UT football

[MikeDeTiger]

I agree for most of 2011.  But in the rematch NC he made throws that he probably hardly ever made again, a few that most college QBs might have a couple in their careers, let alone several in one game.  He remained very good after that point.  

[bamajoe]

AJ was a very good qb and one of my favorites. He was no where near the talent of a Tua or a Johnny Football or a Cam Newton. That is why he was like a 5th round draft choice and a career back up in the League. We have had other good qbs such as Blake Sims, Greg McElwain, Blake Barnette, and John Parker Wilson but none of these including McCarron were world beaters.

The guy who started this argument says you have to have a great quarterback before you can be successful and cited Tua as an example. I believe that is assinine

[Cincydawg]

Georgia's really good teams have had pretty good QBs were tended not to lose games, nor make flashy plays to win them.

I guess DJ Shockley could be viewed as something of an exception because he was very mobile.

Tarkenton was very mobile also.

[OrangeAfroMan]

I appreciated when Shockley came in and used his talent to give Florida the win in Jax that one year.

[MikeDeTiger]

AJ was a very good qb and one of my favorites. He was no where near the talent of a Tua or a Johnny Football or a Cam Newton. That is why he was like a 5th round draft choice and a career back up in the League. We have had other good qbs such as Blake Sims, Greg McElwain, Blake Barnette, and John Parker Wilson but none of these including McCarron were world beaters.

Johnny Football?  You're kidding, right?  Not being Cam Newton or Tua (so far) does not put you in the same league as Sims, Barnette, Wilson, and jeez...McElroy.  Also using the NFL draft and career to gauge a college QB is erroneous for all kinds of obvious reasons.  McCarron was one of the better QBs the SEC has seen in the past few years.  

[Cincydawg]

Manziel was a pretty good college QB who had some great WRs.

[MikeDeTiger]

Maybe I'm just biased against him because of his games against LSU, but he was a scrambler who improvised well, and was not a very good passer.  I'd take McCarron all day every day over Manziel.  

[OrangeAfroMan]

I take McCarron if my team is loaded.
I take Manziel if he's going to be carrying the load.



Context, gentlemen.

[Cincydawg]

Yeah, the mobile aggressive QB can win games with a less talented team.

He could also lose games.

A solid steady QB would be better for a talented team.

[Drew4UTk]

it's just my opinion and doesn't mean anything, but... 

a 'flashy' QB who makes plays when plays break down will always get more credit than the QB who is in a system that doesn't often break down.  the QB with the operating system doesn't get the credit deserved as he just 'goes to work'... you'll only see his potential or ability when he encounters the rare break down and recovery.  

Manziel had a lot more opportunity to show his capability than McCarron, plain and simple, and his ability to scramble while maintaining vision of the field (akin to Baker Mayfield's) is what set him apart... both those QB's had targets that were capable of being covered, and their talent on their feet+vision allowed them to make the best of situations apparently chaotic.  Meanwhile, AJ had linemen that protected, backs that blocked or provided the OS dump mechanism, and receivers that ran tight and precise routes- making it only seem that he was 'serviceable, nothing great'... Auburn's Newton had offense sets to highlight his capabilities so he shined, almost in a Randell Cuttingham fashion of play (covered deep? gonna run / spied? gonna pass)... 

if the 'quiet' QB's weren't good enough it would have been obvious, is my contention, as they wouldn't have been able to execute the plays asked of them and those plays wouldn't have appeared as smoothly executed as they were... it's the 'fading' into the machine that makes TEAMS truly great, in my humble opinion, NOT the presence of a handful of playmakers that operate almost detached from the remainder of team.  

in short, i wouldn't take AJ without the rest of the team, and I wouldn't want Johnny Football on a team built like AJ had. 

[rolltidefan]

mccarrons ability wasn't so much his arm strength, accuracy, and certainly not his scrambling ability. his most impressive ability was pre-snap reads and getting us out of bad plays and into better ones. he really came into his own in late 2011, after lsu part 1, and it flourished in 2012 and 13. in lsu part 1 and before, they didn't really let him make many decisions, not many checkdowns and changing plays cause he was a young, first year qb. after lsu part 1, they started to let him loose, and in the bcs title game, they knew they had to take that risk or it'd be another 6-3 game.

this ability, imo, is so much better than any ability to scramble or chunk it 75 yrds.

[Cincydawg]

It's a bit "funny" in a way how rarely the names Aaron Murray and David Greene come up in QB conversations of whatever ilk.

I think they also are a case in point about solid QBs who got the teams into the right plays often as not and rarely made mistakes.

They both put up some serious career numbers passing.

I see Fromm as being of their ilk while Fields is more akin to DJ Shockley.

[Gigem]

It’s easy to say this but as a fellow fan and alumnus of another long suffering school  it’s simply a matter of time and competing factors before UT is back to greatness. Now assuming the facilities are up to par a great coach should be able to upgrade the talent. The other factor is sometimes even when you’ve done everything right you have to wait for your competitors to dip down before you can trend up. 

I would think being in the sec east the road would be a little easier but of course you still get Bama every year. So we might just have to wait awhile until Bama dips a little. I know it seems a long way off but Saban could call it quits anytime he’s ready and still be a legend for 100 plus years. They’ve been that good. 

[Gigem]

I think though that the same problem that dogged A&M in the B12 has also dogged UT. For A&M we were too focused on competing with Texas and OU that we failed to compete against Tech and Okie St and Missouri and all the smaller programs. So instead of having two conference losses and a solid 3rd place every year we slipped down to 5th and 6th place. 

We spent so much energy trying to get the same type of recruits and players that the premier programs were getting we lost out on a lot of solid “3 star” players. What we should have done instead was either recruit like TCU does and recruit good solid football players and then cherry picked the occasional 4 and 5 star players that actually showed interest. Instead we had so many reaches on talented but troubled players and some that washed out quickly we played lousy football against “lesser” teams. 

This is kind of stretching it but can you imagine if we fired Slocum a year or two earlier and hired Leach instead of Texas Tech?  I mean our defense pretty well sucked most of the time post 2000 anyway. Leach had a knack for getting guys to fit his system. I feel like we could have been much more successful with him as opposed to more traditional guys like franchione or Sherman.