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Grothe Gets Back To Basics

Tribune photo by MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER

Matt Grothe runs against Memphis during the second quarter of play.

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By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 21, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - Now, that was a game Matt Grothe will want to remember.

He beat Memphis with his arm.

He beat the Tigers with his legs.

USF's junior quarterback basically beat them every way a team can be beaten, throwing for three touchdowns when he wasn't running all over the field. That's why he was named the Most Outstanding Player of the inaugural magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl. A season that was so frustrating at times ended with a dose of feel-good for Grothe and his Bulls in front of a lively gathering at Tropicana Field.

One more important thing happened, too.

"I think it's actually the first bowl game I've made it through the whole game - it was a plus," Grothe said with a slight grin.

Indeed, as Grothe walked from the field after USF's 41-14 rout Saturday, he knew exactly where he was. He couldn't say that a year ago after he was beaten up and suffered a concussion in a blowout loss to Oregon in the Sun Bowl. This was after he was knocked out of the Papajohns.com bowl two years ago with a broken right fibula.

This time was a lot better.

"He's Matt Grothe. He is going to make plays," wide receiver Taurus Johnson said. "He's going to scramble around until someone is open, and if they're not open he'll take off running. That's what he does. It's nothing new to me. It's what we've seen in practice, and I've seen it the last three years."

Grothe was on it from the beginning, and he didn't let up until taking a seat near the end of the third quarter with the Bulls comfortably ahead. He finished with 236 yards passing, a game-high 83 running, including a memorable 32-yard scramble on third-and-22.

And he had those three TD passes.

"He pretty much took advantage of the situation," Memphis linebacker Greg Jackson said. "When we were in pass coverage, he ran. When we blitzed, he moved to the right spot to get the ball out."

Tigers coach Tommy West was succinct.

"We could not tackle their quarterback," he said.

Bulls Needed This

This game was created during the summer when ESPN realized it needed extra programming to fill an afternoon time slot in late December. Don't laugh. ESPN can do that. It speaks and bowls materialize from thin air or, in this case, in a baseball stadium with catwalks.

As badly as the World Wide Leader might have needed something to televise, though, the Bulls needed this even worse. You can't put a happy face on a sixth-place finish in the Big East, especially for a team that returned as many starters as the Bulls did this season.

A win like this - even against an opponent the Bulls were expected to handle easily - will make the offseason pass a little more smoothly.

The Bulls lose a lot of talent from this team, but Grothe returns to become a four-year starter at the most important position. He passed West Virginia's Pat White to become the Big East's all-time leader in total offense. White, a senior, still has a bowl game, but Grothe has another full season.

"He had something to prove. He felt like he hadn't played as well this year and he wanted to come back and say, 'Hey, I'm Matt Grothe. I can play,'" Bulls passing game coordinator Mike Canales said.

Got A Pep Talk

Grothe got a surprise visitor before the game. The San Diego Chargers are in Tampa to play the Bucs, and quarterback Philip Rivers dropped by USF's hotel at the request of Canales, who coached him at North Carolina State. Rivers had a simple message.

"He told Matt to go out and play with the fire he had seen early in the season," Canales said.

Grothe took those words to heart. He is at his best when he rips up the script and just plays the game, and that's what he did in this one. He might as well have been in his back yard in Lakeland.

It's a shame the game was played on artificial turf, because his uniform should have been caked with mud after this one. He was all over the field, and that's just where the Bulls needed him to be.

"I think the biggest thing that motivated me was to just go out and play football," Grothe said. "The last few weeks of the season we were just trying so hard to win a game that we forgot how to play football."

They just remembered.

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