Even when they lose they win. Interesting how so many controversies follow one program

Ohio State 56, Ball State 3: The Tape Says Julian Sayin Is Ready. It Also Says Right Tackle Isn't.

Week 1 film review — Menace2Sports

I watched every snap of this thing twice, both sides of the ball, and I'm going to tell you the same thing I'd tell a room full of players on a Sunday: the scoreboard lied to you, and it lied in both directions.

56-3 makes it sound like there's nothing to fix. There's plenty to fix. But it also undersells what I actually saw from the quarterback, because Julian Sayin didn't just play well against a bad football team. He played like a guy who has seen the picture before, and that is the single hardest thing to fake.

So let's get into it. Offense first, then defense, and I'm not going to bury the problem — I'm going to lead with it after I tell you about the good.

Julian Sayin gave you the one thing you needed

320 yards. PFF put him at a 93.1 overall and a 92.6 passing grade on 47 snaps, and nobody else on the offense cracked 90. That's the number. Here's what the number doesn't tell you.

Fourth-and-goal. Ohio State goes for it. They run mesh, and Ball State is in match coverage — everybody covered, every defender with their back turned to the football. That's the rep. That's the whole thing. Sayin doesn't panic, doesn't drift, doesn't bail backward. He climbs, he recognizes that in match coverage there's nobody looking at him, he makes the last man miss and he walks into the end zone from three yards out.

I've coached quarterbacks who take four years to learn that. Some never learn it.

He backed it up all afternoon. The out-and-up to Jeremiah for 48 — watch the safety on that one, not the ball. Jeremiah gives him a little out stem, the safety levels off, and that's the entire play. The speed does the rest. Sayin let it go when Jeremiah still had two yards of separation to create. That's trust and that's timing.

Then the back-shoulder fade inside the five with the defender's back turned. Then the late-hands touchdown in the red zone where Jeremiah isn't even open by any normal definition — he's open because the corner's eyes are in the backfield and the ball placement is perfect. Eight catches, 151 yards, two scores, and Jeremiah Smith did all of that before halftime.

He also executed a full two-minute drill and finished it with a touchdown. I know it's Ball State. I don't care. You have to be able to do it against them before you can do it against anybody, and last year this offense didn't always look like it could.

Now the nitpicks, because that's what we do here.

He left corner routes on the field. Not one — at least three. The Brock Boyd rep late in the first half is the one that bugs me. Boyd runs a corner, gets separation at the top of the stem, and Sayin has a clean pocket and all the space in the world to drop it on the pylon and let a young receiver get his first career touchdown. He checks it down instead. Fine result, wrong throw.

Same story in the red zone when Jeremiah came wide open on the backside and Sayin instead put too much mustard on a checkdown to Bo Jackson, who dropped it. That's a three-touchdown day that became a two-touchdown day.

Those are the Joe Burrow throws. The cocky ones. I've got space, I can fit it, it's going there. He's going to need every one of them in Austin.

Right tackle is a problem and I'm not going to soften it

Phillip Daniels went the wrong way on the first play of the game.

The first play. Of the season. As a returning starter. Against Ball State.

Call it nerves. I'd buy that from a freshman. This is a guy who started a full year of college football. And it wasn't a one-off — he was bad all day, they benched him after two drives, they put him back in, and he got beat again.

Let me coach it for you instead of just yelling about it. Daniels doesn't pass set. He gets top-heavy — head out over his toes, waist bending instead of sitting his hips down — and then he turns his shoulders and lunges with a punch. There's no name for what he's doing because it isn't a technique. And because he's late and out of position, his hands end up outside the frame constantly. He got away with holding at least twice that I saw live and I wrote about it on the site.

The cleanest way to see it: run Ian Moore's pass set and Daniels' pass set side by side on the same possession. Moore kick-slides, stays square, punches inside. Daniels turns and grabs. Same offense, same drill work, completely different product.

In the run game it's the same story. On the stretch play where 70 veers inside, Austin Siereveld owns the B-gap and Daniels has the C — the second that defender crosses Siereveld's face, somebody has to snap outside and take the spiking end. Nobody does. Daniels just gets moved.

The grades were kinder to him than the tape: 59.8 overall, 67.6 in pass protection. Take a look at the snap counts instead. Hinzman, Moore, Montgomery and Siereveld all played 47. Daniels played 32. The staff told you what they thought.

But here's the conundrum, and this is the actual story for this week: Gabe VanSickle isn't the obvious answer. He took a holding penalty and a false start against a MAC team, and he graded 60.1. Ohio State committed four offensive penalties in a 53-point win, and a bunch of them belong to those two.

VanSickle also had the single best offensive line rep of the entire game. He gets jabbed, feels no rusher on him, and his eyes snap outside looking for the twist. He picks it up, Siereveld comes off clean, Sayin never gets touched. That is elite, coached, veteran-level protection work. Shout out Arthur Smith and Tyler Bowen — that's an 86.0 pass-blocking grade for a reason.

So the choice this week is Daniels at tackle or a shuffle that gets VanSickle on the field. Neither one is comfortable. Both are better than what happened Saturday.

The rest of the line, briefly

Carson Hinzman was clean and picked up twists all day — 72.1 overall, 77.9 in protection, and he was the anchor when the right side got busy.

Austin Siereveld was the repeat offender on zone rules. He's hopping instead of continuing on stretch, he's falling down, he's not snapping outside on the B/C exchange. He was wrong on a play that Ja'Kobi Jackson made right with his legs. Give him this, though: there's a rep on Bo's long touchdown where he just covers a guy up, body on body, wherever the defender wants to go, and it's a huge part of why that run pops.

Ian Moore is the mixed bag. Some genuinely outstanding pass sets — best on the roster on those reps — and then he gets completely whipped by a Ball State linebacker on split zone, and turns his hips on a stretch that gives up a tackle for loss. When he doesn't turn back, the play seals and Bo walks in. He showed you both versions in the same afternoon.

Ball State got two sacks. Two. Jared Badie and Anthony Pinnace, both newcomers. Texas has better than that on the third string.

Field position is the quiet problem nobody's talking about

Three drives started inside the 10-yard line. The one, the six, and the ten.

Why? Legend Bey bringing kickoffs out of the end zone.

Against Ball State that's a curiosity. In Austin, on the road, in a night game, that's how you go three-and-out backed up, punt from your own end zone, and hand a top-five offense a short field. It's the most fixable thing on this entire list and it needs to be fixed by Saturday.

Devin McCuin was the biggest eye-opener on the roster

If you've been subscribed here you know his UTSA film was fine. It was okay. Nothing that made me sit up.

He looks like a completely different player.

The release is explosive, the top end is real, the route detail is there, and he made a defender miss on the RPO for the third touchdown of the day. 81.3 overall on 37 snaps — more snaps than Jeremiah Smith played.

But the thing that made me rewind was the blocking. He's push-cracking safeties in the run game. Laying out to do it. He posted an 88.8 run-blocking grade, which is the best mark on the offense by a receiver, and it isn't an accident — that's the Evan Spencer effect and it's showing up on tape everywhere.

You want corners tackling running backs. The way you get that is receivers taking safeties out of the picture. This room is doing it now.

WEEK ONE​

OSU Offense vs. Ball State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/a99d6523-989d-4b16-a9af-44455056f814
OSU Defense vs. Ball State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/4705b4de-56f2-416f-93af-ae93ae89c35c?draft=true
Michigan Offense vs. W. Michigan: https://menace2sports.com/videos/7d7e4e72-1510-48df-bbc4-2b948784ecbd
Texas Offense vs. Texas State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/dd9ede12-fbbe-495f-9a27-b48b06074dec
Texas Defense vs. Texas State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/06226aa8-5e42-4b16-bf0a-6cd68ad2b3eb

WEEK TWO​

OSU Offense vs. Texas: https://menace2sports.com/videos/c29854a4-ddcd-4b11-a712-a9910ba88ead?draft=true
OSU Defense vs. Texas: https://menace2sports.com/videos/ea5db740-8bf1-4d21-a90f-ad6c4c5f8c56
Michigan Offense vs. Oklahoma: https://menace2sports.com/videos/c0ea61a1-9efb-49ec-8522-36592c49a92e?draft=true
Michigan Defense vs. Oklahoma: https://menace2sports.com/videos/ce95e36a-4a22-42c4-bce2-a93e9c5e76ea?draft=true
Oregon Offense vs. Oklahoma State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/af9c74df-723c-4872-8204-6dffdf1227be

WEEK THREE:​

OSU Offense vs. Kent State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/9701de67-aac9-47a0-ac77-4e9b4f0525ec?draft=true
OSU Young Guys Offense vs. Kent State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/69fe9343-ef1c-499c-9aaa-b80678d961f7?draft=true
OSU Defense vs. Kent State: https://menace2sports.com/videos/0d39be30-065b-4f61-b50e-3102be9e0b7f?draft=true
Ole Miss Offense vs. LSU: https://menace2sports.com/videos/7f97ff60-6b9a-4581-ab9c-0234d5120228

WEEK FOUR:​

OSU Defense vs. Illinois: https://menace2sports.com/videos/430c9441-c177-4076-a363-4f402220f74f?draft=true
OSU Offense vs. Illinois: https://menace2sports.com/videos/c7f5f711-621b-44c0-853e-b459bf0f29fb?draft=true
Iowa Offense vs. Michigan: https://menace2sports.com/videos/54f32e79-0616-413b-aff4-309c2fe6b052?draft=true
Iowa Defense vs. Michigan: https://menace2sports.com/videos/9fa820e3-fff5-4231-882c-a85b1bc8aa36?draft=true
Oregon Offense vs. USC: https://menace2sports.com/videos/5dc40ceb-f56b-4689-a761-4a7102ade856?draft=true

WEEK FIVE:​

OSU Offense vs. Iowa: https://menace2sports.com/videos/2a8a504a-722c-4da9-a089-34470d25e763
OSU Defense vs. Iowa: https://menace2sports.com/videos/3972d91b-b9c7-41c4-825f-76c7cc2e90be
Alabama Offense vs. Mississippi St: https://menace2sports.com/videos/2644f263-e039-42c2-b682-3fedcbcd7056
Georgia Defense vs. Oklahoma: https://menace2sports.com/videos/531d1cf1-cff3-4c09-85a1-f45fea2dfa66

WEEK SIX:​

OSU Offense vs. Maryland: https://menace2sports.com/videos/6725863b-0470-4e7e-86f5-7b29ce76c624
OSU Defense vs. Maryland: https://menace2sports.com/videos/d65d6217-f4e4-4849-80fd-cb9bb6b20ea7

Oregon Handed Boise State 24 of Their 27 Points​

Oregon 34, Boise State 27. The Ducks outgained them by 233 yards, went 0-for-3 on fourth down, committed ten penalties for 90, and needed a fourth-and-10 breakup in the last two minutes to win at home.


By Zach Smith
Five hundred and seven yards to 274. Eighteen first downs apiece.


And Oregon needed four straight pressures and a pass breakup on fourth-and-10 with the game on the line to beat Boise State in Autzen.


Dante Moore threw for 378 and three scores and didn't turn it over once. The defense held Boise to 2.7 a carry on 35 attempts. Oregon was better at almost everything that gets measured, and the final was seven.


That gap has one explanation and it isn't the opponent.

Ninety yards of free offense​

Ten penalties for 90. Boise had three for 25.


