Last year’s starting quarterback for the Stony Brook football team, now junior Joe Carbone, has fully recovered from a shoulder injury that caused him to miss the final two games of the 2016 season.
Despite insisting he is 100 percent healthy, Carbone is competing for the starting job this summer – redshirt freshman quarterback Tyquell Fields is also in the running. Carbone does not see this as him versus Fields but something more.
“[The competition] is just going to make each of us better,” Carbone said at the team’s media day on Aug. 11. “We’ll just wait and see what happens in the first game.”
Stony Brook was 5-4 in games that Carbone started in 2016. He finished his season with three touchdowns and 1,017 passing yards but was also responsible for 12 interceptions. Fields has been praised for his athleticism and potential to throw downfield. The freshman threw for 2,268 yards and completed 24 passing touchdowns and five rushing touchdowns in his senior season at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York.
“Obviously it’s Joe’s job to lose, but he hasn’t lost it at this point,” head coach Chuck Priore said. “My goal is to have two kids that can start on Sept. 2.”
Carbone completed three passes and threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to freshman wide receiver Jahquel Webb in the Seawolves’ first scrimmage on Aug. 5. He proved to be more effective in the team’s second scrimmage on Saturday, completing nine passes for 98 yards and a 12-yard score to senior wide receiver Ray Bolden. Bolden was the team’s leader in receiving yards in 2016. The quarterback connected for one touchdown pass to Bolden, compared to five in 2015 when Conor Bednarski was quarterback.
“It felt good playing full speed again, and I’m excited for what the future holds for me,” Carbone said. “It has been about improving my mental side of the game. We will see how it translates into the season.”
Fields played the part of the opposing quarterback to Carbone in the Seawolves’ scrimmages. He completed two more passes than Carbone in the first game despite not finding the red zone and connected on six of nine passes in the second scrimmage.
“He’s a long range-y kid who has a quick release,” Priore said. “He’s a little more athletic than Joe when it comes to escapability in the pocket. He’s young, he’s learning, he’s a freshman but his performances keep on building correctly.”
The team has nearly three weeks of training camp and scrimmages to play before they decide who will get the starting job for the Seawolves’ first game of the season at South Florida on Sept. 2.
