Tag: Saturday Down South

Texas A&M QB room disrespected with C Grade by Saturday Down South

Texas A&M’s QB room receives a disrespectful C grade by Saturday Down South

The 2023 college football season will be a noisy one for Texas A&M, as the Aggies embark with heightened expectations across the board. From the belief that Jimbo Fisher could be coaching for his future to the hiring of Bobby Petrino to helm the offense, the surrounding narratives are plenty. But taking a shot at the Aggies’ quarterback room? That might be too premature.

Saturday Down South recently graded each SEC team’s current QB room and perhaps unsurprisingly, they did not hold back on their assessment of the depth under center for Texas A&M:

One outlet’s perspective is by no means the spoken word, but a quick glance at the ensuing comments highlights that the Aggies signal-callers are being easily dismissed. If the eye test isn’t enough for the critics, then the hard facts make it tough to argue against.

If the C grade was solely predicated on last season’s tape then that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Yes, the Aggies averaged 219.4 yards per game and finished the season with the third-fewest total yards (2633) and second-fewest points (22.75) per game. Inconsistency from the quarterback position played a role in their offensive struggles.

But Texas A&M could be in for one of its best years for quarterbacks after welcoming back sophomore Conner Weigman, who had a promising freshman season in five appearances for the Aggies. After being the last man standing atop the depth chart a season ago, Weigman finished off the season with 896 passing yards and eight touchdowns.

Now with Petrino at the helm as offensive coordinator, we could see a return of a high-octane offense given Weigman’s ability to move around the pocket and stretch the field while on the move.

That being said, it’s not a foregone conclusion that Weigman will be the starting quarterback in 2023. Max Johnson will return and while he was limited to four starting appearances last season, he has a leg up over Weigman in playing experience after transferring from LSU. While in Death Valley, he accumulated 3,384 passing yards and 37 touchdowns in 18 games for the Tigers.

The Aggies clearly have two capable starters atop the depth chart which bodes well for the short term. And yet also have their eyes toward the future as they welcome Marcel Reed to the roster, a four-star recruit and the No. 20 quarterback in the 2023 class. Reed played in 13 games as a senior for Nashville (Tenn.) Montgomery Bell Academy, completing 58.8 percent of his passes for 2,198 yards and 27 touchdowns with seven interceptions. He also added 944 yards on the ground with 15 rushing scores.

Despite Weigman and Johnson needing to sort out the starting quarterback job, it’s clear that the Aggies QB room has the most upside it’s had in recent memory, perhaps since the days of Johnny Manziel. And the addition of newcomer Reed only paints a brighter picture for the future.

Regardless of how controversial the hiring may be, having Petrino at the helm of the offense should help give a boost to a quarterback position that has held Texas A&M back in recent memory. Not to mention that Petrino has a long track record of developing quarterbacks into draft picks.

With a proven SEC starter and a freshman All-American on the depth chart, and a promising four-star recruit on the horizon, the math doesn’t add up for the Aggies QB room to be granted a mere passing grade. But that’s what hot takes are for, to attract attention. If this unit can deliver in 2023, you can bookmark this SEC QB room breakdown to look back on for a good laugh.

Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes, and opinions. Follow Pete on Twitter: @PeteThreee

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Southeastern Conference set on remaining at 16 schools… for now

16 teams is a perfect number for a conference of the SEC’s potency if you asked us.

It has been a wild week for college sports after word came out that the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins intended to jump ship from the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten. The aftershocks of the announcement reverberated throughout the remainder of the schools across the nation putting perennial contenders like the Southeastern Conference on notice.

In response, the media rushed to takes on how the SEC might respond to the earth-shaking news, with wild suggestions coming from every angle but nothing that actually stuck. As it turns out, the conference brass never intended to make a countermove — or at least, that is the official word.

According to Matt Hayes of Saturday Down South, who first broke the news, the conference that has been home to the Florida Gators and many of its sister schools since 1933 has no intention of expanding past 16 members after the induction of the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners in 2025.

“We’re positioned at 16 (teams) for a robust future,” an unnamed SEC athletic director told SDS. They also added that “the need just isn’t there… I don’t see any (expansion) move as threatening to us.”

CBS Sports’ Dennis Dobbs was able to confirm the report.

