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By Pete Conrad, Staff Writer 9:37 AM Tuesday, November 17, 2009

OXFORD — Much of the pain from a Miami University football season that has produced just one victory in 11 weeks has been concentrated at the quarterback position.

There are the growing pains for redshirt freshman Zac Dysert and his teammates as he learns the ropes. There is the physical pain for Dysert of getting sacked 45 times.

And there is the pain of inactivity for senior quarterback Daniel Raudabaugh, who has passed for 5,251 yards in his career but who has not thrown a pass in Miami’s last seven games.

That could change on Wednesday, Nov. 18, when the RedHawks play their season finale against the Buffalo Bulls.

It will be the final game of Raudabaugh’s college career, and Miami coach Michael Haywood said “he may get some playing time. At some point he may get a series or two.”

Dysert replaced Raudabaugh as the starting quarterback after the first three games this season and has become a phenomenon, passing for 330 or more yards in four of his eight starts.

Raudabaugh has not been totally inactive during those last eight weeks, though.

“He does a really good job (of working with Dysert) on the sidelines during games and he does a tremendous job during practice,” Haywood said of Raudabaugh, who has passed for 23 touchdowns in his career.

“He could have reacted the other way and didn’t,” the Miami coach noted. “He’s been really good for Zac.”

But when Dysert struggles, as he did last week against Bowling Green, Miami struggles.

“It’s a quarterback-based system,” Haywood said. “Everything relies on how he plays, and he took a few steps back. But I think he’s consistently getting better.”

Haywood said Dysert misread the blitz in the 35-14 loss to Bowling Green and sometimes he hangs onto the ball too long when he takes a three-step drop.

Haywood said a quarterback doesn’t have time to look in three different directions on a three-step drop. If no one is open, he said, “throw the ball in the cheap seats.

“You just have to keep working with kids so they understand,” Haywood said. “We’re going to suffer through some growing pains, but we’ll have a bright future at Miami.”

In some ways, Dysert’s redshirt freshman season has been similar to Ben Roethlisberger’s redshirt freshman year.

Dysert has completed 61.3 percent of his passes while averaging 293 yards passing per start. Roethlisberger completed 63.3 percent of his passes while averaging 259 yards.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2197 or pconrad@coxohio.com.