Tag: Grayson McCall

Dillon Gabriel one of SI’s most intriguing quarterbacks in 2022

Oklahoma starting quarterback Dillon Gabriel was named one of college football’s most intriguing quarterbacks for the 2022 season.

Dillon Gabriel’s college football journey has taken him from Hawaii to Florida and now to the Palace on the Prairie in Norman, Oklahoma. It’s an insane journey if nothing else for the sheer differences in some of the stops he’s made along the way since high school.

He has no tangible results in Norman yet but that will change in under 10 days when Oklahoma laces up their cleats and straps on their pads up to take on UTEP for the first game of the season.

Gabriel is an experienced signal caller with a lot of snaps in Jeff Lebby’s offensive system. The system itself is predicated on tempo and the Sooners plan to play ultra-fast. Gabriel will have weapons like Marvin Mims, Theo Wease, and Drake Stoops out wide with Eric Gray, Marcus Major, and talented freshman running back Jovantae Barnes in the backfield with him.

All of these components make up a small part of the reason that Gabriel was named by Sports Illustrated as one of college football’s most intriguing quarterbacks for 2022.

The Sooners’ QB1 checks in at No.7 on the list behind Alabama’s Bryce Young, Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud,  Clemson’s DJ Uiagalalei, Texas’ Quinn Ewers, Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall, and USC QB, Caleb Williams.

Here’s what Sports Illustrated had to say:

When [Caleb] Williams vacated the starting job at Oklahoma, Gabriel jumped at the chance to replace him. The former UCF QB was headed to UCLA in December, but decommitted from the Bruins in early January and redirected to Norman. The left-handed Hawaiian has thrown for more than 8,000 yards in college and reunites with his freshman-year UCF coordinator (Jeff Lebby) at Oklahoma. Gabriel is coming off a fractured clavicle and hasn’t played in a game since Sept. 17, 2021, but has drawn strong reviews through spring practice and the offseason with the Sooners. ‘Dillon Gabriel is a winner,’ Brent Venables said in July. ‘He’s a galvanizer of people.’ – Pat Forde, SI.com

Gabriel’s immediate buy-in to the Oklahoma program has endeared him to the fanbase in lightning time. His time is coming to show what he can do as the signal caller for a program of Oklahoma’s stature. He’ll take that first step against UTEP.

With his connection to the offense and the weapons around him, Gabriel has a shot to have a special season in a place where quarterbacks have shined the brightest over the last 5 or so years. His season-long journey as a leader for Oklahoma will be intriguing, to say the least.

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2023 NFL draft film room: Coastal Carolina QB Grayson McCall

See for yourself what makes Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall one of the top quarterback prospects in the 2023 NFL draft

It’s never too early to look ahead to the next group of top prospects, so if you’re looking to get a head start on the 2023 NFL draft class, we’ve got you covered.

What makes Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall one of next year’s top quarterback prospects?

Watch the tape and see for yourself:

Oklahoma’s Caleb Williams on the rise in latest Heisman rankings

With a stellar week nine, Caleb Williams is seeing his stock rise in USA TODAY Sports’ latest Heisman rankings.

Caleb Williams took the college football world a month ago when he helped the Oklahoma Sooners overcome an 18 point halftime deficit. He hasn’t looked back, amassing 18 total touchdowns on the season and completing 70.9% of his passes, good for seventh in the nation among quarterbacks with at least 94 dropbacks on the season.

That completion percentage is better than every other quarterback in Heisman contention for 2021. And believe it or not, Caleb Williams is in Heisman contention.

In USA TODAY Sports college football analyst Paul Myerburg’s latest Heisman rankings, Caleb Williams has moved up one spot from last week to fifth.

The freshman phenom keeps stacking monster Saturdays, the latest a six-touchdown performance in the Sooners’ rout of Texas Tech. In 99 attempts since replacing Spencer Rattler midway through the Red River Shootout against Texas, Williams has thrown for 1,097 yards and 14 touchdowns against one interception. – Myerburg

Last week, Caleb Williams was ranked sixth in Myerburg’s rankings, but his performance over Tech gave him a bump over Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder and Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman.

Williams is the highest graded quarterback through week nine of the season according to Pro Football Focus. Things appear to be heating up for the true freshman quarterback who just threw for 402 yards and six touchdowns in an offensive domination of Texas Tech last Saturday.

His passer rating of 142 (NFL) is second only to Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall.

At this point, games played might be the only thing keeping Caleb Williams from being higher on lists for college football’s most prestigious award.

Even if Williams doesn’t end up a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, what he’s done in such a short time is pretty remarkable. He’s helped transform the Oklahoma Sooners back into the big-play offense that we’ve grown accustomed to.

Oklahoma’s scored 50 points in three of their last four games since Williams took over as the starting quarterback. Though they were blanked in the first half of their win against Kansas, Williams orchestrated a 35 point second half to help Oklahoma to the win.

The following month of the season will tell the tale for Caleb Williams and the Oklahoma Sooners. How he and OU perform in games against Baylor, Iowa State, and Oklahoma State will go a long way toward getting Williams to New York and the Sooners into the College Football Playoff.

Though they’re on a bye week, the stakes are higher now than they’ve been all season after the College Football Playoff committee ranked the Oklahoma Sooners eighth in their initial playoff rankings.

The Oklahoma Sooners will need “Superman” to be heroic over the final three games of the regular season and the Big 12 championship. Caleb Williams will have plenty of opportunities to create his signature Heisman moment over the last month of the season. The question is, will it be enough to put him in serious contention for the Heisman.

After the bye, we’ll find out.

Stock Watch: The Spencer Rattler edition

The big quarterback story of the day was Lincoln Riley turning to Caleb Williams to replace Spencer Rattler in the Red River Showdown. We’ll cover that and more in this week’s installment of Stock Watch.

Back in another lifetime, in a career dominated not by playbooks, Twitter and quarterbacks and rather judges, courtrooms and clients, there were often some days dominated by difficult conversations. With the old saw being that the practice of law is wonderful, were it not for the clients, there are some difficult conversations that are often needed. Moments when a client needs to be brought in, sat down, and given the harsh reality of their case.

Perhaps evidence is not going their way, or perhaps witnesses have been discovered that shed new light on the situation. Perhaps a difficult judge was drawn, or maybe the client themselves stepped in it a bit. Regardless of the reasoning, a tough discussion about strategy was needed. Maybe even a complete reversal on the client’s stance.

We called those the “time to come home” conversations.

It might be time for such a conversation about Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler.

Coastal Carolina with the 99-yard TD pass against Arkansas State

Coastal Carolina with a 99-yard touchdown pass

Easy to forget there was an undefeated college football team playing Thursday with the MLB playoffs and Los Angeles Rams facing the Seattle Seahawks.

However, the 15th-ranked Coastal Carolina Chanticleers were playing at Arkansas State and it didn’t take long for them to try and head to the top of the highlight reel.

The Chanticleers were at their 1-yard line less than 3 minutes into the game.

In a blink, they went 99 yards and were up 7-0 en route to scoring the game’s 31 points.

The play went from Grayson McCall to Isaiah Likely, who was untouched en route to the end zone.

Early in the fourth quarter, Likely had 7 catches for 213 yards and 4 touchdowns.