right, and that's why it's gotta be such a tough decision for Mario whether to gamble on Ward or lock somebody like Howard up. i expect our defense to only get better next year, and like you said, even this year we were just a competent QB away from being sooo much better. but i think an offense with Ward would make recruits go, "holy ****, that offense is fun i want to go play there," which would do wonders towards accomplishing the goals Mario wants to with this program.
if i were mario making this decision i'd think like this:
ASSUMPTION:
Waiting on Ward to decide --> Howard isn't an option
then i'd go down my list of transfer QBs till i got to the guy i was reasonably sure would jump at an offer to be the starting QB here for a year. then, if i think we can have a better offense with that guy than we did this year, i'd push all my chips in on Ward.
either way this gets resolved sure is an exciting time to be a canes fan again