It was Greg Schiano’s first Monday press conference of the season and hopefully you tuned in to the live broadcast on SNY. For those of you who didn’t (we’re working on getting video of it up at some point), Schiano was as secretive as promised about the QB situation.  Initially.

He didn’t have an updated depth chart for us in the original game notes and he said once we got it, it would indeed feature that OR between all three quarterbacks: fifth-year seniors Dom Natale and Jabu Lovelace and true frosh Tom Savage.  He said he had not designated a starter, BUT he did admit, “I have a starter; I’m just not making it public yet.” Schiano went on and said, ”We know.  I think we have a pretty good idea of what the plan is going to be.  How it unfolds in the game is different.  I think some of that will be determined on how it goes.”

So obviously we tried to prod him a little further. I asked him about starting freshmen in general, that if two players are generally equal, would he prefer going with the older guy. He sort of said yes, but it wasn’t an unequivocal yes: ”Experience does count for something.  I don’t want to minimize that.  If he’s just a little bit better, you may still go with the more experienced guy, and then bring the other guy in behind him, if that makes sense.”

We kept trying, we couldn’t get Schiano to go any further and then the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Bill Koch got on the phone and asked Schiano to just talk about the three QBs different talents. And Bill got the tea leaves out of the bottom of the cup.

“You start with Jabu Lovelace,” Schiano said. ” Jabu is a very athletic, very good with the ball in his hands, running the ball, has shown that over time.”

Then he moved to Savage and said, ” When you talk about Tom, Tom is young.  There’s no doubt.  I only wish we would have had him here for spring practice because you can see him coming right now.  He’s getting better every day.  But not sure that he’s got enough snaps under his belt to go against a team like Cincinnati.”

And then he finished with Natale, the player who’s taken the majority of first-team snaps since the spring: ”You look at Dom Natale, who is a seasoned guy, a 22‑year‑old guy, but has not played a lot of college football.  He’s been injured, has transferred.  But he definitely has the command of our offense.”

You tell me: do you really need a gypsy skirt and a set of tarot cards to translate that?