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Another writer takes a shot at Bo Nix

Another writer takes a shot at Bo Nix

The varying opinions from writers on Auburn quarterback Bo Nix spread far and wide.

On Wednesday, Connor O’Gara, Senior National Columnist for Saturday Down South and host of the Saturday Down South Podcast gave his five biggest gripes about the preseason all-SEC teams, and Nix being listed as the third-team all-SEC quarterback was his biggest complaint.

Here’s what he had to say.

Sorry. At best, Nix is a middle-of-the-pack SEC quarterback. It’s pretty simple — he’s been solid at home and horrendous on the road. In 2 seasons, he has yet to finish in the top 8 in the SEC in quarterback rating, yards per attempt and completion percentage. A guy who has yet to have a season-long average of 7.0 yards per attempt OR 60% accuracy would be excusable if he was prolific as a runner. But Nix has yet to hit 400 rushing yards in a season. Nix has mechanical flaws that haven’t been corrected, despite the fact that he’ll enter 2021 with more experience than any returning SEC quarterback.

If we’re being honest, experience is why Nix got this preseason honor. Yes, it was a brutal year for preseason All-SEC quarterbacks. That’s why only 3 SEC quarterbacks were in attendance, including the 2 others who got preseason All-SEC love (Matt Corral and JT Daniels). I’d rather give that to Connor Bazelak, who was better than Nix in 2020, and with less talent around him.

I’d even rather give it to Myles Brennan or Max Johnson, both of whom showed more potential in their limited starts than Nix has in 2 seasons. Of course, quarterbacks in a battle don’t get that type of preseason love. Tua Tagovailoa wasn’t a preseason All-SEC quarterback in 2018 despite the fact that he delivered one of the best moments in college football history a few months earlier.

If you’re wondering why Bryce Young didn’t get that recognition, it’s because hasn’t started yet, though his bank account surely doesn’t reflect that. The same probably goes for Emory Jones, though he at least has half a season’s worth of snaps as a decent SEC quarterback.

Nix is a familiar name, and in a year in which there aren’t many of those, he stood to benefit the most.

The ballot only allowed media members to choose from the seven SEC quarterbacks that have significant starting experience in the SEC (JT Daniels, Matt Corral, Emory Jones, Bo Nix, Connor Bazelak, Will Rogers, and Ken Seals).

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Should Penn State fans cheer for the Florida Gators football this season?

If a season actually happens in the SEC, only time will tell whether Gators fans will accept the now teamless Big Ten fans into their ranks.

With the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponing their seasons, the last shred of hope for college football this fall rests with the SEC, ACC and Big 12.

But in the event that those leagues do play, what are fans of teams in the former two conferences supposed to do this season?

Often, the Big Ten and the SEC are the deepest and most talent-rich leagues in the country. Without their teams competing, will fans from the Midwest migrate south of the Mason-Dixon to find a new rooting interest for the short term?

Mike Griffith, a Georgia writer and Heisman voter, put out his list of teams Big Ten fans should adopt, and notably, he thinks fans of the Penn State Nittany Lions should be cheering for the Gators this fall.

It’s certainly possible to see some parallels between the two. Though neither program is the top-dog in their respective conferences, each has had historical periods of dominance and recently bounced back from down periods.

Under coach James Franklin, PSU won a conference title in 2016 and is coming off an 11-2 season in which it won a New Year’s Six Bowl and finished ranked in the top 10, just like Florida did in 2019.

In the Saturday Down South article Griffith quote-tweeted, Connor O’Gara instead argued that Michigan was more comparable to Florida, which I personally find more agreeable.

O’Gara argued his case as follows.

When these 2 schools inevitably meet again in a bowl game in a year or 2, it’d be nice if their fans could have the common ground of talking about the time they rooted for the same team. Lord knows there are already plenty of Michigan graduates in the state of Florida. Actually, Michigan graduates are everywhere. And why do they always feel the need to wear multiple pieces of Michigan apparel at the same time? We get it, guy. Also, if this is the year that Florida beats Georgia, Michigan fans can just tell themselves it’s like they finally beat Ohio State.

If a season actually happens in the SEC this fall, only time will tell whether Gators fans will accept the now teamless Big 10 fans into their ranks.

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