Everything about the quarterback position at Tennessee has to begin with the starter, Jarrett Guarantano. Guarantano has evolved over his three years on Tennessee's campus from skinny redshirt to a guy who looks the part and has some of the numbers to match. He has wowed quarterback coaches and statisticians alike, but the fans have been left wanting. One thing that simply hasn't come over the last two seasons with Guarantano largely in charge has been wins. 9-15 over the past two seasons was never going to breed much excitement among the fan base, and right or wrong, quarterbacks tend to get the bulk of the blame for the results on the field. However, it's pretty hard to toss much of that blame at the feet of a quarterback who has thrown 16 touchdowns to just 5 interceptions over that time while completing 62% of his passes. He's been efficient, to say the least. Of course, efficiency works best when paired with playmaking elsewhere, and while there has been plenty of playmaking that took place, too often it's failed to lead to points or deficiencies elsewhere have made Guaratano's lack of scoring and yardage woefully inadequate to overcome the overall issues.
I could throw the advanced statistics at you that prove that Guarantano is one of the nation's best under pressure, in addition to being highly efficient, accurate, and effective, but fans have had these numbers tossed in their face before and most elect to hunker down in one of two camps: he's a great quarterback that is some decent blocking away from taking his place among the best in the nation at the position or he's a bust that will never live up to the lofty expectations that came with his ranking out of high school.
Both are actually right. Guarantano should never have been evaluated as a dual-threat quarterback. The young man averaged 2.1 yards per carry in high school. I understand that he ran a 4.51-forty at a camp, but there's a huge difference between having speed as a runner and instinct as one, and he never displayed the instincts. So it's true that he'll never live up to the ranking he was given because he should have been one of the top pro-style passers as opposed to a dual-threat. However, when it comes to being some solid blocking away from establishing himself as an elite passer, that's invariably true as well.
A bit of advanced stat work: under Jim Chaney, Georgia averaged 349 pass attempts per season. Guarantano was able to throw it 246 times last year, and even as a team Tennessee only threw it 297 times. Looking at last season, using the same averages for touchdowns, interceptions, and yardage while giving him the average attempts per season for Chaney at UGA, Guarantano would have thrown for 2,723 yards, 17 touchdowns, and 4 interceptions.
Now let's apply some common sense to this equation and give Guarantano the benefit of the doubt that his yard per attempt and accuracy averages would improve. I mean, it doesn't take too much faith to think both would likely occur. Guarantano was 6th in the SEC in yards per attempt average anyway, so let's keep things reasonable and toss the ridiculous average of Tagovailoa since only three passers averaged over 10 yards per attempt in 2018. Taking the other four and averaging them out, we come to 8.7 yards per attempt. That would be just outside the top ten last year, but a look at recent history shows it to be a fairly common average for a top 12-15 passer nationally, and three quarterbacks in the SEC alone had a higher average last season. Basically, it's pretty achievable with solid blocking. Of course, I can already hear the complaining about it, so I'm going to knock it down to 8.2 yards per attempt, which is generally a top 30-35 average and on par with Fromm's per attempt average in 2018. We'll also give his touchdowns per attempt a modest boost to one touchdown for every 18 attempts, down from one every 20.5 attempts. With those modest improvements, he would move to 2,862 passing yards and 19 touchdowns. From a national perspective, that would place Guarantano at 40th nationally in passing yardage last year and tied for 46th in passing touchdowns.
Let's get a bit crazy and think about that 8.7 yards per attempt number and say Guarantano could up his touchdown per passing attempt average to 15 attempts per touchdown. As stated before, the 8.7 yards per attempt is roughly a top 15 average among quarterbacks each year, and a touchdown every 15 attempts would probably land somewhere among the top 20-30 annually. That would come out to 3,036 passing yards and 23 touchdowns. In 2018, that would have been good for 32nd in passing yardage and tied for 37th in touchdowns. Of course, even when I'm being a "bit crazy" I'm being kind of conservative given we saw nine quarterbacks average nine or more yards per attempt last year and several in the SEC alone had a better attempts per touchdown number.
There are the numbers. Here is the bottom line: we're talking about a young man who has started 18 games total and is only heading into his redshirt junior season. He's far from a polished player, and now he's working with the best group of quarterback developers he's had in his three years on campus. He's going on his fourth offensive coordinator and his fourth quarterback coach at Tennessee, and he's been the very definition of efficiency. ESPN has named him to their list of under-the-radar players ready for a breakout campaign this season, and it's not hard to understand why.
