Dr. Kill or: How I learned to stop worrying and love DeMarcus Grady

Coach Jerry Kill is just messing with us.  Right?

After this entire offseason, this entire battle royale for the starting quarterback positions and this is what ends up happening?  What we witnessed on Thursday was not fun to watch by any sense of the means.

What does Kill want?  Let's review the last time he commented about the quarterbacks:

"I’m not worried about that right now, to be honest with you," Kill said. "I got a lot of other concerns besides quarterback. That’s the least of my concerns right now."

...!

"We’ve evaluated every film, we know every pass they’ve made, every interception they’ve made, every mental breakdown they’ve made," he said. "You consider health, gametime and experience, who you feel like can lead your team to win."

DeMarcus Grady was truly the quarterback best fit to lead the team to victory on gameday vs. Iowa State?

Coach Kill truly believes this.  Or does he?

All signs are pointing to Grady starting next week against North Dakota as well:

And despite Grady's three-interception performance during a 27-10 loss on Thursday night in the season opener, Kill sounds like a man standing by his choice.

"He did some awful good things," Kill said. "He had a couple balls tipped on the line of scrimmage. He doesn’t have an awful lot to do with that. …When you get the ball tipped at the line of scrimmage, I’m not going to throw him under the bus on that. I think he’d like to have one decision that he made (an interception over the head of Landon Cox) back."

And despite Grady’s less-than-stellar performance against a Big 12 Conference opponent, Kill doesn't appear ready to do things differently next week in preparation for NIU's Sept. 11 home opener against North Dakota.

"I’ll evaluate him when we get in and watch film and teach him some things," Kill said.

I'm not one to start any conspiracy theories.  I know they're out there.  I'm not one to believe that Coach Kill hates Harnish or is saving him up for conference play or some nonsense like that.

Give DeMarcus Grady a chance. 

Kill left him in the game and he had a couple fluke interceptions.  They were mistakes that never should have happened, but what had he done in games beforehand?

The idiotic stat floating around was the fact he was 5-0 as a starter.  Did anybody even bother to look up his passing stats for those games?  7/12, 6/10, 10/18, 4/5, 4/5.

Against Iowa State was the first time Grady was given the reigns and was able to do his thing.  He went 14 of 29 for 93 yds.

Was he nervous?  Your damn right he was nervous and it showed.  He rushed things early on.  Later on in the game he got into a little groove was off on a couple passes.  Then his delivery throwing the ball fell lower than usual and the defense intercepted two "fluke" interceptions as both balls doinked off linemen.  All of these things can be fixed and I have faith that Grady can improve.

I got excited when I heard he was going to start the game.  I got excited because he has the potential to put NIU over the top.  That's something that Harnish didn't have the last two years.  If Kill was going to put Harnish in at all this season he would have done it at some point in the 2nd half.

Can we beat Illinois with Grady as a starter?

Is there a method to Kill's madness, or are we in the beginning of a never-ending spiral?