Go through them, because every one has a name and a down-and-distance attached:


Two on Boise's opening drive, both handing over first downs. Two of the six first downs they picked up on that possession were free. DJ Uiagalelei jumped offside on a hard count and turned second-and-8 into second-and-3. An earlier offside on another hard count turned fourth-and-6 into fourth-and-1, Boise sneaks it, and the drive ends in three points. A pass interference erased an Oregon interception and Boise scored on that drive. Number 21 with another pass interference after the rush had already flushed Madsen out of the pocket. Two personal fouls, Bear Alexander and then Woodyard after the whistle. A penalty on the first snap of the second half to start first-and-15.


And Evan Stewart muffed a punt he was never touched on. Boise scored on a screen one snap later.


Add it up: Boise State scored 24 of their 27 points on drives Oregon either extended or handed to them.


Don't jump. When a quarterback is barking at you on a hard count, that's the entire point of the exercise, and it happened twice to the same guy.

Sixty-six yards, then four hundred forty-one​

The split that tells you what actually happened offensively:


Oregon gained 66 yards in the first quarter. They gained 441 after it.


Same quarterback. Same receivers. Same offensive line. What changed was the call sheet.


The first quarter was RPO hitches, a drag on third-and-8 that came up short of the sticks, and a fourth-and-2 stop. Everything after was the go route, the seam, the back shoulder, the counter, the RPO flat, and Dakorien Moore with the ball in space.


Drew Mehringer figured it out. It took him a quarter and a half, and it nearly cost Oregon a home loss to Boise State.

Dante Moore had the best day of his career and the tape isn't complicated​

28-of-37, 378 yards, three touchdowns, no picks, 10.2 a throw.


Every throw that traveled produced something. The 50-yard go route to McClellan on first down from his own 2. The seam with 19 seconds left in the half. The back shoulder to Johnson at tight end to start the 87-yard drive. The RPO flat to McClellan for 40-plus. The strike to Dakorien Moore that went 50 to the house.


That is exactly what I wrote about him in the offseason and it's the reason I had him at a 98.5 grade throwing it 20-plus yards last year. From ten yards out to the end line he's as good as anybody in this sport.


The other half of that file was the layup problem. He graded a 65.5 on throws of zero to nine yards last season with five interceptions, more than every other depth combined. Today he threw it into trouble underneath exactly zero times, and the reason is that Oregon eventually stopped asking him to live down there.


Two misses I'll charge him. Four verticals off play action with McClellan open and he sails it high. That's a weight-forward miss and it's the same mechanical note that's been in his file since last November. Get the weight back and that's a touchdown.


And in the two-minute drill before halftime, four verticals called, and he takes the check down. Take the shot. What are you saving it for?


The receivers: McClellan 6-150 and a score, Dakorien Moore 6-93 and a score, Stewart 8-72, Johnson 4-57 and a score. Four guys over 55 yards.

Nobody on that offense could get a yard​

Twenty-five carries, 119 yards, 4.8 a pop. Jordon Davison went 12-90 with the touchdown and a 40-yard counter. Dierre Hill got the first quarter mostly to himself and produced 2.0 a carry. Davison was the back today. It wasn't a debate.


Then look at the money downs. Oregon went 0-for-3 on fourth down.


Fourth-and-2 stopped on the opening drive. Fourth-and-1 answered with a perimeter RPO thrown for no gain, which is a call I'd like explained to me. And on the final possession, needing one first down to end the football game, they got five yards, then two, then stuffed.


Boise went 2-for-3 on fourth down, including a corner route for a touchdown.


An offense that put up 507 yards could not get a yard when a yard was the only thing on the table.

Three bad quarters and one that saved them​

Through three quarters this defense was losing in man, losing in zone, getting Madsen comfortable, and getting controlled at the point of attack. They did not get off the field on their own between the first quarter and the fourth. The stops they got were gifts. A juggled throwback ruled incomplete. A hold in the red zone that turned seven into three.


Then the fourth quarter, all in man coverage, and it was a different unit.


Uiagalelei sack on second down to force third-and-long. Third-and-17 with pressure closing, Madsen checks it down to a slant that gets stopped short, three-and-out. Down seven with 2:24 left: Uiagalelei beats the right tackle clean and forces a throwaway. Pressure, incomplete. A back shoulder attempt broken up in man. Third-and-10 in cover two, and number 31 clubs Madsen with a broken hand, because he can't wrap so he strikes, and the ball sails. Then fourth-and-10 and Offord with the breakup.


Ballgame.


Teitum Tuioti was the best pass rusher on that field, one sack and three tackles.


And Uiagalelei finished with a sack and seven assists and was the single biggest reason Oregon won the fourth quarter. He's also the guy who jumped offside on a hard count. That's this entire defense in one player: the talent is real, the discipline is a coin flip.


Amari Washington got penetration on a fourth-quarter run and missed the tackle, turning a tackle for loss into four yards. Wrap him up. Oregon won the first snap of three separate sequences on Boise's long fourth-quarter drive and lost all three.

Boise held the ball for thirty-one minutes​

Madsen went 15-of-29 for 181 with three touchdowns and no interceptions. Three scores and not one giveaway.


They ran it 35 times for 94 yards, 2.7 a carry. Riley 17-50, Gaines 11-39. That's a bad rushing day by any standard and they still held the football for 30:54.


Their offense didn't take anything from Oregon. They possessed it, converted third-and-ones, and cashed whatever Oregon handed them. That's a complete plan executed by a team that knew exactly what it was.


And Danielson's defense was the best unit on that field from the first drive to the last, including a four-man rush with a twist that sacked Dante Moore on third-and-8 with 2:32 left and denied Oregon the chance to kneel it out.

This is Lanning's job​

Two straight postseasons ended in embarrassment. He told me himself the last two years have taken a physical toll on him, and I believe him.


Then today: ten penalties for 90 yards, two offsides on hard counts, two personal fouls, two pass interference calls with one of them erasing a takeaway, a muffed punt that turned into a touchdown, and 0-for-3 on fourth down.


His team outgained Boise State by 233 yards and won by seven.


Talent isn't the problem in Eugene and it hasn't been for three years. Discipline is a coaching outcome, not a personality trait, and every single one of those ten flags has a name attached to it. Somebody in that building has to answer for a team that keeps beating itself in the exact same ways.


They're 1-0. That's the good news, and against a real opponent it's a loss.


One more thing to watch: Dakorien Moore left during the four-minute drill and looked wobbly getting off the field. See what Oregon says this week.


Appreciate you, Menace Army.

Clemson Had One First Down in a Half​

​

LSU 51, Clemson 10. Thirty-eight first downs to eight, 644 yards to 145, and 1-for-13 on third down. Lane Kiffin's debut in Death Valley was a statement and Sam Leavitt led the game in rushing.​

By Zach Smith
Ninety-minute rain delay. Wet Bermuda. Lane Kiffin's first night in Tiger Stadium, Sam Leavitt's first game as an SEC starter, and Christopher Vizzina's first career road start.


Then LSU put up 51 and Clemson finished with one first down at halftime.


One. A program with two national titles picked up a single first down in thirty minutes of football.

Twenty-one to one​

Three numbers and you can stop reading if you want.


Thirty-eight first downs to eight. At the break it was 21 to 1. Six hundred forty-four yards to 145. And Clemson went 1-for-13 on third down, which includes 0-for-8 in the first half.


LSU ran the football 58 times and held it for 36:09.


That's not a bad night. That's a team that never found out what it was allowed to do.

Leavitt led the game in rushing​

Sam Leavitt went 16-of-28 for 230 with a touchdown and a pick. He also carried it 12 times for 113 yards and two scores.


He led every player on that field in rushing. Write the evaluation right there and you're most of the way home.


It started badly. First drive, he missed a slant behind the receiver and Clemson picked it at the LSU 33. Wet field, so the plant foot is a real variable and I'm not resolving that one from my couch.


Then look at the order of what came next. Scramble for nine on first down the very next series. A keeper on a read where he refused to slide and went looking for the contact. An escape from an all-out blitz that had actually gotten home, scrambled all the way to first-and-goal. A naked boot from the goal line where he beat the rush, made a defender miss, and walked in. A quarterback draw on second-and-10 for eleven and a first down. Another scramble for a second rushing touchdown.


He is balling with his legs, not his arm, and I want to be precise about that because his completion percentage sat in the 40s most of the night before it finished at 57.

The one throw that mattered​

Eight twenty-one left in the third, all-out blitz coming, and Leavitt backpedals and delivers a strike for a touchdown.


That is the throw that requires the fastest processing on a football field. Somebody is unblocked, you have one look, and the ball has to be gone. He saw it and he threw it.


If you've read this series you know the comparison I'm about to make. Julian Sayin had eleven scrambles all of last season and I built an entire article around that number. Gunner Stockton had 53 and I built one around that. Sam Leavitt had two rushing touchdowns before halftime in his first SEC start.


Whatever else is unresolved about him, that trait is not.

Nobody made him throw​

The caveat belongs in the same breath.


LSU led by four scores from the second quarter on. Clemson never forced Leavitt into a situation where the arm had to win. He threw 28 times in a game his team controlled from the middle of the first half.


So the legs are confirmed and the arm is still an open file. Ole Miss on the 19th is when we find out, and I'd note that game is against the program that just watched Kiffin walk out the door.

This wasn't the Ole Miss offense​

I wrote in the offseason that Lane Kiffin's Ole Miss attack was RPOs, screens, dinks and dunks, and one gorgeous fake-look-back snap. I told LSU fans that was their preview.


I was wrong about which version they'd get.


This was tempo and a run game. Fifty-eight carries for 309 yards at 5.3 a pop, Dilin Jones going 23-113 with two scores, and tempo used hard enough that Clemson couldn't substitute. Built for the weather and built for the roster he inherited.


The only real Ole Miss carryover was the screen game, which produced a chunk play in the second quarter. Everything else was a coach looking at a wet field and a Death Valley crowd and deciding to run it down their throat.


That's a good sign, by the way. A coordinator who only has one offense is a coordinator you eventually solve.


Winston Watkins Jr. went 7-110 with a score, Phillip Wright III 3-70 with a score, Trey'Dez Green 4-58.


And there's a basketball hoop on the LSU sideline now. Take a takeaway, go dunk. Same family as the belt and the chains at Ole Miss, and it tells you something real about the culture change from Brian Kelly's buttoned-up teams that kept losing openers.

Weeks, Umanmielen, Ross​

This LSU defense has names and you should learn them.


Whit Weeks finished with six tackles and 1.5 for loss and was the most consistent player on that field. Watch the third-and-2 that ended Clemson's first real drive. Zone play, no puller, and Weeks shoots the gap. He beat the alignment, not a blocker. That's recognition and it's the hardest thing to coach. He also stuffed a draw on third-and-9.


Princewill Umanmielen had six tackles, 1.5 sacks and two tackles for loss, and led the team in pressure. He followed Kiffin from Oxford.


Jordan Ross had four tackles, a sack, two tackles for loss and the pick six, and he's the one who dominated the puller on Clemson's quarterback counter.


And the front did it with five-man pressure, not exotic stuff. Four guys winning and a fifth closing. That's the version that travels in November.

The pick six is a coaching failure​

Go back and watch it before you charge it to the quarterback.


LSU zone blitzed. The defensive end dropped into the exact window Vizzina was throwing to. He read rush, assumed that space was vacated, and threw to a spot.


I wrote almost this identical paragraph about CJ Carr in the offseason. Narduzzi's six-man look reads the quarterback's eyes and breaks on his front hand, Notre Dame threw into it three separate times, and I put that on Mike Denbrock because nobody gave the kid an answer.


Give him an answer for the zone blitz. If your quarterback doesn't have a rule for a dropping end, the interception is on the guy who didn't teach it.

