I’m certainly no mechanics guru, but looking at this highlight tape from JT Daniels’ high school days, he sure seems to be throwing differently from the pocket than what we saw last season. Take a look:
For the most part, that awkward hop he was putting into a lot of his deep throws in 2020 only seems to appear there when he’s throwing on the run. Also, there are few examples of him underthrowing his receivers.
Has he picked up bad habits in the interim? Is it just a case of not being able to fully trust his knee yet? Both, maybe? Or, am I reading too much into this? What say y’all?
Get The Picture 
Trusting the knees… And that takes time
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i am a year past my surgery, and just now pretty much not noticing it. Still get a wicked pop in the outer tendons sometimes.
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Nah, he still did it then too. :46.
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Not seeing it there.
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At :46 he lifts that right leg up. Top Billin’ does an excellent job breaking him down. Study: JT Daniels/Ultra-Aggressive UGA O can be INCREDIBLE!!
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Maybe I was referring to something different than what you were. I thought the main mechanical issue was lifting the right leg and forcing more air under his throws. On a compendium of his best, he’s seen doing it at the clip that starts at about :46. I imagine a clip of his “not best” would show this rather a lot.
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What jumps out to me is he appears much faster in the highlights vs last year. Maybe the height of the lineman in the SEC vs high school is causing the jump throws.
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I’m sure the proprietors of the Manning camp would consider Daniels’ mechanics a bit squirrely there and especially the four games in 2020. An offseason of work should restore confidence in his knee.
I was impressed with his vision on the sixty yard TD run @1:18 and the last play.
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Might be the video only shows his best throws. The guy does throw a lot of great balls in between the bad ones.
Personally, I think it’s the knee.
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He does this weird whip around thing with his back leg. It just looks awkward from the waist down.
The good news is that Monken seemingly has dude open on every play, so just a minor improvement in timing will cover up a lot of mechanical problems imo. Once he leaves, it’s the NFL’s problem from there.
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It’s all about not trusting the knee, 100%. The kind of things he was doing mechanically last season didn’t show up in the USC games he played in, so we can safely say it’s not trusting the knee.
Now, can Monken fix the problem and get him back to mostly good mechanics? We’ll see.
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I don’t give a shit about your opinion but you sure tore our coach down last season and now the QB has a knee problem?
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Good for you.
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Kirby just ain’t “corching” him right….
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He’s not going to win the Heisman but he’s a competent QB who can stretch the field and doesn’t miss many layups. That’s what we need. He’ll probably make mistakes and throw some picks, but he’s plenty good enough to take us all the way if everyone else will pull their own weight. A RB taking the next step this off-season would be a big deal in that regard.
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My biggest concern with Daniels is the underthrown ball, but watching the clip I’m wondering how much of it (if any) was getting used to the speed of the receiver.
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Things are happening very fast at that level.
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There is a breakdown of him going up on his toe on his left foot on those long throws which, they concluded, pulls his power away. I don’t see it here on those long throws and he does step into the throw more flat-footed.
If that’s not the case, could it be he can’t throw the ball that far?
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In Monken I trust.
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I’ll add, since I am – and always be – a supporter of CMR, that I think JTD is one of those QB’s that Richt and Bobo would have gotten a lot out of too. The only difference is he would have been surrounded by 3 and 4-stars, rather than 4 and 5-stars.
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Every time I see a QB highlight reel like this, I always wonder where those receivers wound up. Those cats ran some great routes and made some crazy catches.
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I don’t know if it was trusting the knee per se (I would agree it was that against MSU) but I would venture to guess is was more strengthening and stretching the muscles and ligaments. Anyone who has suffered a severe injury where you are not able to use leg/arm etc. knows that the strength comes back quicker than the coordination. I think after 9 months he will be better balanced and coordinated in his legs and you should see the awkwardness lesson.
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He’s never had great mechanics, but no one other than Trevor ever did in HS. Usually it gets better in college, but JT really hasn’t yet. I think we can credibly point to a shitty OL at USC for preventing his mechanics from improving, and then the knee. I see front leg hops on every throw over 50 yards from him since HS. He has to work on converting his leverage from back to front with better timing bc right now it’s too much arm on the long balls. That and lack of timing with receivers leads to balls thrown short. But it’s better than missing them long. And I’m sure he knows that. Fingers crossed that a winter, spring, summer and fall with a private QB coach, Monken and Faulkner (and likely a cleanup procedure) gets this ironed out.
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I saw Trevor as a freshman in the Georgia Dome warming up throwing it 50 yards across the field so it is really weird to me that Shotty or whoever didn’t know who he was at our camp.
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Tony Romo did an impersonation of several famous QB’s on one of the late night talk shows a couple of months ago. Brady, Manning, Farve…point is that it was not only funny and spot on, but each has their own unique style. As long as JT puts the ball in our receiver’s hands, I don’t care how it looks.
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Theres a reason charles barkley’s mechanics dont allow him to hit a ball over 10 yards….
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I think the answer probably lies in the truth of why the coaches held him out so long in 2020 — a truth we may never know, but I suspect it was because they knew even if he was physically ready, he might not have been mentally ready. Like a RB who is fully healed from an ACL but isn’t ready to totally trust his body.
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Whatever the issue, I’m certain that he and Monken and various analysts and QB gurus are hard at work with him in this offseason to address it. I hope that he can get it fixed, though, because if he can get dialed in on the deep balls to these fast receivers we’ve got, then Georgia will basically be able to name our score in eight or nine of the games on our schedule. The Dawgs are going to be “pick your poison” for defensive coordinators this fall if JT can air it out to the guys who get free. If Burton, Pickens, et al keep having to slow down and fight for jump balls when they could have been running naked then it’s gonna hamper us.
Personally, I think that even if some hesitance and lack of trust in the knee wasn’t the full issue it had to be at least part of the equation. With another year post surgery under his belt, I have to imagine that part of the equation will also be on its way to being resolved.
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