It's easy to put blame on Fleck for some of these guys - -
Viramontes is absolutely a Fleck failure. He was the only scholarship QB on his first recruiting class (to an absolutely barren position). Yes, the fact that player was gone by June, that's on Fleck. The fact that he is playing another position at a JuCo by June 4th isn't a great example of an eye for talent.
Brennan Armstrong - We'll see how he turns out, but Brennan is more of a symbol of Fleck not being able to bring in depth, at all, with his first recruiting class. That was a failure of Fleck.
Demry Croft - The handling of Croft last year was bizarre. Fleck walked into a bad QB situation, but he handled it very odd last year (IMO).
So yeah, some of these are on him, some of them aren't.
I agree only partly with you here.
1. I think it's most likely that Viramontes enrolled expecting to be the starter. We have no idea if he was promised anything, but most coaches wouldn't put themselves out on a limb. I suspect he was promised an opportunity to compete.
2. I think it's obvious that he wasn't first on the depth chart after spring practices. He may even have been third.
3. Like so many players, especially quarterbacks, he immediately began looking for greener pastures because he didn't want to wait around.
4. If Viramontes had decided to compete for the job instead of leaving, and thus was still on the team, would you classify him as "absolutely a Fleck failure"? Probably not. There is only one starting job, and the other guy has a scholarship for a reason. Not every person who's not a starter is a failure. That's why there are 85 scholarship players and only 22 (plus a handful of special teams) starting positions.
5. It's the fact that he transferred that many are considering this a failure. But I've seen no evidence that that's a Fleck move. Has anyone else? It seems entirely the choice of Viramontes. And more power to him - it's his life, and if he doesn't wait around for a starting job that may never come he can certainly leave.
6. The fact that he's changing positions doesn't necessarily count as an indictment against Fleck's or anyone's talent evaluation. Sometimes players and coaches realize they would simply be better at another position. Down here at Iowa State last year, starting quarterback Joel Lanning switched to middle linebacker before his senior year. It doesn't mean he was a swing-and-a-miss as a starting quarterback - on the contrary, he was more than capable. There was no failure in talent evaluation. He realized that he had a better chance to play at the next level if he switched, and so he did.
I'll miss Viramontes from a depth perspective, because if we have quarterback injuries then we're screwed. But other than that, I have no problem with this.