Negative four rushing yards at halftime​

Clemson ran it 26 times for 40 yards. One and a half a carry.


At the half they had minus four yards on twelve attempts. Their leading rusher finished with 21.


Vizzina went 10-of-16 for 83 with the pick and got benched in the first half. Dabo Swinney named him the starter on Tuesday and pulled him in the opener. Tait Reynolds came in and went 4-of-6 for 22.


The ledger on Vizzina's night: the pick six, a should-have-been second interception off pressure, a sack on five-man pressure, back-to-back pressures after that, and a wide-open touchdown missed on a running back rail route against a blitz on third-and-7.


Throw the rail route. That's the answer to that look, it's why the route exists, and he panicked instead.


Now be fair to him. I've got two clean pockets in the entire ledger, both on the opening drive when it was still 3-3, and both produced completions to Bryant Wesco. You cannot evaluate what that kid is because nobody let him find out.


The line gave him zero rushing yards through eight carries, negative four at the half, a puller who got dominated on a quarterback counter, and four penalties. Hands to the face, a facemask, a false start on crowd noise, and a hold on a screen that got declined.

Chad Morris called that game​

A quarterback counter with a first-time road starter down fourteen. A draw on third-and-9. Repeated screens with an offensive line that could not get to the second level.


Those Arkansas teams were historically bad on third down too, and that was eight years ago. Clemson went 1-for-13 tonight.


Somebody has to answer for a play sheet that put a freshman quarterback in the worst possible spots in the loudest possible building.

What I'm holding loosely​

It's one game and I've been doing this long enough to know what September does to people.


Kiffin's first September at Ole Miss looked good too. The real tests are Ole Miss on the 19th and Alabama in November.


The rain matters. Wet grass favors the team that knows the snap count, and LSU ran it 58 times. Some of Clemson's disaster is conditions.


The environment matters. Death Valley at night against a first-time road starter is about the worst spot in America for a quarterback. The false start on noise and the panic on the rail route both belong partly to the venue.


But 51-10 with a 644-to-145 yardage gap is not a weather story. Kiffin's debut was a statement, and Dabo Swinney's football team picked up one first down in a half.


Appreciate you, Menace Army.

I Asked Him to Scramble. He Did It Twice.​

Ohio State 42, Ball State 3. A 5.6 rushing average that's fiction, a defense that won the pass rush and finished with one sack, and the two plays from Julian Sayin that I've been waiting nine months to see.


By Zach Smith

---

Fourth and goal from the three. Protection breaks down. Everybody's covered.


Julian Sayin steps up and runs it in.


If you've read anything I've written since January you know why I'm opening there. Eleven scrambles all of last season. Forty-eight yards. Zero against Miami in a playoff game where his pocket fell apart all night. The play I opened his whole article with was him throwing the ball away in a two-minute drill with nothing but grass in front of him.


Today he did it twice.

The two plays that matter​

The scramble touchdown is one. The other comes in the two-minute drill, when Philip Daniels gets beat inside and Sayin leaves the pocket and finds Jeremiah Smith.


Neither one shows up in a passing line of 21-of-25 for 320 and three touchdowns. Both of them are the reason I feel differently about him today than I did in July.


That's development. Not "he's more comfortable" or "he looks poised," which is what you'll hear on a broadcast. He identified two dead plays and went and made something out of them instead of standing there waiting to get hit.


The throws that count today: the back shoulder to Smith on third and four in the two-minute drill, and the play action strike to the back of the end zone to close the half. Those are the two that would have been throws against a real defense.


The 48-yard touchdown needed a safety to bite on the out and up and it was underthrown. Take that one at a discount.

Before anybody gets carried away​

Ball State played zone almost all afternoon.


Clean-pocket zone is exactly where Sayin graded a 94.4 last year. That's his neighborhood. The only real pressure he saw came from his own guys losing one-on-ones, not from anything Ball State schemed up.


So no, we did not learn whether he can beat man coverage on a Saturday that counts. We learned he'll run when it's broken, and that was the open question. Bank that and wait for Texas.

Five point six a carry is fiction​

Ohio State averaged 5.6 on the ground. Ignore it.



Every single phase of this football game produced about three yards a carry. Bo Jackson's 65 and Ja'Kobi's 49 are the entire difference between a good rushing day and a bad one.


And there were no halftime adjustments to credit, before anybody tries. Those two explosives came on the same stretch concept they'd been running since the opening drive.


Which is the point I keep making and the reason I'm not panicking: when they blocked the stretch correctly on Bo Jackson's touchdown, it worked. That's inconsistency, not incapability. Big difference.


Two run concepts all day, plus a goal line man sweep and a jet to Smith. Vanilla by choice, most likely, which muddies the diagnosis. You can't fully indict a line that ran four things against a MAC team.

Names, because somebody has to say them​

Philip Daniels got beaten six times, two of them for sacks. Number 67 got beaten in the red zone. Ian Moore missed his block on the goal line sweep. Ja'Kobi Jackson whiffed the corner blitz that produced the first sack. And there's an uncalled hold on Carson Hinzman that turned a third down into a second one.


Block the corner blitz. That's a running back's job description and it cost their quarterback nine yards.


If those names sound familiar it's because I spent the offseason writing that this group was the least prepared offensive line I studied. Today was better than the Miami tape. Better than that tape is a low bar.

Devin McCuin is the story nobody's telling​

Jeremiah Smith went 8-151-2 and touched it six different ways. Out and up, curl, comeback, back shoulder, play action score, jet sweep. He's Jeremiah Smith. Moving on.


Devin McCuin went 6-97 with a touchdown and was the release valve every time Ohio State was backed up. A go route, an 18-yard conversion, an RPO hitch he took to the house, a corner route, another RPO. Every time they needed to breathe, they found him.


Ten pass catchers got a target with the starters on the field. That rotation is deeper than anything Brian Hartline ran, and it's the Cortez Hankton hire showing up on a stat sheet in week one. I said in the spring that room would look different. It looks different.


Chris Henry Jr. and Brock Boyd both got held back until the second half. That reads deliberate to me.

One sack, and it should have been five​

Ohio State gave up 144 total yards. Ball State went 19-of-38 for 94 passing at 2.5 a throw, and 21 carries for 50 on the ground. Zero touchdowns.


And the defensive front finished almost nothing.


Khary Wilder was the most disruptive edge on that field today and his line reads zero tackles, zero assists. Zion Grady the same. Epi Sitanilei has the only sack on the sheet.


Count what got away. Wilder's press rush flushed Luster into Tarvos Alford's interception. James Smith's horse collar erased a sack and extended a drive. Kenyatta Jackson got a hit as thrown. Grady had a near sack. Luster's escapability is the entire reason that box score says one.


Get him down. That's the whole coaching point, and it's a fixable one, but you don't get to be sloppy about it against a quarterback who can actually run.


Zion Grady started over Beau Atkinson, by the way. I called that in August and I'm taking the lap.

Seven defensive backs won a rep​

The secondary is the real story of this game.


Devin Sanchez ended three drives by himself and dropped a fourth-down interception. Jermaine Mathews, Tarvos Alford with the pick, Earl Little Jr., Camp Calhoun. And Jay Timmons, a true freshman, went three for three in coverage with two pass breakups, one of them on a double move.


A true freshman corner not biting on a double move in his first college game is the most encouraging individual thing on this whole sheet.


Patricia's group also stayed onside through multiple hard counts. Discipline is not a sexy thing to write about and it's the thing that beats you in November.

The field position is the actual problem​

Five drives started inside their own ten. Five.


Legend Bey brought the opening kick out from six deep and got to the 15. Later he caught one deep in the end zone, Brandon Inniss told him to stay in, he stepped out, tried to return it anyway, and got stopped inside the ten. Stay in the end zone. When your teammate is screaming at you to take a knee, take a knee.


Inniss fair caught a punt at the six instead of letting it bounce. Let it bounce. That ball is going into the end zone and you get it at the 20 for free.


A Phillip Bell return came back on a hold. And Inniss took a shot on a punt return at 35-3 and fumbled it before recovering.


Ball State's punter went eight for 349, a 43.6 average with three inside the 20. He was the best player on their football team by a mile.


None of it cost anything today. Against Texas, five drives inside your own ten is a scoring drought and a loss.

Fahey came in ahead of St. Clair​

Luke Fahey was QB2, and given who Tavien St. Clair was recruited to be, that's the depth chart statement of the afternoon.


Fahey went 5-of-7 for 62 and a touchdown. His interception was a Chris Henry drop, so charge it to the receiver. St. Clair did play and went 5-of-6 for 52 with a score, so read this as an order of entry, not an exclusion. But somebody made a decision about who goes in first.

Chris Henry Jr. had the strangest afternoon on the sheet​

Three drops. Two of them were touchdowns. One of them turned into an interception charged to his quarterback.


He also caught a touchdown, and he threw the crack block on the safety that turned Bo Jackson's 20-yard run into a 65-yard touchdown.


That's the whole player right now in one line. The blocking rep is why he's on the field, and the three drops are why he isn't ahead of McCuin yet.


Legend Bey did the same thing in miniature. Two freshman mistakes on returns, and then the most dynamic play of the game: screen pass, makes one miss, cuts it back, makes three more miss with two of them running into each other, touchdown. Same instinct that got him in trouble on the kick return, applied to the right situation. 2-37 and a score.


Brock Boyd debuted with the starters at 9:50 in the third and made a hard catch for 22. Riley Pettijohn led the team with six total tackles and looked athletic in space. Isaiah West got seven carries.

What the box score gets wrong​

Same argument I made about Josh Hoover in July, and it applies to your own team too.


Sayin's rushing line reads three carries for minus nine. Two of those are sacks that belong to Ja'Kobi Jackson and an uncalled hold, and the scramble touchdown is buried in there somewhere.


Fahey's interception is a receiver drop.


And that one sack belongs to a defense that won the pass rush most of the afternoon.


Three numbers, all of them lying about who actually played well. Forty-two to three tells you Ohio State was supposed to win and did. Everything worth knowing is underneath it.


Appreciate you, Menace Army.

Eleven Scrambles

Ohio State's quarterback threw for 3,610 yards and 32 touchdowns and graded out as the best passer I studied all offseason. He also ran out of the pocket eleven times in fourteen games, and none of them came in the Orange Bowl.

By Zach Smith

Two minutes left. Down eight. Everybody's covered.

He steps up. And there it is, right in front of him: grass. Nobody within eight yards. The first down is a jog. Run it. Slide. Move the chains and let's go win this thing.

He throws it away.

That's Julian Sayin in the fourth quarter of a playoff game, and it's the single most frustrating snap I watched from any quarterback this year. Not because it was hard. Because it was easy, and he wouldn't take it.

Eleven all year

PFF had him down for eleven scrambles in 2025. Eleven. For 48 total yards.

Against Miami, with his pocket falling apart on him all night, he had zero. No carries, designed or otherwise. I studied twenty-five minutes of that film and never once saw him leave the pocket to keep a play breathing.

I've brought this up in every breakdown I've done this summer. Chambliss, Dante Moore, Mensah, all of it. So let's put the whole thing in one place with the numbers behind it, because the rest of his season deserves better than the way it ended.

The season was outstanding and I'm not burying that

392 attempts. 301 completions. 76.8%. 3,610 yards at 9.2 a pop. Thirty-two touchdowns, eight picks. A 92.9 offensive grade.

The number I care about most: 23 big-time throws against six turnover-worthy plays. Six. On more than 400 dropbacks. That's a 1.4% rate and it's the best of anybody I charted this offseason. His receivers dropped six balls all year. He might be the most accurate quarterback in college football and I've said that since spring.

