Seizing the moment

His slipperiness and ability to avoid being pinned down are impressive. Simply put, he's been nearly impossible to corner.

Oh, not Gophers quarterback MarQueis Gray, though he's going to be a headache for defenses, too. No, the cagey one this month has been Jerry Kill, stiff-arming any projections about who might be under center for Minnesota next fall.

At his eve-of-spring-ball news conference last week, Kill even strongly hinted that Gray's position switch, from receiver to quarterback, wasn't irreversible.

"He's going to be an impact player for us somewhere," Kill said. "If it's at quarterback, that's great."

If? If? Three years of waiting for his inauguration, two of them spent in an anything-to-help detour of catching passes instead of throwing them, and now he's suddenly back in the Iowa caucuses, fending off a raft of challengers? That's not what he was promised, right?

"I don't mind at all. I know I have to earn it," said the junior from Indianapolis. "These coaches don't know me. But I'm very confident I'll show them I deserve the job."

True to form, Gray is doing it with impressive speed. Only four practices into spring drills, and only one of them in pads, offensive coordinator Matt Limegrover on Tuesday agreed with this supposition: The kid sure looks like the Gophers' next quarterback.

And that might be a greater relief to Kill and his coaches than to the quarterback himself.

"[Gray's status] was really the 800-pound elephant in the room," Limegrover said. "Everybody knows he's a wonderful athlete who was supposed to get the job. But what if he came out and stumbled around? Now you've got to make a tough decision. What the kid has done is, [he's] taken a lot of pressure off all of us."

He's done it with a solid first week of demonstrating his aptitude with the playbook and his knack for leadership, not to mention the running skills that appear designed for Kill's multifaceted offense. But Gray's potential ascendency began three months ago, when the 20-year-old realized he couldn't count on a new coach to fulfill his predecessor's promise.

Gray, after a season in which he caught 42 passes from Adam Weber, five of them for touchdowns, met with Limegrover a few days after he was hired, then appeared in quarterback coach Jim Zebrowski's office practically before he had unpacked a box. I'm ready to learn, Gray told his new mentors. Teach me.

"We started discussing the new playbook right away. I wanted to get it down as soon as I could," Gray said. "The offense is actually pretty easy, once you get comfortable with it. It's a good fit for me and for our receivers -- the quarterback is going to be running the ball some, so that's going to make defenses put people in the box, and leave [receivers] one-on-one."

"He does. He's not a rag arm by any means," Limegrover said. "That's going to be a work in progress. It isn't like the Good Lord opened up the sky and dropped a perfect quarterback down upon us. But there's a work ethic to him that matches his great natural ability, and that's what gives you confidence that he'll get there."

That work ethic, Limegrover said, is what separates Gray so far.