How Should Fans View Jarrett Guarantano?

Jarrett Guarantano has become something of a divisive topic for Vol fans. In one camp, they appreciate the young quarterback for his toughness and how well he takes care of the football while making more good decisions with the ball than bad ones. The other camp is frustrated by how many sacks he's taken, feel that he often takes unnecessary hits, question his timing and arm strength, and want more touchdowns and big plays from their young signal caller. Ultimately, both camps feel one side is right and the other is wrong. It's not necessarily that clear cut because few things in life are.

First things first, Guarantano has played in 21 games and started 18. He has one full season as a starter under his belt. In his time playing quarterback for the Vols, he's passed for 2,904 yards, 16 touchdowns, and 5 interceptions while completing 62.1% of his passes, which at present places him second to just Peyton Manning in career completion percentage. Short of missing significant time next season with injuries, he will almost certainly enter his senior year in the top ten at Tennessee in career passing yardage and has a very good shot at also being top 10 in career touchdowns with a season left to play.

So let's get into some numbers a bit more deeply. 1,185 passing yards will see Guarantano surpass Heath Shuler for tenth in career passing yardage and 16 touchdowns will put him in a three-way tie for ninth in career passing touchdowns. I want to potentially provide what might be reasonable progress for Guarantano in making the jump from his sophomore to junior campaigns. From his freshman to sophomore seasons, Guarantano increased his passing yards per game by 48.1 yards per game and increased his passing touchdowns by 8, so let's give him basically the same jumps in production and keep his touchdown-to-interception ratio of 4:1 intact. Crunching some additional numbers based on last season's yards per attempt and yards per completion while working out his completion percentage, his complete stats for 2019 would come out to:

199-319, 2,484 yards, 20 touchdowns, 5 interceptions, 62.4%

Now, keep in mind all of that is either based on reasonably minor increases in stats from 2018 or uses the exact same numbers. In all likelihood, Guarantano will do what most college quarterbacks do and continue to improve in nearly all categories. Guarantano had the fewest passing attempts of any starting quarterback in the SEC last year and yet finished with the fewest interceptions, 6th in yards per attempt, 7th in completion percentage, 8th in quarterback rating, 11th in yardage, and 12th in touchdowns among SEC starters. To put it another way, he did about as much as you could ask of him with the fewest opportunities to do it in.

Now, Tennessee did allow 23 sacks last season, which works out to 320 passes attempted on the season and about 27 passes attempted per game. That's 23 lost opportunities to complete a pass and realistically, not all of those sacks are solely on the offensive line. Guarantano does need to improve his field awareness and internal clock. He can be slow to run through his progressions.

The long passing criticism isn't entirely fair. Guarantano threw for more passes of 40+ yards last season than Josh Dobbs did as a senior and just one fewer that Dobbs did that year from 50+ and Guarantano basically matched Dobbs or exceeded him in those categories when compared to Dobbs junior campaign. Guarantano at worst compares well to what Dobbs did as a passer and that's just looking at Guarantano as a sophomore.

A fair complaint has been Guarantano's ability to take off and run, a skill set he shows at times but seldom utilizes well in games. He's by no means going to be Josh Dobbs, nor should anyone expect him to be. However, he's allowing himself to be dropped behind the line of scrimmage far too often for a player timed in the 4.6-range in the forty in high school. He needs to use his legs to avoid negative plays when things are breaking down whenever possible.

The Vols have a very good group of receivers, but the receivers aren't doing a great job of turning deep passes into scoring plays. Sometimes that might be on the quarterback when the pass isn't on target, but more often the receivers were stumbling last season on their way to the end zone. The receivers needed improvement on yards after the catch as much as Guarantano needs to improve touch and ball placement.

So how should fans be looking at Jarrett Guarantano? Well, I'd advise that fans should probably stop worrying about how he compares to the other quarterbacks going into their junior seasons, or at least Tua Tagovailoa and Jake Fromm. Guarantano, for the most part, doesn't have the same level of talent/protection around him as those two quarterbacks. Sure, he has good receivers, but the running games and offensive lines that Tagovailoa and Fromm have at their disposal is simply at a different level. Stick Guarantano on those teams and he'll put up better stats too. That's not to say he's necessarily at the same level as them, but I will say that it's a lot tougher to gauge where Guarantano would compare to them when the team MVP for the last two seasons was probably the punter.

Guarantano is a talented young quarterback displaying toughness in the face of being sacked probably 40+ times and also showing off a high level of efficiency. He's not a polished product yet, and that's understandable since he's going on his fourth offensive coordinator heading into his redshirt junior season. That kind of turnover will impact the development of almost any young signal caller. His feel for the game, ability to see the field, and speed with which he runs through progressions is a work in progress, but the arm talent is there, both from an accuracy and strength perspective. Above all else, he is their quarterback, and whether or not you think he can or will become a top SEC quarterback, there's little chance that a healthy Jarrett Guarantano isn't the Tennessee quarterback in 2019.

Now, how do I view Jarrett Guarantano? Frankly, he might ultimately be the second best Tennessee quarterback since 2004 by the time he's done. He has a realistic chance to challenge Peyton Manning for the best career completion percentage as he is currently just 4-tenths behind him in career percentage right now. He's also on his way to the best touchdown-to-interception ratio for a Vol quarterback as he's currently sitting 3.2 touchdowns per interception (Peyton Manning currently has the best at 2.7 touchdowns per interception in his Vol career). He has a realistic chance to finish in the top five in UT history in passing yardage and passing touchdowns. While he's probably not going to be able to compare to what Josh Dobbs was able to do as a playmaking quarterback, he likely will be the better passer of the two and second just to Dobbs as a quarterback since Casey Clausen wrapped up his Tennessee career. That's just my two cents when considering his accuracy and efficiency as a passer up to this point and considering the kind of receivers he has to work with.