He also went on a run from Minnesota through Purdue where he graded 91.5, 86.0, 89.5, 92.6 and 90.9. The Penn State game was 20-of-23 for 316 and four touchdowns.

They wasted his best throw

Twenty-plus yards downfield: 50 attempts, 1,196 yards, thirteen touchdowns, one interception. A 97.3 grade. Nineteen of those fifty were big-time throws.

Thirteen of his thirty-two scores came on deep balls and he gave away exactly one.

So why was he only throwing deep on 12.8% of his attempts? His average depth of target for the year was 8.7 yards. Almost half his throws didn't travel ten. Against Washington, in the worst game of his season, his average target depth was 4.9 yards and he graded a 59.7. That's not on him. That's a staff turning the best deep passer they had into a screen operator.

Which brings me to the throw I actually have a problem with. Three-level read, deep defender and flat defender. The safety sits on the over. That means Jeremiah Smith is one-on-one and you launch it. Launch it right there. He does launch it, 57 yards, and Smith catches it. He's just late by a beat.

Get it out five yards earlier and that's a walk-in touchdown instead of a contested catch. Right read. Right decision. A hair late. That's the whole thing with him.

What happens when it breaks

Clean pocket: 82.1% completions, 25 touchdowns to five picks, a 94.4 grade, 2.70 seconds to throw.

Pressured: 58.9%, a 67.1 grade, 3.54 seconds to throw. Seventeen sacks. Fourteen throwaways.

Look at the clock more than the grade. Under duress he holds it almost a full second longer. He doesn't speed up. He doesn't bail. He waits, and then he eats it or chucks it out of bounds.

Blitzes don't scare him, and that's worth saying. He completed 75.9% with eighteen touchdowns against extra rushers and got the ball out faster doing it. He knows where to go schematically. It's when the pocket actually caves that he's got one answer, and the answer is stand there.

Eleven scrambles.

The first half against Miami, he was rattled

Watch his feet. That's the tell.

Miami shows blitz, and before the snap you can already see it. The double pat. The twitchy feet. Then the protection holds up fine and he plays like the roof is coming down anyway.

He checks down before routes develop. Three-vertical concept against a middle-of-the-field-open look, two on the safety, the bender is sitting there for a big play, and he panics and takes the check down. Another one, they call out the blitz, they kick to it perfectly, protection is clean. Step up and deliver it to Smith. That's all. He leaves the pocket instead.

I've said this about him from the beginning. He has to let his nuts drop. Be a dude. Don't play scared. He played scared for two quarters in the biggest game of his life.

Some of it isn't his fault. That offensive line went on "one" what felt like every single snap, and I'd be jumpy too with a front teeing off on the same count all night.

Both picks belong to somebody else

The pick six was a quick screen. Jeremiah Smith has to block the nickel and doesn't. That's the play. The ball was exactly where it needed to be.

And behind the line of scrimmage was Sayin's worst area all season anyway. A 66.6 grade with two interceptions on throws that are supposed to be free yards. That's blocking and scheme, not arm talent, and it handed Miami seven points in a game Ohio State lost by three.

Whatever they said at halftime

He came out a different quarterback and started dropping bombs.

Third-and-15, he steps into a clean lane and delivers a strike on time. One, two, three, hitch, throw. Nothing better than that.

Four verticals, Tate sits it down against off coverage, Smith goes, and Sayin drops a back shoulder ball in there. That's a big-boy throw. When your quarterback can make that one, your receivers are never covered. CJ Stroud made a living on it.

Then with under a minute left, high rush, a guy wrapped around his ankles, weight back, all arm whip into a bucket for Carnell Tate. One of the best throws you'll see a college quarterback make.

Tate dropped it.

The mess in front of him

That was the least prepared offensive line I watched all year, and it's not that they got beat. It's the mental errors.

Ian Moore going the wrong way on a stretch play. Carson Hinsman looking outside at an edge blitzer the running back already has, when his job is the tackle spiking inside. Last play of the game, three-down front, you get one single block and two double teams, and instead they triple the end and leave Luke Montgomery alone against the guy who ends the season. Tyler Bowen owns that.

The receivers didn't help against press man. Smith running routes with no release at all against a corner draped all over him. Tate falling down on a catchable fade, alligator-arming another one, and missing a block that walks Smith into the end zone. That room played like it didn't have a coach.

And a couple of calls were rough. The opening RPO asks him to throw a hitch at a corner sitting there playing with vision, waiting to jump quick game. That's a scheme error. Then third-and-three in the red zone with the game hanging on it, no RPO attached, no free access, nothing. If you won't build a five-yard out into a third-and-three for the most accurate quarterback in the country, you're telling everybody in the building you don't trust him.

Where I've got him

B+ for the Miami game.

I wanted an A-minus and the second half earns one. The poise, the toughness, the bounce-back, the throws. But I can't get past two quarters of a kid playing scared, and I can't get past twenty-five minutes of film with not one scramble in it.

The season is better than that and the number says so. A 92.9 grade, elite accuracy, the best decision-making I charted, and a deep ball nobody let him use, all behind a line actively working against him.

In this series he's ahead of Dante Moore and Josh Hoover, even with CJ Carr, and behind Darian Mensah. And the gap between him and Mensah is what I opened with. Mensah's arm is not better. Mensah's accuracy is not better. Mensah goes and makes something happen when the play dies, and Julian won't.

He's a good enough athlete. He's every bit the athlete Mensah is. It's a habit, not a limitation, and habits get fixed.

So fix it. Feel the edge coming, get out of the pocket, and go make somebody miss. Give the play a second life. Sometimes you get a chunk, sometimes you throw it away anyway, but you gave it two chances instead of one.

He gave it one. Every single time.

I Counted Five. So Did PFF.

Arch Manning put five turnover-worthy throws on tape against Florida. I counted them watching it once. The charting service counted the same five. Here is the rest of what his 2025 actually says.

By Zach Smith

When I broke down the Florida tape I said Arch Manning put five turnover-worthy throws on film. Two picks, one drop that should have been a pick, and a couple more the Gators flat missed.

Then I pulled his season file. Five turnover-worthy plays against Florida. An 11.9% rate, the loosest single game he played all year.

I'm not telling you that to pat myself on the back. I'm telling you because it means that game was exactly as sloppy as it felt, and it's the reason I trust the rest of what I saw.

Let's do the whole year.

He's an out-of-system quarterback

That's the phrase I keep coming back to and I think it beats anything the SEC talking heads have said about him. When it's broken, Arch Manning can make throws almost nobody in this sport can make. When it's clean and pretty, he gets confused.

The first half of that is not debatable.

Twenty-plus yards: 65 attempts, 934 yards, thirteen touchdowns, a 91.5 grade, seventeen big-time throws. Ten to nineteen: an 89.5. Half his touchdown production came on deep balls. The score where the pocket breaks, he slides away, keeps his eyes downfield and flicks it into a bucket is exactly what a 91.5 looks like.

Now the second half.

Zero to nine yards: a 69.4 grade. And 28.7% of his throws were short with another 23.3% behind the line. More than half of Arch Manning's attempts came at or behind nine yards, in the one area where he's worst. Same profile as Dante Moore. Elite on the hard stuff, shaky on the layups.

About that 60.8%

He completed 60.8% of his passes. Lowest of anybody in this series. That number is going to chase him all fall so let's be precise.

His receivers were charged with twenty-two drops, an 8.1% rate. That's higher than Josh Hoover's, and I wrote a whole piece about Hoover getting robbed. Five drops at Mississippi State. Five more at Georgia. Adjusted for all of it, he's at 73.0%.

So 60.8% is not honest. But 73.0% still isn't good and I'm not going to pretend it is. Sayin adjusted out to 82.5%. Moore to 80.3%. The drops explain part of that gap. They don't explain the whole thing.

Nobody in this class ate more shots

This changed how I read his year.

Arch Manning was pressured on 35.6% of his dropbacks, the highest rate of anybody I studied. Blitzed on 45.1%, also the highest. And he was hit as he threw eleven times.

Eleven. Sayin got hit as he threw twice. Moore once. Mensah twice. Carr three times. He also had ten balls batted at the line.

That's not a kid having a bad season. That's a kid getting his teeth kicked in for four months.

And I did not see this coming. He graded a 63.5 under pressure, second-best in this whole series behind Sayin's 67.1, and way ahead of Mensah at 47.1, Moore at 47.2 and Carr at 48.7. His pressure-to-sack rate was 13.3%, second-best, while facing the most pressure.

The reason is his legs.

The legs are propping up the whole grade

Thirty-two scrambles. An 81.1 rushing grade. Both the highest in this series and it isn't a close race. Moore had twenty-two, Mensah twenty-one, Hoover nineteen, Sayin eleven, Carr nine.

Watch it on the Florida tape. Half a dozen snaps where a lesser athlete eats a sack and the drive is over, and instead Arch slips it, keeps his eyes up, and gets something. The best one: play action, nothing there, he takes off like he's committed, gets the defense to buy it, then pulls up. Twenty-plus yards.

He's tough too. He'll take a quarterback run on third and short. When a play dies he fights back to the line instead of accepting a ten-yard loss.

Now the number that settles it. His overall offensive grade was an 87.3. His passing grade was an 81.0.

That six-point gap is his legs. Strip the rushing value out and he's the second-lowest-graded passer in this series, ahead of only Hoover, behind Sayin at 92.5, Moore at 90.2, Mensah at 85.0 and CJ Carr at 83.5.

Which is exactly where I had him off the film. C plus as a pure passer, dragged up to a B minus by the athleticism. I like that my eyes and the number agree, because it means the thing holding up his production is the thing least likely to hold up at the next level.

What actually happened against Florida

The Florida game graded a 54.5 offense and a 50.1 passing. Sixteen of thirty, 263 yards, two touchdowns, two picks.

And one number explains the whole afternoon. His average depth of target that day was 20.2 yards. His season average was 9.7. He more than doubled it in a game Texas was losing.

That's a kid pressing, and it looked like it. The second pick is the cleanest example. Down two scores, he takes a shot up the sideline into a retreating corner with a safety over the top. That throw is not there. And if you're taking it anyway, miss outside. Put it on the sideline where only your guy can go get it. He misses inside, the receiver has to lean back into the coverage, and the safety high-points it.

The first one he throws too early and too high on a dig off an abbreviated drop with a skip in it. Put it on target and I'm praising the anticipation instead.

It started on the very first snap I watched. RPO, blitz off the edge, the defender he's reading telling him exactly what to do. Pull it. Pull it and throw. He hands it off. Flat missed assignment.

He waits instead of knowing

The bigger problem is anticipation, and it's not a pressure thing. It happens in clean pockets.

Count the hitches. One, two, three, hitch, hitch, and by the time the ball leaves his hand the window that was open two beats ago is gone. He waits to see a receiver come open instead of throwing him open.

The worst version is the last drive with the season on the line. Clean pocket. Receiver coming wide open across the middle. Throw it right now. Right now, and there's a real chance it's six. He tucks it and scrambles. Two snaps later, same story, same result.

He sold that game. I don't have a nicer way to say it.

The mechanics are strange for a Manning

He pushes the ball down before he brings it up, so the path is down and around instead of a clean route to the release point. The arm slot lives somewhere between three-quarters and sidearm, which is fine off platform, and off platform is when his ball looks best. But it shows up as a low flicking release on simple throws too and the results get erratic. His drops have a pitter-patter step in them that should be a clean one, two, three, hitch, throw. And he over-rotates onto his front foot, which is where most of the misses come from.

