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Tim Chang was the most high profile recruit to come to Hawaii. Of greater note, the highest profile recruit to stay home. He was the punctuation mark starting the June Jones era which stated that no longer would Hawaii lose the majority of it's best local prospects to bigger name mainland schools. Since then, it's been quite a roller-coaster ride, for the talented young quarterback. He's experienced the highs of being the WAC newcomer of the year, defeating Hawaii's greatest rivals Fresno State perennially, and is the preseason offensive player of the year in 2004. Of course he's also faced one of the darkest sides of college sports. No young man should be subjected to the kind of pressure that Tim has to face when he throws an interception, or when fans who think they know better harshly criticize him, or when the weight of the entire state bears down on his young shoulders. However it comes with the territory since Hawaii football is the biggest show in town, and it comes with trying to achieve greatness. Not just in Hawaii, but in all of college football history. Yes this is the final stretch of the roller coaster ride, and this is the toughest part. He enters his senior season trying to accomplish four things.

1) Lead the Hawaii Warriors to their outright first WAC championship. They've shared the championship twice. This may be the most difficult since the road to that championship goes through Boise State, a team that has been undefeated in the WAC since their inception. The last time Hawaii beat Boise St, was the year before they joined the WAC.

2) Break several NCAA division 1-A college football passing records. The most important is the career all time passing yardage record of 15,031 yards held by Ty Detmer. At the start of the season, Chang only needs 2,218 yards to tie. Which, barring injury, should be easy since he's had well over 4,000 yards the past two seasons. A couple other records within reach are the single season passing record of 5,188, and the career yardage average of 326.8 yards per game. At the end of the 2003 season he has a career average of 320.4 yards per game. These records are tantamount to any shot at the next goal.

3) The most difficult goal is to win the coveted Heisman Trophy. The award for college football's best player. Of course he is also on the watch lists for the Davey O'Brien and Maxwell awards. These hinge on several things. For one, he will rely on rewriting the record books. If anything it will be his resume. It's a single season award, but it played a big part in Ty Detmer's winning of the award for BYU. One of the biggest challenges is visibility. Virtually all home games happen after the rest of the country - and the people with the Heisman vote - are asleep. So Chang will rely on the efforts of the University of Hawaii media to put on a full blown advertising campaign in Chang's behalf. Here is the website which headlines the effort: Timmy Chang for Heisman. It also plays out nicely how the schedule turned out. Hawaii will be featured in road games at Fresno State and Boise State, the best of the WAC. Most people will be able to watch. Further, for ESPN purposes, game times will be moved so that Hawaii will have a national audience. The rest of the country will be able to also watch Hawaii play Big 10 teams, Michigan State and Northwestern. So combining the talents of Timmy Chang and the hype of the ad campaign, he should have an outside, but realistic, shot at the award.

4) The final goal when it's all done, is to move on to the next level and play as a professional quarterback. Ultimately, in the NFL. If teams don't make the excuse of a gimmicky offense, making Chang look better than he is, they will see that he truly is a kid with exceptional talent. Thankfully, most NFL heads respect June Jones and credit his offense as being pro-style.

Of course, these are lofty goals. Chang is a very talented quarterback, but he is far from peak college potential. If he wants to accomplish any, if not all of these goals, he has things he needs to work on. Let's consider Timmy Chang the quarterback.

Timmy Chang #14 Quarterback
Height: 6'-2" Weight: 205 lbs. Right-Handed

He is a pure pocket passer. He is extremely disciplined to look for the pass first. He is very patient, and has excellent sense in the pocket. Rarely gets sacked which is remarkable considering the amount of pass plays called. He has above-average scrambling ability, but rarely ever uses it to rush for yardage. It is always to buy receivers time. He can have wide open romping grounds but will stand pat to make the pass. For June Jones, that's fine. However for the next level, he needs to recognize when to take advantage of the run, to keep defenses honest. Keeping a linebacker as a spy on the QB will free up the receivers instead of using all available guys for coverage.

He has a very strong arm. His throws have tremendous velocity, or high speed. He also has a nice touch, always throwing a tight spiral. He can make virtually an throw. I've seen him throw a fifty yard touchdown strike after scrambling around off the wrong foot. He can throw on the move well. I've seen him make throws against the grain of his direction of passing. Moving in one direction, and throwing with arm motion across his body. This isn't to say he doesn't have disciplined technique. Quite the contrary, he has superb form. He just can improvise well whenever the play collapses. He has a quick release. Actually one of the quickest I've seen of a college quarterback. This coincides well with his above average vision. He scans the field quickly, makes reads very fast, and delivers the strike to the receiver open first. This works well for short or medium passes. Also displaying his excellent reading skills, is the fact that he distributes the ball to different receivers well.

