There is one helluva sick burn in this tweet.
“I just thought that was a way for me to see the field early, but after looking at it I’m in the best position for my career at UGA.” So much for that vaunted development prowess.
It’s better to sit and learn at Georgia than to play early at Florida is just the kind of message that’ll shrink recruiting gaps in a real hurry.
Filed under Gators, Gators..., Georgia Football, Recruiting
No, the header isn’t about Gus Malzahn. It’s about this premise:
… but when Barton Simmons, Tom Fornelli and I are breaking down quarterbacks for the best teams in college football, you’ll often hear the terms “maverick” and “bus driver” as a sorting tool.
Bus drivers get you to where you need to go on time. They are capable of leading a team to title contention and even winning a national championship … with the right pieces around them. But when judged individually, as players are in the NFL Draft process, they are not rated against their peers the way their teams were in college.
Mavericks, on the other hand, are elite. When they are judged against their peers, they are proven to be among the most talented quarterbacks in the entire country. To put an oversimplified line in the sand for this discussion: mavericks are first or second round NFL Draft talents while bus drivers often are Day 3 picks or go undrafted…
But two things have changed in the College Football Playoff era. First is the emphasis on elite quarterback play, which is a continuation of a trend that began before 2014 and extends to all levels of the sport. From hurry-up offenses to the read-pass option, the fate of a team is put in the hands of the quarterback more than ever…
Of the 19 quarterbacks that have started in a College Football Playoff game, 10 of them have been first- or second-round talents. Those 10 quarterbacks have combined for 13 playoff wins and four of the six national championships, including every title since 2016. The other nine quarterbacks have combined for just five playoff wins, four of them coming from Ohio State and Alabama in championship runs. Without Cardale Jones’ two wins in 2014 and Jacob Coker’s two in 2015, the playoff record of quarterbacks outside of that first two-round NFL Draft group is 1-7. So if you’re not Alabama or Ohio State, the odds of winning the national championship should you make the College Football Playoff are long if you don’t a maverick at quarterback.
Jake Fromm has that one win. He should have had two, but I digress.
Anyway, where the piece goes from there is to note that Joe Burrow raised himself from bus driver to maverick in one season and then proceeds to look at who stands where in 2020.
The good news, if you’re a Georgia fan, is…
Teams with a maverick
- Clemson (11/5): Trevor Lawrence
- Ohio State (4-1): Justin Fields
- Georgia (7-1): Jamie Newman
- Texas (35-1): Sam Ehlinger
- USC (60-1): Kedon Slovis
There’s no real need to elaborate on Lawrence and Fields. They’ve each proven their elite status on the field and both begin the year at the center of the national championship discussion. CBS Sports NFL Draft expert Ryan Wilson projects Newman joining Lawrence and Fields as a top-10 pick in 2021, noting that the move to Georgia has the former Wake Forest quarterback on “everyone’s first-round radar.”
The amusing news, if you’re a Georgia fan, is…
Trask had a great season in 2019 and there’s no question the Gators are entering the fall in a position to displace Georgia from atop the SEC East and therefore are on the short list for national championship contention. At the moment, however, he’s rates closer to a bus driver than a maverick and needs to take a step in his second season as starter to reach the level seen by the most successful quarterbacks of the playoff era.
Assuming he beats out Jones for the starting spot this season, that is.
Filed under BCS/Playoffs, Georgia Football
Washington Post, June 21, 2020:
While much remains uncertain about the novel coronavirus that causes covid-19, five infectious-disease experts interviewed by The Post agreed that frequent testing of all players, regardless of whether they show symptoms, is the linchpin of any effective outbreak prevention policy. Ideally, all athletes should be tested before returning to campus, those experts said, and once full-contact practice begins — scheduled for early August — all players should be tested weekly.
“This is a highly transmissible virus … and we do know that with just a single case that’s not necessarily symptomatic, in high-risk settings, it can spread explosively,” said Albert Ko, an infectious-disease epidemiologist and professor at the Yale School of Public Health. “There’s actually a question and debate of whether you should test twice per week.”
Across college football, however, what Ko believes is a consensus is not yet agreed upon. Over the past week, The Post surveyed all 65 schools in the five major college football conferences and discussed best safety practices with the infectious-disease experts — including Ko, who consulted with the NBA, which plans to test its players every day when it attempts to resume play this summer.
In interviews, emails and news releases, officials in the Power Five conferences described policies that vary widely from school to school — most of them subject to change — ranging from weekly tests for all players, regardless of symptoms, to no tests for players unless they display symptoms or are discovered to have been near an infected person.
The array of policies among conferences and schools reflects the parochial nature of the sport, which is one reason college football could face more difficulties attempting to play during the pandemic than professional leagues.
I say this entirely without snark, but after reading some of yesterday’s comments here, I guess I need to say it: I am the proprietor of a blog about college football.
When I write about the pandemic, it’s not because I’m writing out of personal lifestyle caution, or because I want you to live your life the way I live mine, or because I want the economy to tank, or because it suits my political preferences or any of the other accusations I’ve seen some of you lob my way over the past couple of months.
Nor is it an invitation for you to tell me how we should live our lives, how it’s about suiting your political beliefs, how there aren’t really any experts who know more than a person who reads Facebook religiously does or any of the other rationalizations I’ve seen some of you pitch over the past couple of months. It’s not that I question your sincerity, just the relevance.
Because GTP is a blog about college football.
So here’s what matters to me, even if it doesn’t matter so much to you.
In just the past two days, here’s what we’ve seen:
If your immediate response to that is, don’t worry, they’re young, the data, etc., save your breath. It’s not relevant to me.
Because GTP is a blog about college football.
Here’s the real bottom line for me. You can brush off every bit of that news because it’s only June, but what happens when the same news hits in September or October? I’ll tell you what happens: they cancel football games. Then they trace back contact and cancel even more football games.
I point out what’s motivated schools and conferences to play and how ill-prepared they are for what they’re about to unleash, not because of the greed factor, or how mediocre they are at their jobs — believe me, there are plenty of other opportunities to illustrate those points — but because they’re about to fuck up something I don’t want fucked up, a 2020 college football season.
So, those of you who have other agendas to push, or are simply too stubborn to admit what’s coming, or even haven’t understood why I post, there you go. You are more than welcome to say your peace, whatever that might be, but if you’re commenting along those lines in the hopes of engaging me in some sort of debate over what’s right or wrong, save it.
Because GTP is a blog about college football.
Filed under College Football, The Body Is A Temple
Shorter random Swamp247 commenter: It’s a season when recruiting doesn’t matter that the Portal Master™’s coaching genius will really shine.
Filed under Gators, Gators...
I watched the linked video in hopes of discovering more Newman porn, but came away thinking there isn’t going to be a lot of great quarterback play in the SEC this season.
The good news is that the gap between Newman and the top passer in the conference is likely to be smaller than the gap between Fromm and Tua/Burrow was in 2019. Shrinkage, for the win!
Filed under Georgia Football, SEC Football, Stats Geek!
Get The Picture 