I expected better fundamentals from Peyton and Eli's nephew.

Around him

The Texas line got its ass beat for four quarters against Florida. Interior walked backward all game, center overmatched from the first drive, two holding penalties that killed drives that were moving. Goosby held up. Everything else was ugly, and the 35.6% pressure rate and eleven hit-as-thrown say it wasn't one bad Saturday.

The receivers couldn't separate against man coverage, and the twenty-two drops speak for themselves. Sark's call sheet was double moves and one under-center trick play Arch overthrew with a guy wide open.

Give Florida some of it. Ninety-three was a problem all day and twenty-nine sniffed their screen game out before it started. If Billy Napier had an offense worth a damn, that's a different team.

But none of that explains handing the ball off on a read screaming pull it, and none of it explains a wide-open receiver from a clean pocket with your season on the line.

Where I land

C plus as a pure passer. B minus once you count the athleticism. The number backs it up almost exactly: an 81.0 passing grade propped to an 87.3 by an 81.1 rushing grade and thirty-two scrambles.

He's Jekyll and Hyde and his weekly file proves it. A 94.3 against Sam Houston. A 49.1 against UTEP. A 54.5 at Florida. A 54.2 at Kentucky. He'll drop a throw on you that stops the room and then leave you asking what in the hell he's doing.

The talent to be a top-of-the-draft quarterback is in there. The deep ball is real, the toughness is real, and he took more punishment than anybody in this class. But he completed 60.8% behind the worst hands in the group, he's worst in his own profile on the easiest throws, and the anticipation isn't there.

Processing is the job. Everything else is already in the building.

Look Right, Throw Left

Pat Narduzzi built a coverage that reads your quarterback's eyes and breaks on his front hand. I game-planned against it in 2012 and got it wrong. Notre Dame got it wrong last year, and CJ Carr wore two of the four biggest mistakes on that tape for it.

By Zach Smith

Before we talk about CJ Carr, you need to understand the coverage that shows up three separate times on the Pitt film.

Narduzzi brings six. Normally when you bring six you've got five defenders left for five eligible receivers and you're stuck in man. He doesn't do that. He rotates a guy to the post, drops two underneath, and then every one of them quits caring about the receiver in front of him and stares at the quarterback's stripe and his front hand. The second that hand comes off the ball, all of them break to wherever he's looking. All of them, at the same time.

I know it works because it beat me. We went to play Michigan State in 2012 with no plan for it. Got it fixed by 2014 and then made a living on it.

The answer is not complicated. Look right, throw left. Look left, throw right. The entire thing is built on your eyes telling the truth.

Notre Dame never did it. On that tape Carr throws a pick and an incompletion into it, on time and confident both times, and Narduzzi's corner just has a better plan than the offense does. That's not a quarterback error. That's Mike Denbrock.

And when I pulled Carr's full year, it turned out that was the theme.

He pushed it further than anybody in this class

I've now charted Sayin, Mensah, Dante Moore, Chambliss, Hoover and Arch. None of them threw it downfield like CJ Carr.

His average depth of target for the season was 10.6 yards. Higher than Mensah at 9.4, Sayin at 8.7, Moore at 8.3. He threw twenty-plus on 20.4% of his attempts, the highest rate in the group. And only 14.0% of his throws came behind the line of scrimmage, the lowest screen-and-dump rate of anybody.

Then look at what happened when he did it. Sixty-one deep attempts. 961 yards. Eight touchdowns. Zero interceptions. A 91.1 grade with twenty big-time throws.

He fired bombs all season and never gave one away. Twenty-one big-time throws on the year at a 6.5% rate, twenty-four touchdowns to six picks in twelve games, a 113.0 rating. First year as a starter.

5.4

That's Carr's average depth of target against Pitt. Half his season number. Second-lowest of his year.

I said on that tape that Notre Dame barely asked him to do anything. RPOs, screens, flat routes, check downs, a couple free plays, and almost nothing down the field. I was going off feel. The number says it flat out. They took the most aggressive downfield passer I studied all offseason and turned him into a quick-game operator against the one defense on earth built to eat quick game alive. Narduzzi's corners sit on hitches. Do not hand him hitches.

The result was the worst game of Carr's season. A 50.7 offense, a 46.7 passing, twenty-one of thirty-two for 212 yards, 6.6 a throw, two touchdowns and two picks, with three turnover-worthy plays. Highest turnover-worthy rate of his year at 8.1%.

For comparison, in the games they let him rip it: 91.6 against Purdue at 18.6 a throw, 90.4 at Boston College at 11.5, 85.1 against Navy, 83.9 against NC State on a 15.4 average depth of target. Same kid.

They blitzed him more than anybody, and it worked

Defenses blitzed CJ Carr on 42.3% of his dropbacks. Highest rate of anybody in this series.

They did it because it worked. He graded an 85.3 when he wasn't blitzed and a 75.7 when he was. Sayin and Mensah were both fine or better against extra rushers. Carr, like Dante Moore, is worse.

When the pocket actually broke down it got uglier. A 91.3 kept clean, a 48.7 under pressure. 69.9% completions down to 47.6%. Time to throw jumping from 2.22 seconds to 3.59.

Every quarterback in this series has that collapse so I won't pretend it's unique to him. The blitz split is his own, and it lines up with the tape. A screen thrown into pressure for six the other way, and an offense with no answer for a six-man look.

He doesn't run. He also doesn't get sacked.

This is the strength almost nobody will notice.

Carr scrambled nine times all season. Fewer than Julian Sayin's eleven, and I roasted Sayin for it.

But he took eight sacks all year. Eight. A 10.5% pressure-to-sack rate, best in this entire series. Sayin was 16.1%, Mensah 15.6%, Moore 16.7%, Hoover 18.6%.

He doesn't run from pressure. He throws through it. His release when clean is 2.22 seconds, fastest I charted, and he had ten throwaways all year. That's a quarterback getting the ball out on time and living to see the next down instead of eating eight yards.

I'd still like to see him extend one. But he solved the same problem a different way and the number proves it.

The best rep on the tape has nothing to do with throwing

There's a run play early where Carr sees Pitt in a quarter shell and reaches over to cut a receiver's split down. He's telling the kid to get tighter so he can crack the safety, because that safety is Pitt's run-support player.

A first-year starter identifying the coverage, identifying the run fit, and fixing the alignment at the line so his blocker can reach the guy who's coming. That's high-level football IQ in the run game, and nobody gives quarterbacks credit for that part of the job.

The arm's easy to see. Quick release, live arm, the ball jumps out of his hand and it looks effortless. His front hand works like a wall he throws against, weight balance is good, footwork in the quick game is clean.

What needs fixed

He'll drop the slot and throw damn near sidearm. Randy Johnson-ish, low and around. Some of it is by design on RPOs.

But there's a roll-out throw late against Pitt that shows the real problem and it starts at his feet. His first step is backwards. He doesn't gain ground, so he never gets his hips around, so the only thing left is to sidearm it. Terrible throw. Gain ground on that first step and half of this goes away.

His weight also transfers too far forward and the ball flutters instead of spinning tight. Season-long, his 65.2% completion and 73.2% adjusted are the lowest in this series, though a chunk of that is throwing it 10.6 yards deep on average. Throw it further, complete fewer.

Two mistakes against Pitt are his. There's a play against quarters where the post is wide open, the coverage has basically left that guy uncovered, you clear it out and it's a huge play. Take the post. It's right there. He comes off it and goes to a drag with a linebacker sitting on it. Against Narduzzi that's suicide, because his guys aggressively match and jump concepts. Brett Favre interception all day long.

Then the pick six on a screen into a blitz. Denbrock called nine hundred screens that game and none of them worked, so he isn't clean here either. But you do not throw a screen into pressure.

What keeps me high on him: neither one was a bad throw. They were bad decisions with fine ball placement. That's the half you can coach.

Around him

The offensive line was the worst thing on that tape. Center walked backward all game, never generated movement even on double teams. Left guard is a liability. Left tackle has started forever, is better than he was as a true freshman, and still had two false starts and gave up a hit that nearly got Carr killed. The right guard I like. He's twitchy, he can move. That's one out of five, and Pitt had a rusher living in the backfield.

To be fair: Carr was pressured on 24.0% of his dropbacks for the season, the lowest rate in this series. It wasn't a disaster every week. Against Pitt it was.

The skill guys are the other story. Jeremiah Love is a stud and it's not a discussion. The spin move and the acceleration to finish are Braxton Miller stuff. Jadarian Price had one gorgeous run, one badly premature cutback and one truly awful blitz pickup, and I've got questions about the first-round talk.

Where I land

B plus, and the season number backs it. An 85.1 offense, an 83.5 passing, first year as a starter.

Josh Hoover was a B minus for me. Carr is a clear step ahead with less experience. He's even with Julian Sayin and behind only Darian Mensah in this series.

The most encouraging thing isn't the arm. It's that his worst game of the year was the one where his coordinator took the downfield passing game away and asked him to throw hitches at a defense that eats hitches.

Fix the sidearm stuff. Gain ground on that first step. Keep the eyes moving against teams that read them. And let him throw it ten-plus yards downfield the way he did all season.

He's got a real chance to be an A in year two, especially with Quincy Porter and Mylin Graham showing up. Notre Dame just has to coach him like it.

Indiana Got Him Twice

The two worst games Dante Moore played in 2025 came against the same defense, three months apart. Everything in between says he has the best arm in college football and can't be trusted with a five-yard out.

By Zach Smith

Week seven, in Eugene, Dante Moore graded a 47.8. Worst game of his season.

The playoff rematch: a 47.3.

Those are the two lowest offensive grades he posted all year and they came against Indiana, twelve weeks apart. Nobody else on his schedule got him under 61. Indiana got him under 48 twice.

I didn't catch that watching the film. I caught it pulling the season file, and once you see it you can't unsee it, because it turns a bad night into a pattern.

Eleven seconds

That's how long the playoff game took to go sideways.

First play. Condensed splits, speed out, and Moore misses it on the receiver's inside hip. On a speed out you miss outside. Always. Inside is where the pick six lives, and D'Angelo Ponds jumped it and took it to the house. Eleven seconds in, 7-0. By halftime it was 42-7.

I'll give him this. After the pick six he didn't fold. He took the medicine and kept firing. That matters to me.

The arm is what I said it was

Twenty-plus yards downfield: 55 attempts, 962 yards, fifteen touchdowns, two interceptions, a 98.5 grade.

Twenty-five of those fifty-five were big-time throws. A 41.7% rate. He averaged 17.5 yards an attempt on deep balls with an average target depth of 28.8.

Fifteen of his thirty touchdowns came twenty-plus yards downfield. Half his scoring off the hardest throw in football.

Across the year, thirty big-time throws at a 6.9% clip, higher than Sayin at 5.7% and Mensah at 5.2%. A 90.7 grade on intermediate throws too. From ten yards out to the end line he's as good as anybody I studied.

The mechanical reason is teachable and he already owns it. Watch his left hand. It comes up, stops dead, stays closed, and gives his body a wall to rotate against. That's the whip.

Best example is a third and twelve in the first half. Indiana rotates into a trap-triangle look and drops a safety as a half-field player. Moore fakes the out, comes back to the bender, drops a dot for a touchdown. That ball has to be on time and it has to be firm, because the defender is trying to play two routes at once. There's also a 25-yard throw on the run, to his right, off his back foot with all his momentum going away from the target, and he still drives it in there.

You can't coach that into somebody.

