Now the additional twist to all of this was the transfers - Del Rio and Appleby. In both 2016 and 2017, when the HC decided to go with a different starter at QB, that new starter was immediately hurt. So in consecutive years, due to dumb bad luck, the program told a kid "you're not good enough to help us win" and had to turn around to then say "please help us win anyway".
Franks would be perfectly fine if this was his first year as a starter. If he had been sitting and developing and this year was his first experience, given the same age, you'd think, "hey, this guy will be alright". But since we saw him struggle so mightily last year, everyone shits on him.
He may be perfectly fine and just didn't get any useful coaching until this year. His stats were good, and like almost everyone, worse vs quality opponents. People would accept him as a game-manager type, except that he's huge and fast and occasionally shows off his cannon for an arm...so he's simply a kid that isn't reaching his potential and likely won't. The long TD throw vs UGA this year was sick. But his first INT in the same game was a WTF moment as well.