Minnesota Football: Adam Weber’s career was a missed opportunity

No position group has bedeviled the Minnesota Golden Gophers over the last decade quite like the signal callers under center. This fall, the team’s fate would seems to rest in the inexperienced hands of redshirt freshman Tanner Morgan. Should he turn out to be competent, it will have been a long and strange road, riddled with the unfulfilled potential of countless Gopher quarterbacks.

First up: Adam Weber.

As a Prospect

247 Sports Composite Rating: .8417
Scholarship Offers: Miami (Ohio), Western Michigan, and Wisconsin

As quarterback for Mounds View High School in Minnesota, Weber was 320-for-598 in his career with 4,771 passing yards and 35 touchdowns. He also rushed for 1,519 yards and 28 touchdowns over that same span. Weber was a three-time all-state and all-conference selection.

As a Gopher

Recruited by Glen Mason, Weber redshirted his first season at Minnesota. Then Mason was fired after the 2006 Insight Bowl debacle, and athletic director Joel Maturi hired the coach that Weber would spend the rest of his college career playing for: Tim Brewster.

As a redshirt freshman, Weber beat out redshirt junior Tony Mortensen for the starting quarterback position and never looked back. He started 50 games over four seasons for the Gophers, which is a record at Minnesota. In fact, he holds a number of school records:

• Passing yards in a career (10,917)
• Touchdowns in a single season (24, 2007)
• Touchdowns in a career (72)
• Pass attempts in a single season (449, 2007)
• Completions in a single season (258, 2007)
• Completions in a career (909)
• Games of 250 passing yards or more (14)

Here are his stats from each individual season:

2007: 258-for-449 (57.5%), 2,895 yards, 24 TD, 19 INT
2008: 255-for-410 (62.2%), 2,761 yards, 15 TD, 8 INT
2009: 191-for-367 (52%), 2,582 yards, 13 TD, 15 INT
2010: 205-for-368 (55.7%), 2,679 yards, 20 TD, 9 INT

He also rushed for a combined 873 yards on 398 attempts with 10 touchdowns.

Weber did have the benefit of Eric Decker for three seasons, which certainly helped. The former Gopher wide receiver accounted for 28 percent of Weber’s completions, 33 percent of his passing yards, and 40 percent of his passing touchdowns over that span.

Unfortunately, as I previously mentioned, Weber spent all four years of his college playing career with Tim Brewster at the helm. His overall record at Minnesota was 17-33, with just one winning season and two trips to the Insight Bowl.

Where is he now?

After graduating from Minnesota, Weber went undrafted but was signed by the Denver Broncos. He was waived during the preseason and ended up signing to the practice squad shortly thereafter. Weber was signed to the active roster when Brady Quinn’s contract expired, but his tenure with the Broncos was short-lived. He spent the following season on the practice squad with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and was waived a year later.

Weber signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League in April 2014 but was released from the team a few months later.

In 2015, Weber returned to Minnesota as a graduate assistant for two seasons. When head coach Tracy Claeys and his coaching staff were fired, Weber was not retained. He ended up taking a position as an analyst for one season at UCLA under his former offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Jedd Fisch.

His current employment status is unknown.

Final Word

One thing that undoubtedly hampered Weber’s development was the revolving door at offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. As a true freshman, he played under offensive coordinator Mitch Browning and quarterbacks coach Tony Petersen. Weber then spent the following two years with offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mike Dunbar, before he resigned and was replaced by Jedd Fisch and his phonebook-sized playbook. Fisch bailed after one season, leaving Weber to spend his senior season playing under co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Jeff Horton, who would eventually take over as interim head coach once Brewster was fired.

The complete lack of continuity — and the amount of success that Weber had in spite of it — makes we wonder what Weber could have done in a less turbulent coaching tenure.

He is, without question, the program’s best quarterback from the last 10 years, which is ironic considering his career was tied to arguably the program’s worst head coach.

Next: MarQueis Gray.