And he can't complete a layup

Zero to nine yards: 148 attempts, a 65.5 grade, and five interceptions. Worst area on his sheet, and more picks than every other depth combined. Another 22.6% of his throws came behind the line.

Which is exactly what the film shows. The pick six that started the playoff game was a speed out. The turnover-worthy stuff on that tape isn't him trying to thread a seam forty yards downfield. It's RPOs, screens and quick game.

There's a seam throw late where a low hole player is sitting underneath and Moore puts it inside, right at the kid who can pick it. Back shoulder it. Throw it away from the hole player. It's not hard. There's a check down he over-guns into the dirt. And he had eight balls batted at the line on the season, most of anybody in this series, because he drops his arm angle sidearm on throws that don't require it.

He can do the extraordinary. He can't yet be trusted with the ordinary.

What happens when the pocket goes

Kept clean: a 93.4 grade, 75.0% completions, twenty-seven touchdowns, and a 2.25-second release. Fastest clean release I charted all offseason.

Under pressure: a 47.2. 57.5% completions, three touchdowns to three picks, 3.45 seconds to throw, eighteen sacks.

He holds it more than a full second longer when it breaks. That's the one-two-three-hitch-hitch-hitch problem I flagged on the tape, and the clearest version is the snap where he's got a flat-footed safety and a one-on-one outside. That's the look you wait all game for. Launch it. Worst case it falls incomplete and we punt. He holds it, the protection caves, and he eats a sack.

He does use his legs. Twenty-two scrambles, double Sayin's eleven. So it isn't that he won't move. It's that he won't decide.

And one split separates him from everybody, in the wrong direction. Moore graded a 90.3 when he wasn't blitzed and an 80.2 when he was. Sayin and Mensah were both fine or better against extra rushers. Moore is worse. That's a recognition problem, and it's the entire explanation for a pick six thrown on a screen into a blitz. See it. You cannot throw a screen into pressure.

The whole year was a rollercoaster

His season grade is a 90.2, and that's a good year. 71.6%, 3,550 yards, thirty touchdowns, 8.6 a throw, 166 first downs. It's higher than Mensah's 84.1.

But nobody in this class swings like this. A 93.6 at Rutgers, fifteen of twenty for 288 and four touchdowns at 14.4 a throw. A 91.0 against Oregon State. A 90.7 at Washington. And then a 47.8, a 47.3, a 61.1 in the bowl against Texas Tech with no touchdowns, a 65.6 at Iowa, a 69.6 against Wisconsin.

He didn't get much help either. Eighteen drops charged to his receivers at 5.8%, three times Sayin's number, and his adjusted completion was 80.3% against a raw 71.6%.

The playoff, and two things nobody will notice

Twenty-four of forty, 60.0%, 285 yards, two touchdowns, one pick, a 47.3 grade, a 28.3 fumbling grade. Four sacks on eighteen pressured dropbacks.

The scoreboard will tell you he had a catastrophe. Oregon's defense had the catastrophe. 42-7 is not a quarterback's number. But he gave Indiana points himself, and I count three giveaways that belong to him in some measure: the opening pick six, a fumble when his running back's path knocked the ball out of his hand on an RPO, and a sack he created by holding it.

Now the two things that don't show up anywhere. Early on, Indiana slides pressure to his lock side after his leg kick, meaning he can't flip the protection. He knows instantly he's hot and delivers a strike to his drag route. Identification and execution under duress in the same half second.

Second, watch his ball placement on check downs. Defender closing from one side and he deliberately puts it on the far shoulder to protect his back. That's a kid who's been coached and who's thinking about his teammates while the play is live.

He also has to trust his guys. There are multiple snaps down by a mountain of points with nothing to lose where he's got the matchup he wants and checks it down anyway. Take the shot. What are you saving it for?

Around him

Indiana beat the hell out of that Oregon line for four quarters and they were shuffling tackles by the end.

The receivers were underwhelming, which is hard to say about that room. Dakorien Moore stopped running on a perfect deep ball that hits him in stride if he keeps his feet going. Later Moore drops a beautiful hole shot to the field and the kid turns down the catch instead of reaching out and framing it. Two touchdowns his quarterback earned and didn't get. Jamari Johnson is going to be a stud in the league and Jeremiah McClellan is the one in that room I really like, but that night they weren't good enough.

The RPO fumble is as much a coaching failure as anything. Teach him to step back with the right foot before he throws and fix the back's path. That's Will Stein. And a post-wheel dies because the route is run wrong. The receiver has to work through the safety's inside hand to force the pass-off before he gets width. Drew Mehringer knows that.

Where I land

A B.

The playoff film is a B minus and the arm talent drags it up. That tape isn't much better than Josh Hoover's. The difference is Moore's arm is on a different planet. He's ahead of Hoover, he has more raw talent than CJ Carr, and Carr's film is cleaner and I trust Carr more today.

The season grade complicates my own take and I'll own that. A 90.2 is better than Mensah's 84.1 and it isn't far off Sayin's 92.9. Strictly by the number, Moore had a better year than the guy I called the best quarterback in college football.

But that's the argument. I value consistent performance over talent. The league values talent over production. Dante Moore is going to get drooled over on draft weekend no matter what, and watching that playoff film, I'm not taking him in the first round.

The other half is just as true. Fix the clock, keep the weight back, clean up the arm angles, and see a blitz coming. Do that and he goes nuclear and he's the first pick. There is not a throw in this sport he can't make.

He's a mediocre season or a monster one, and the gap between them is coaching.

The Best Tape I Watched All Year

Darian Mensah put four touchdowns on Clemson and won it on a two-point conversion. I graded that game an A plus. Then I pulled his season and found the thing Miami has to fix before September.

By Zach Smith

I've spent this whole summer handing out B's and C's. Hoover, CJ Carr, Dante Moore, Arch, Chambliss, Sayin. Every one of them, I sat there cataloguing what needed cleaned up.

Then I put on Darian Mensah against Clemson and about twelve minutes in I realized I'd stopped evaluating and started narrating a highlight tape.

Four touchdowns. No picks. 361 yards. A game Duke won on a two-point trick play after he kept the last drive alive with his arm. That's an A plus and that's QB1 in the country from what I've watched.

Then I pulled the full season and it got more complicated. Both things are worth knowing before Miami fans get too comfortable.

Where he puts it

Everybody's got an arm now. What separates him is placement.

I lost count of the balls he threw onto a face mask against Clemson. Not near a guy. Not catchable. On the mask, in stride, so the receiver never breaks stride or thinks about the defender. Fourth and three early, the timing and the placement together make the coverage irrelevant. The corner is in decent shape and it doesn't matter, because the ball got there before he could do anything about it.

He also understands protective placement, which is a coaching-staff detail. Defender inside? Put it on the outside shoulder. Defender closing on a check down? Put it on the far shoulder so your guy knows where the danger is. That's a quarterback thinking about somebody besides himself while the play is happening.

Watch his feet and count it. One, two, three, hitch, throw. He's on time. Fourth quarter, there's a ball already out before the receiver has topped his route off. Pair that with the arm strength and zone coverage can't account for it. You can be in the right spot and lose anyway.

There's a funky little spin in his release and I'd like his back foot down more often. But the whip is elite, the spiral is tight, and he generates it from positions that have no business producing that velocity.

The season backs the arm up

503 attempts, 335 completions, 3,951 yards, thirty-four touchdowns, six interceptions, 189 first downs, a 107.9 rating and an 85.0 passing grade.

He's not a checkdown merchant either. Average depth of target of 9.4 and he pushed it twenty-plus on 17.1% of his throws, a much higher rate than Julian Sayin's 12.8%. Twenty-four of those were big-time throws, a 25.8% clip, for 1,085 yards and thirteen scores.

His best area is the one that matters most. Ten to nineteen yards: 101 attempts, 68.3%, 1,170 yards, fifteen touchdowns, three picks, a 92.7 grade. That's the throw that wins in the league and it's his best throw. The 48-yard laser he drove to the two before halftime against Clemson is what that grade looks like in motion.

He also got very little help. Eighteen drops charged to his receivers, a 5.1% rate, three times Sayin's six. His adjusted completion was 76.2% against a raw 66.6%.

And for this series specifically: twenty-one scrambles. Sayin had eleven. When Mensah's play dies he goes and does something about it. That's the entire gap I've been describing between those two and it's sitting right there in a column.

92.9 clean. 47.1 pressured.

I'm not hiding from this one.

Kept clean, he's a 92.9 offensive grade. 75.7% completions, 9.1 a throw, twenty-eight touchdowns to five picks, 2.49 seconds to throw. Elite. That's the Clemson tape.

Under pressure, he's a 47.1. 44.1% completions. 4.7 a throw. Six touchdowns. Time to throw balloons to 3.79 seconds. Twenty-seven sacks and thirty throwaways.

That's a 46-point swing and it's a bigger collapse than Sayin's, who went 94.4 to 67.1. Mensah was also pressured more often than anybody but Arch, on 32.4% of his dropbacks.

Credit where it's due, blitzes don't bother him at all. When teams brought extra rushers he threw twenty-two touchdowns to two picks and graded an 82.3, actually better than when they didn't. He knows where to go against pressure schematically. It's when the protection actually caves that it falls apart, and twenty-eight sacks says it caved a lot.

Then there's the number that keeps me from calling him finished. Twenty-one turnover-worthy plays, a 3.6% rate. He only threw six actual picks, which means he got away with a pile of them. Sayin had six turnover-worthy plays all year at 1.4%. That gap is real and it shows up on the Clemson film, where I charted two balls in the two-minute drill that should have been intercepted, including one where Clemson disguised a middle-of-the-field-open look and he played the wrong side with the touchdown sitting on the other hash. His fumbling grade for the year was a 46.4.

The back half of his season was rough

Through eight games he averaged roughly a 78 offensive grade, with a 94.0 against Elon and a 90.1 against NC State at the top.

Over his last six, UConn through the bowl game, he averaged about a 65. That's a 59.0 at UConn, a 57.6 at North Carolina, and a 63.2 against Arizona State where he threw four touchdowns and completed 57.7% of his throws.

And I have to be straight about the game I graded an A plus. The Clemson tape graded a 77.1. Four touchdowns, no picks, a 126.2 rating, and also three turnover-worthy plays and a 65.9% completion. My eyes saw the ceiling. The grade saw a very good game with rope left on the field. Both are true and I'd rather tell you than pretend otherwise.

What else is on that Clemson tape

The stuff I still love, because none of the above erases it.

He's got ice in his veins. Fourth and one with the game on the line and Duke didn't sneak it or hand it off. They put it in his hands and he got the first down. That tells you what that building thought of him. On the last drive he takes a shot to Cooper Barkate on a corner route and puts it exactly where it has to go. Barkate gets his jersey pulled, palms up, can't run, no flag. Then it's fourth and ten, all-out blitz, protection gone, and he just lets it go, heaves a prayer downfield with his guy getting mugged, and this time they throw the flag. First and goal, touchdown, two-point trick play, ballgame.

He's human in four specific ways. The coverage-disguise misread. A flat miss on a third-and-one RPO where he had to lead the receiver and didn't, which should have been a turnover. Two football IQ errors: scrambling on a screen and throwing downfield after his linemen released, which is a flag every single time, and catching his own batted pass instead of knocking it down. Bat it down. That's all you have to do. And a double clutch on a double pass with a man wide open and the defender triggering flat-footed. Throw it. Perfect call, dead on arrival.

He is also not an athlete. Not fast, not twitchy, not pulling away from a defensive end. He'll extend and he'll take off when the grass is there, and those twenty-one scrambles were worth having, but you're not game-planning for his legs.

