Tuesday).
"I really like the fact that Austin Allen has been in the SEC, been on the road and had some success. On the flip side of it, Cole had the win at Ole Miss and in (the Coastal Carolina) game, even though it wasn’t pretty, he finished the game.
"One thing you can’t take away from somebody is once they’ve done it, they’ve done it. He’s had two come-from-behind wins at Ole Miss and last week’s game here. The good news is we’ve got two really good quarterbacks and feel great about either one of them, whoever it is.
"I’m not really trying to keep it a secret as much as we’re just going to put the best guy in there that gives us the chance to win. Last week we really didn’t know if Cole was going to be the starter until Thursday or Friday. We approached it that way, but Austin just wasn’t able to get all the reps he needed to get there. This week is the same scenario except for Austin is a little bit healthier.
"Just because they’re cleared for the game doesn’t mean they’ve done everything they need to do in practice, and that reflects in the game. I know that doesn’t make sense always to the people writing, but just because a player is cleared doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve had all the preparation. That was kind of the case with Austin last week; he practiced but he didn’t practice the whole week, so we felt like Cole, who did practice the whole week, gave us a better chance. In the fourth quarter that ended up being a big difference.
“The guys that aren’t cleared for practice the whole week, they’ll get limited roles (based) on what they do in practice, but we don’t want to put them out there if they haven’t done something they’re not prepared for.”