Chang has excellent accuracy when making short to intermediate throws. Often hitting his receivers right on the numbers. However his completion average, is only slightly above average. He sports a career average of 56.2%. Last season he had a pedestrian 58.7%. Compare that to last years quarterbacks drafted to the NFL in the first round of 2004. First overall pick Eli Manning had a 62.4% rate. Fourth pick Phillip Rivers sported a season best 72%. Ben Roethlisberger had 69.1%. And J.P. Losman had 59.5%, the closest to Chang. So why the discrepancy? Simply put, Chang is trying to find his long ball. In 2003, his increase of strength was noticeable, because when he threw the deep passes, he often overthrew his receivers. This also included Jeremiah Cockheran, who reportedly ran a blazing 4.3 fourty yard dash in Arizona. How do you overthrow a burner deep? Well, that shows you how strong this kids arm is. This is one of the biggest areas of concern. He needs to sync with his receivers deep if he's going to make some noise this year. His problem is leading his receivers too far. He either needs to take a little velocity off the ball, or put a little more air under the pass, so that his receivers can go get it, instead of always trying to catch up with it. He has the right idea leading the ball, but it's just too much. This stems from another problem. Interceptions. He's too afraid of giving the ball away, so he makes it tougher to pick off, problem is, it also makes it harder for his receivers to get.

While he has improved his touchdown to interception ratio, the number of interceptions itself, is too high. Last season he had 20. He needs to reduce the amount of interceptions, if he wants journalists, and pro scouts to take him seriously. How will he improve this? Hopefully the experience helps. It's actually hard to decipher why he throws so many interceptions, because he has above average decision making. Perhaps, it's when Chang is out of his comfort zone, when he feels forced to make plays, so he forces his throws. If he ever grabs the reins to this offense the way Dan Robinson and Nick Rolovich did in their respective senior years, he will find his comfort zone, and more importantly be in the zone, triggering the same high flying offense that Robinson and Rolovich did. Naturally, if he finds it, the interceptions will reduce drastically.

Of course the last thing he needs to work on are his intangibles. He's already got a great work ethic, he's a great team mate, and is very humble and defers to the the team when doing interviews. You see certain glimpses of remarkable leadership and swagger in certain games. Other times he throws a pick and gets into a funk. He needs a shorter memory to forget any bad plays he makes, and he needs to get deaf, when the fans boo him. These things gave been too much of a shot in his confidence in the past. He needs tougher skin. Of course no real fan would boo a kid playing for the love of the game, but booing isn't something you can easily stop. And it will happen in the NFL. Hence, the short term memory loss, deaf ear, and thick skin. He needs to maintain his confidence and swagger consistently and at a high level. He already has the respect and confidence of his team mates, and more importantly his coach, that's all that matters. These are all key components, if he's going to get 'it' in this offense. What is 'it?' 'It' is what Dan Robinson, a lanky, slow, non-athletic medical student had when he led UH to it's second co-WAC championship. 'It' is what Nick Rolovich had when he had had consecutive 500+ yard back to back to back games, including a 72 point bomb on hated rival BYU. 'It' is something that Chang has gotten close to, and shown flashes of potential for, but never fully grasped. He's in his final year, and on schedule to receive it. And if he does, fulfilling the goals, should come naturally.

Tim Chang Scrapbook:
Warriors' Chang focuses on winning, not setting records - Stephen Tsai
WAC betting on Chang's record run - Stephen Tsai
Come join the fun and games on the Heisman Chang Gang - Kalani Simpson
Detmer has passing interest in Chang's record run - Ferd Lewis
Chang set, but backup is not - Jason Kaneshiro
Warriors name captains - Stephen Tsai
Again, it's rah, rah for Chang - Norman Chad
Chang's chase begins tonight - Dave Reardon
It's Chang's turn to pick on defense - Ferd Lewis
QB Chang flows past Rivers; Detmer ahead - Dayton Morinaga
Chang passes NCAA record - Stephen Tsai
Chang celebrates birthday win - Dayton Morinaga

 

2004 Stats	Pass									Rush
DATE & OPP	CMP	ATT	YDS	CMP%	YPA	TD	INT	SACK	RAT	ATT	YDS	AVG	TD
9/5 Fla Atlantic	38	66	302	57.6	4.6	2	0	0	106	2	-4	-2	0
9/18 @Rice	34	50	363	65	7.3	3	0	5	149	7	-24	-3.4	0
10/3 Tulsa	22	43	378	51.2	8.8	3	0	1	148	3	-5	-1.7	0
10/9 Nevada	21	35	322	60.0	9.2	3	1	1	159.9	3	8	2.7	0
Totals	115	194	1365	59.3	7.0	11	1	7	136.1	15	-25	-1.7	0

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