And I'll say it about Clemson: that defense was a disaster. There's a snap where the corner and the safety both step up in run support and leave a receiver as open as any receiver you'll see in college football. There's a 60-yard completion late because a linebacker decides not to carry the number two vertical in cover two. Carry him. That's the job. Dabo's going to answer for that, and he has to be missing Brent Venables about now.

Where I land

I gave that Clemson game an A plus and I'm standing on it. Best single quarterback tape I watched from last season and the only A plus I've handed out.

But the full season is an 84.1, not a 95, and the honest way to hold both is this: his ceiling is the best in this class and his floor is not. Clean, he's a 92.9 and the best quarterback in the country. When the pocket breaks he's a 47.1. Miami is not getting a finished quarterback. They're getting the highest ceiling available plus a protection problem to solve.

The good news is that's the most solvable version of the problem. Duke gave up pressure on a third of his dropbacks. If Miami's line is better, and it should be, a big chunk of that 47.1 sample never happens.

Series-wise he's still first. Ahead of CJ Carr and Sayin at B plus, ahead of Chambliss and Dante Moore at B, ahead of Hoover and Arch. He's way more Cam Ward than Carson Beck. Cam Ward without the nonchalance, because Ward would stroll onto the field like he didn't care and Mensah plays every snap like it's fourth down.

Miami got the best quarterback in the country and his favorite receiver in the same offseason. I might still go sprinkle a little something on him for the Heisman before the number moves.

I'm just going to watch that pressure grade all fall.

Twenty Drops

Josh Hoover completed 65.9% of his passes last year and that number is a lie. His receivers put twenty balls on the ground, the worst rate of any quarterback I studied. Five of them came in one game. Here is what TCU's quarterback actually is.

By Zach Smith

Somebody is going to pull up Josh Hoover's stat line this fall, see 65.9% and thirteen interceptions, and tell you Indiana got a guy.

They're wrong, and I can prove it with one column.

Twenty drops. That's what TCU receivers were charged with in 2025, a 6.8% rate, and it's the worst of any quarterback I've studied this offseason. Dante Moore's guys were at 5.8%. Mensah's at 5.1%. CJ Carr's at 4.9%. Julian Sayin's receivers dropped six balls the entire season, a 2.0% rate, and Sayin is walking around with a 76.8% completion percentage because of it.

Take the drops and the throwaways and the batted balls out of Hoover's number and he's at 73.2%. Seven and a half points of his stat line went straight through somebody's hands.

Five of them came in one game

I pulled the Kansas State tape at random because I wanted to see him against a real defense. Turns out I picked the perfect one.

Twenty-six of forty-seven. Three touchdowns, no picks, 376 yards. His charted completion percentage that day was 55.3%.

His receivers dropped five. In one game. A 16.1% drop rate, the worst single game of his season, and his adjusted completion percentage that afternoon was 70.5%. Fifteen points of separation between what he did and what the box score says he did.

And that's what it looks like on tape. First scoring drive, he holds the safety with his eyes all the way left, comes back, and drops it in the window between the linebackers with juice on it. Anticipation, eye control, right on the guy. Dropped. Later he throws a beauty on a stalk-and-go and it goes through a set of hands. Down at the two, hard run action, he floats a gimme touchdown in there and his receiver has already drifted out of bounds before the ball arrives. No field awareness at all.

Route running was mostly nonexistent. Perimeter blocking was worse. That kid was fighting his own huddle.

He can spin it

Not "for a college quarterback." The ball comes out of his hand.

Twenty-plus yards downfield: 54 attempts, 743 yards, ten touchdowns, a 91.6 grade. Twenty of those fifty-four were big-time throws, a 30.8% clip. Ten of his twenty-eight scores came on the hardest throw in football.

The arm action is what I like. Quick release, real whip through it, the thing I spend all spring trying to coach into guys with a towel. He keeps his weight back. Transfer is clean. He can throw from positions he has no business throwing from and still get life on the ball. He's got a pretty ball. Lance Armstrong pretty.

The best one on the tape is a red zone fade. Ninety-five percent of quarterbacks at this level put air under a fade and say a prayer. Hoover drives it, puts it on the face mask, and makes his guy catch it with late hands. Flat trajectory, perfect placement, touchdown. That is a professional throw.

The thirteen picks are real too

I'm not going to sit here and tell you the drops explain everything.

Twenty-one turnover-worthy plays in 2025. A 4.4% rate. That's the worst of anybody I've charted, and unlike Mensah, who got away with his, Hoover's turned into results. Thirteen interceptions. Three in one game at Houston. Two at Arizona State in a game where he also had six big-time throws, which tells you exactly who he is.

Ten to nineteen yards is where he dies

Look at where he grades by depth and the whole thing snaps into focus.

Deep, 91.6. Short, 79.4. And the ten-to-nineteen window? A 74.1.

On 103 intermediate attempts he completed 53.4% with four picks and nine turnover-worthy plays, an 8.3% rate. Sayin, Mensah and Moore all grade above 90 in that same window. He's thirty points behind them in the exact area the NFL cares most about.

That's the speed out. He's a count late, takes a little hop instead of it being rock and throw, and puts it on the inside hip. You cannot do that. Miss outside. Every single time, miss outside, because inside is where the pick six lives. Throw it out here and it's a completion or it's nothing. Throw it in there and it's six the other way. He did it twice against Kansas State and one of them should have been returned.

Nobody in this class handles a blitz better

Now the fun part, and it surprised me.

Hoover graded an 83.5 when he was blitzed and a 72.4 when he wasn't. He's the only quarterback I studied who is better against extra rushers than a standard four-man rush, and it isn't a small gap. Nine touchdowns to four picks when teams brought heat, at 8.7 a throw.

That's the play I lost my mind over on the tape. Kansas State brings seven against empty. Brother, you cannot bring seven. Somebody has to be uncovered. The second that seventh guy shows, Hoover finds his slot to the right and rips it out. Watch how fast he sees it. Watch how fast the ball is gone.

That isn't a lucky rep. It's a season-long trait and it's the best thing in his profile.

Structural pressure is a different animal. Clean, he's an 85.9 with twenty-three touchdowns and a 2.22-second release. Pressured, he's a 51.1, completing 49.3%, holding it 3.74 seconds. Nineteen sacks on 102 pressured dropbacks, an 18.6% pressure-to-sack rate, worst in the group. He knows what to do about a blitz. He has no idea what to do about a pocket caving in.

The rest of that Saturday

He's not a runner and I don't need him to be. Nineteen scrambles on the year. But he uses his legs to extend. Play action, nothing there, he takes off like he's going, gets the defense to bite, and pulls up. Twenty-plus yards. That's not athleticism. That's competitiveness.

He also feels stuff. There's an RPO where he's loaded on the little bender, the safety comes downhill to cut it, and right as he's about to let it go he says nope and whips it to the flat with his body all wrong. You have that clock or you don't.

Two mistakes are his and I'm charging him for both. A busted play where the line is blocking stretch, the back is running stretch, and he turns the wrong way. You can watch the exact frame he realizes it. Bonehead. And a ball sailed to a running back under pressure with his right tackle getting his dick kicked in. Step up and dump it. That's it. That's the whole answer.

Also go find the snap where the TCU left tackle doesn't get beat so much as spontaneously combust. I couldn't tell you whether that man was having a seizure or an orgasm.

What Cignetti is getting

His season grade is a 76.8. Lowest of anybody in this series. Sayin 92.9, Moore 90.2, Carr 85.1, Mensah 84.1, Hoover 76.8. I'm not going to dress it up.

I've got him at a B minus.

A live arm, a quick release, an elite deep ball, real touch, enough athleticism, and the best blitz recognition in this class. Attached to a 4.4% turnover-worthy rate and a hole in the middle of the field. He's careless. He's raw. He spent a year throwing to the worst hands I charted.

Curt Cignetti has built a career on this exact quarterback. Solid, talented, a little sloppy, and nobody has squeezed him yet. I'm not telling you Hoover is a first-round pick or that Indiana is cutting down nets. I don't think he's the prospect Fernando Mendoza is.

But clean up ten to nineteen, get him on time on the speed out, and put actual hands around him, and that 65.9% is going to look like a completely different number.

He's got a chance. As an option for Cignetti? Really, really not mad about it.

I Picked the Wrong Georgia Game

Trinidad Chambliss threw three interceptions in 2025. Three. He also posted the best under-pressure grade of any quarterback I studied, and fifteen batted balls that prove the exact flaw I called out. Starting with a confession.

By Zach Smith

When I broke down Trinidad Chambliss I made a decision on purpose. I took the regular season game at Georgia instead of the playoff, because playoff games come with a month of prep and I wanted to see what he was on a normal Saturday between the hedges.

That game graded a 54.2 offense and a 46.4 passing. Second-worst game of his season.

He went back to Athens later that year and put up a 91.8. Best game he played all year. Thirty of forty-six for 362. Same stadium, same defense.

So when I said his ceiling was an A minus and handed him a B? The ceiling wasn't theoretical. He hit it three months later against the same people. I'd rather say that out loud than act like I nailed it.

So let's do the year.

Three picks. Four hundred forty-eight throws.

Twenty-two touchdowns, three interceptions, 3,934 yards at 8.8 a throw, 193 first downs.

Thirteen turnover-worthy plays all season, a 2.5% rate. Second-best in this series behind Julian Sayin's 1.4% and better than Mensah at 3.6%, Carr at 3.2% and Hoover at 4.4%.

Split it and it gets stupid:

Zero interceptions when blitzed, on 194 attempts, with fourteen touchdowns. Zero interceptions under pressure, on eighty-one attempts.

All three of his picks came in clean pockets against a standard rush. You cannot rattle this kid into a giveaway.

76.1

That's his offensive grade when the pocket broke down, and it stopped me cold.

The rest of the field: Sayin 67.1. Arch Manning 63.5. Hoover 51.1. CJ Carr 48.7. Dante Moore 47.2. Darian Mensah 47.1.

He's nine points clear of second and nearly thirty clear of the guy I called the best quarterback in college football. Every other passer I studied falls off a cliff when protection fails. Chambliss doesn't.

Twenty-four scrambles. A 74.9 rushing grade, second only to Arch. An 82.7 rushing grade specifically under pressure. When it breaks, he goes and does something about it.

Third and seven in the red zone, max pressure coming, everybody covered. He steps up, takes off, gets in the end zone. Third and four, he sheds an arm tackle and finds just enough to reach the sticks. That wasn't even designed. That was a scramble.

The gamer thing I kept saying on the broadcast isn't a vibe. It's the most distinctive number he has.

Stop playing off coverage against this guy

He's got one of the quickest releases I have seen and he throws it hard.

Twenty-plus: 55 attempts, 987 yards, 17.9 a throw, a 95.7 grade, twenty-five big-time throws at a 37.3% rate. Only Dante Moore graded better deep. On the year he had twenty-nine big-time throws at 6.1%.

The 48-yard laser he drove to the two to tie it before halftime is what that looks like. Not a floaty deep ball you camp under. A drilled one that isn't in the air long enough for anybody to recover. Then he flipped the ball to the ref and found the laces like it was nothing.

And my actual coaching advice for anybody on the Ole Miss schedule stands. Do not give this man a cushion. Georgia played him with a bail corner and he completed hitches all afternoon. Free eight yards. Free ten. On one of them he caught it, made the corner miss and took it to the crib.

Fifteen batted balls

I said on that tape the ball nosedives on him. That his hand gets on the side of it and comes across instead of getting on top. That his release point is low and he never gets over the ball.