So Tennessee has their starting quarterback, and it's pretty clear that he's going to be unchallenged for that role for any number of reasons, not the least of which is his play. Unfortunately, another reason is a pair of freshmen are the only other scholarship signal callers on the roster. The only other quarterbacks on the roster are a couple of true freshman walk-ons, so I can't even offer up that an experienced walk-on might help provide depth.
J.T. Shrout is the likely backup at this point, and there are certainly reasons to like his potential. The first thing that everyone brings up with this young man is the arm strength, and it jumps out at you for certain. He has a cannon that fits among the best in the country, but a gun is only as good as the person wielding it and Shrout is still raw in this regard. Perhaps the best news from his spring is that he didn't make any particularly bad decisions with the football, which was certainly an issue during a senior campaign in high school that saw him throw 25 interceptions. It would seem that Shrout did work on his decision making and field vision during his redshirt season. He was also second in the spring to Guarantano in passing yards and touchdowns, holding off the true freshman in establishing himself as the likely #2. Shrout, like Guarantano, isn't much of a running threat although he was at least able to keep teams honest in high school in that regard.
The primary threat to Shrout, who was only a one-year starter in high school, is the more experienced true freshman Brian Maurer. Before you hurt yourself trying to figure out how a true freshman can be more experienced than a redshirt freshman, Maurer was a three-year starter in high school, taking over as a sophomore and never relinquishing the top spot. That would be impressive enough, but he also improved noticeably each season in yardage, completion percentage, touchdowns, TD-to-INT ratio, and with his legs as a runner. Maurer was also the most accurate passer in the spring, however, he also took the most risks so despite completing 69% of his passes for 118 yards, he also tossed two interceptions to fellow freshman Jaylen McCollough. Maurer was also the only quarterback to finish with a net gain in rushing yards that quite possibly would have been better in a live scenario. In a perfect world, Maurer will be able to redshirt and polish his decision making, but with only three scholarship options on the roster, his redshirt season will hinge on the health of others.
When it comes to the walk-ons, one is an intriguing young man who could develop into a quality depth addition and another who was sitting on FCS offers and preferred walk-on offers from other FBS schools who shows off accuracy, touch, and a pretty pass on his film. That said, both are still very much true freshmen, and true freshmen who hail from smaller schools to boot.
Let's start off with the in-state quarterback who opted to walk-on with the Vols over scholarship offers and other walk-on opportunities. Spencer Smith had himself quite the senior season with over 2,800 yards of total offense, 38 total touchdowns, and just 4 interceptions. A touch on the skinny side, Smith has decent height at 6-1 and shows off a nice set of skills with his arm while showing off what is probably best described as sufficient running ability. Smith isn't the biggest, fastest, or strongest armed quarterback by any means, but he's solid in every regard with accuracy and placement that many elite passers struggle to display. While level of competition could be blamed at least partly for his level of success, at some point you just have to give it up to a pretty, well-placed pass that would work at any level in high school. That said, he will need time to adapt to the new level he's playing at in addition to the huge shift in talent he'll be both playing with and facing. He'll also need to dedicate himself to the strength and conditioning program if he wants a shot to be more than a scout team quarterback in the future.
People in Oklahoma don't know who Steven Orr is and he played in the state and took his team to the state semifinals as a senior. How do you do all that and fly under the radar? Well, playing at the Class B level, the second smallest division of high school football in the state, is a solid start. Playing in a city of under 900 people is another solid way to sail well under the radar. Strip all that away and what you're left with is a three-year starter at one of the most successful schools in the nation of its size. Orr is a southpaw with a quick release and a pass that doesn't get a lot of air under it. The ball gets to its destination quickly, but that comes with the potential downfall of his passes being easily low enough to be batted down. Adding in the lack of air under the passes with his 6-2 height and his release point may need some tweaking at the next level. He often throws a well-placed ball, but he has had some accuracy issues at times. He's a passer who throws the ball down the field, although not necessarily deep that often. Well, not deep in the sense that fans might think of. He likes to throw a large number of passes in the 10-25 yard range downfield, giving him career averages of 9.5-yards per attempt and 16.5 yards per completion. He also threw for 73 touchdowns against just 12 interceptions, numbers that stack up pretty nicely against those of fellow true freshman Brian Maurer. I suppose I should also mention that on film he's the most natural running quarterback I've seen head to Tennessee since one Josh Dobbs, although he lacks Dobbs's speed in that category, but shows similar instincts as a runner, putting up 1,879 rushing yards and 39 touchdowns while averaging 5.9 yards per carry. He has also played safety and served as the team's punter, so Orr is a young man willing to do anything asked of him to benefit his team. I don't know much more about him other than the fact that I'd rather have him on my team than an opposing one.
Up next will be the running backs, and there is some talent, production, and depth among that group. Look for that article in the next few days.
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