Trinidad Chambliss had fifteen batted balls in 2025. Most of anybody in this series and it's not close. Arch had ten. Moore eight. Mensah seven. Carr four. Hoover three. Sayin two.

And all fifteen came when he was kept clean. Zero under pressure.

That's not a collapsing pocket crowding his lane. That's a release point. Fifteen separate times, clean pocket, clear window, and he put the ball on a path a 300-pound man could reach out and touch.

The short game says the same thing. Zero to nine yards, which is 40.2% of his attempts, he completed 77.2% and graded a 67.0. His worst area by a mile. High completion, low grade, which is exactly what it looks like when balls arrive low, behind, and with no touch on them. He completes them. They aren't good throws.

Add the back shoulder problem, which I charted three or four misses on in one game, and you've got him. Best throw on his sheet is elite. The routine ones leak.

Fair is fair about that tape

Nineteen of thirty-six. 52.8%. 263 yards, one touchdown, no picks. A 54.2 offensive grade.

I gave it a B and the number says I was generous. I weighted the highlights, the grade weighted the misses, and we were both looking at the same thing. I said it myself on the broadcast: if not for the nosedives, this kid is an A minus. Nosedives are precisely what a grade punishes.

The two-minute drill is where the game got decided. Down eight, two minutes, on the road. Second down, he's got an OTB sitting open right in front of him, and instead of taking it or throwing it away he freaks out with a blitzing back and eats the play. Take it. It's right there. Third down he gets to his backside dig and misses it, feet not set, momentum drifting left. Fourth down gets batted at the line, which now has fourteen friends on his season file.

Find the throwing lane. Step up and deliver through the window. That's the most under-coached thing in quarterback play and it ended his afternoon.

Around him

Ole Miss receivers could not separate from Georgia's corners, and the routes were part of why. There's a shot play late where a kid sticks his left foot in the ground with no triple release and the corner knew where he was going before he did. Season-long, seventeen drops at 5.5%, and Chambliss adjusted out to 75.1% from a raw 65.6%.

They can't block either. There's a speed option that loses a yard because a receiver runs straight at the defender, closes the entire cushion, and never breaks down. Push off, nose up, four yards, break down, shuffle your feet. That's the whole technique. I'm a receiver guy. That's inexcusable.

On scheme: Lane Kiffin runs a ton of RPOs, screens, dinks and dunks, and one beautiful fake-look-back snap where he gets the whole Georgia defense to turn their heads before the ball is snapped. LSU fans, that's your preview. I still don't understand condensing four receivers into the boundary the way he does. It drags every defender to one side and then nobody attacks the space it makes.

Kiwan Lacey is a problem, though. Watch him cut back on the soft shoulder and run through arm tackles.

Where I land

I gave that tape a B and called his ceiling an A minus. I'll stand on the ceiling and raise my confidence in the player.

Season grade of 87.8 offense, 83.7 passing. Third in this series behind Sayin at 92.9 and Moore at 90.2, ahead of Carr, Mensah and Hoover. Three picks in 448 throws. Best under-pressure grade of anybody I studied. A 95.7 deep.

What's holding him back is a list a good quarterback coach fixes in one spring. Get on top of the ball. Quit putting throws on a path a defensive tackle can reach. Learn a back shoulder. Find some touch on the short stuff.

He's not a great athlete. Not fast, not twitchy, and he isn't pulling away from a defensive end. But he uses everything he has better than anybody in this class, he runs like JT Barrett with maybe a step more, and he's a tough son of a bitch who lowers his shoulder for the extra yard.

Fix the release and he's a problem for everybody. He's already a stud. He's just not finished, and the 91.8 he put up back in Athens is what finished looks like.

Gunner Stockton scrambled more than any quarterback I've studied this offseason, by a mile. He also graded twenty-three points better against the blitz than without it. Georgia's quarterback is a college baller and I mean that as a compliment.

By Zach Smith

Third and four against Ole Miss. Georgia runs a levels concept, the one some people call shallow. Two-high coverage with a bracket up top, man underneath, and nobody comes open.

Stockton sees the Red Sea part in front of him. Puts his foot in the ground, takes four yards, dives for the sticks.

That's it. That's the whole player, and it's the thing that shows up 53 times on his season file.

Nobody in this series runs like this

Fifty-three scrambles in 2025.

The rest of the field: Arch Manning 32. Chambliss 24. Dante Moore 22. Mensah 21. Josh Hoover 19. Julian Sayin 11. CJ Carr 9.

Stockton has twenty-one more than the next guy, and twenty-eight of them came under pressure. He also threw zero interceptions on the year when pressured. When the pocket goes bad, he leaves and he doesn't panic.

That's the baller nature I kept talking about on the broadcast and it isn't a feeling. It's a column, and it's the exact thing I've been begging Julian Sayin to do for three months.

Watch what it buys him. There's a play late where Ole Miss has everything covered with depth, so Stockton takes off and gets four. Second and six instead of second and ten. He keeps his offense on schedule. I don't think I saw a third and long all game. That's what JT Barrett was good at, and it's a real skill nobody puts in a highlight package.

Blitz him and he beats you

Now the split that made me sit up.

Not blitzed: a 63.6 offensive grade, 66.4% completions, six touchdowns to four picks.

Blitzed: an 86.8 offensive grade, 88.1 passing, 74.2% completions, 8.0 a throw, and eighteen touchdowns to one interception. A 131.5 passer rating.

Eighteen of his twenty-four touchdowns came against extra rushers. Teams brought it on 41.9% of his dropbacks and he made them pay every single time.

That's a twenty-three point swing. Josh Hoover had the second-best blitz profile in this series at an eleven-point gap and Stockton doubled it.

The tape shows you why. Ole Miss brings an all-out blitz, and Stockton has a swing route to the field with a lead blocker and exactly one defender over there. Watch how fast he gets rid of it. He knows they brought six, he knows he's got numbers, and it's gone before the rush arrives. Huge play. He understands the math and he doesn't hesitate.

So quit blitzing this kid. Play him straight and make him beat you down the field, because that's where he isn't as good.

Georgia never let him throw it past the sticks

His average depth of target was 7.3 yards. Lowest of anybody I've studied. CJ Carr was at 10.6, Arch at 9.7, Mensah at 9.4.

And 31.1% of his throws came behind the line of scrimmage, on 120 attempts. Highest rate in the group and it isn't close.

That's a screen and quick game offense with a run game mauling people, and it worked. Georgia ran it down Ole Miss's throat all afternoon and Pete Golding got a head coaching job with that defense on tape, which is its own kind of crazy.

But it means we did not get a full look at him. He completed 97.5% behind the line and 81.7% short. Where he lives is fine. What he does past twenty is the question.

The driven ball is the problem

Twenty-plus yards: a 77.5 passing grade. That's the lowest deep grade of any quarterback in this series by a wide margin. Dante Moore was at 98.5, Sayin 97.3, Chambliss 95.7, and everybody else sat above 89.

Some of it isn't him. His receivers dropped six of the fifty-three deep balls he threw, a 26.1% drop rate, which is absurd. But five turnover-worthy plays on those fifty-three throws is his.

And I saw exactly why. He misses driven intermediate balls high. Twice on that Ole Miss tape.

The first is a seam against a rock-and-roll disguise. Georgia identifies it, the safety rolls down, and the honey hole opens up right where it's supposed to. He sails it. The second is about a thirty-yard driven ball with real heat on it and it's over the receiver's head.

When a ball sails high on a driven intermediate throw, it lands in a deep safety's stomach. That's the pick that ends games. He has to get on top of those.

He's got the arm for them, though, and I underrated it going in. He throws a corner route on a flea flicker from the left hash to the right sideline, drops it in a bucket, and by the time you account for the angle that's a fifty-yard throw with drive on it. Off a thirty-yard driven dig later in the game his whip is legitimately good.

Where he's actually best is ten to nineteen: an 88.2 grade, 66.7%, eight touchdowns. That's the money window and it's his best area.

Seventeen batted balls, and I know why

He had seventeen balls batted at the line last year. Most of any quarterback I've charted this offseason, ahead of Chambliss at fifteen and Arch at ten.

I flagged this off the film without knowing the number. He isn't the tallest quarterback in the world, and when your tackles are six-six it's hard to see, which is exactly why Georgia gets him out of the pocket so often on nakeds and bootlegs. Watch how many of his best throws come with his feet moving.

Find the throwing lane. Step up into the window instead of throwing over the top of a wall. That's the most under-coached thing at the position and seventeen of them is a lot.

He's a general, with one bad habit

The processing is good and it's the most encouraging part of him.

There's a play action check down concept where he gets to his fourth read. One, two, three, four, and it's fast. That tempo helps your offensive line more than anything a coordinator can draw up. He also feels voids as well as anybody in this series. On a first and goal fake, the whole defense collapses inside on the tight end and he feels the swing route come open behind it and flips it out for a walk-in touchdown. Nobody told him to do that.

The bad habit is the flip side. He gets through progressions a little too fast.

Against quarters, running spread with a double dig, he flies through one, two, three and takes the check down while a fifteen-yard dig is coming wide open. Clean pocket. Nobody near him. Take the dig. Don't skip the read. That's real yardage left on the field and it happened more than once.

The other one that cost points is the two-point conversion. Number seven gets in the end zone, turns around, and he's open. Throw it right now. Right there. Stockton hesitates, and Georgia is down nine instead of seven.

I picked one of his good games, and I should say so

Fair is fair, since I called myself out for picking Chambliss's worst tape.

The Ole Miss regular season game graded an 84.5 offense and a 90.3 passing, twenty-six of thirty-one for 289 with four touchdowns and no picks. That's his best passing grade of the season and his second-best game overall.

So this is Stockton near his ceiling, not his average. His average across the year is an 81.1 offensive grade with 69.7% completions, 2,906 yards, twenty-four touchdowns and five interceptions.

And it swung. He put up an 84.8 at Mississippi State and an 80.2 against Texas. He also put up a 39.1 at Georgia Tech, eleven of twenty-one for seventy yards, and a 62.7 when Ole Miss got him a second time in the bowl.

One thing that travels regardless: he does not give the ball away. Twelve turnover-worthy plays all season, a 2.4% rate, second-best in this whole series behind Sayin's 1.4%. Five picks in 386 throws.

He also isn't explosive. Fourteen big-time throws at a 3.3% clip is the lowest rate of anybody I've studied. He's careful and efficient. He's not going to drop twenty-five bombs on you.

B plus, and what he actually is

I gave that tape a B plus and I'll stand on it for that game, with a caveat: his season grade is an 81.1, which is behind Carr at 85.1 and Mensah at 84.1, and I gave both of those guys the same or less. Judge him on the year and he's a B.

What I actually think he is, and I mean this as a compliment: He's white Trinidad Chambliss. Same profile. A gamer who extends plays, keeps you on schedule with his legs, doesn't turn it over, feels the field better than he throws it, and has a mechanical issue putting balls where big men can reach them.

He's tough. He'll lower his shoulder on a zone read for fourteen. He runs a quarterback sneak better than anybody I watched and I didn't know you could enjoy watching a sneak until this tape. He answers mistakes: he blows a zone read that should have been a give, gets tackled for a loss, and on the very next snap drops a forty-yard dot on Dillon Bell to take the air out of the building.

Do I think he's an NFL guy? Not right now. He's not going in the first round and I'd be lying if I told you otherwise.

Do I think he can be one of the most impactful quarterbacks in college football on a loaded Georgia team? Absolutely, and the blitz number is why. Clean up the driven ball, quit skipping reads, and find a lane so seventeen becomes seven.

He's a baller. That'll do just fine in Athens.