It’s getting to be the middle of the summer, which means it’s close to preview season on the college football calendar. Various conference media days are going on now, and once those are done, everything will be about getting you ready for the upcoming season.
I’ve seen a handful of early rankings of SEC quarterbacks for this year. I can’t say I’ve been impressed by the output so far in relation to Florida’s situation.
I’ve seen a couple that cut things off at fewer than 14 and don’t have UF on there. I think that’s fair enough if you want to go that direction. I didn’t see explanations because these were just social media graphics fishing for virality, but UF technically hasn’t named a starting quarterback yet. I expect it to be Graham Mertz over Jack Miller, but in theory the competition is still ongoing. If you want to leave the Gators out because of lack of a firm pick behind center, then fine. Whatever.
What gets me is when I do see Mertz on there and see him in the bottom three. There was a South Carolina site that put him last, for instance.
The thing is, Mertz is not going to be the new Joe Burrow. He has a chance to improve over his time at Wisconsin, but it’s not going to be by miles.
However the, “he’s also played enough snaps that he is what he is” factor goes both ways. He’s not going to suddenly regress and perform way below what he did in Madison. We have a good sized sample set on him, and players really do tend to be what they are after three full seasons of starting.
And what Mertz was, back when he was playing in red and white, was not a bad quarterback. He wasn’t an all-conference performer, but he wasn’t dreadful either.
There definitely was a fatalistic streak in the Gator fan base earlier this year after the Jaden Rashada thing blew up and the new recruiting class came in ranked below what a lot of fans wanted. Florida picked up Mertz because it needed more at the position, but there was hope that more than just Mertz would come.
And more just… didn’t. There were periodic rumors about some QB or another trying to come to Gainesville, but hints from the beat writers indicate that the couple of options that were real (and not just fantasies) couldn’t get into school. UF admissions strikes again.
So back when folks around the country started laughing at the notion that Mertz would be an upgrade over a guy who was being projected as an early first round NFL Draft pick, there wasn’t any pushback whatsoever from the Florida partisans. The general gist of it was, “yeah, we know, we hope we don’t have to count on Mertz”.
And, narratives being what they are and following the usual path, the idea that Florida got an okay-but-not-great quarterback flattened out into the idea that Florida got a terrible quarterback. Mertz went from a highly rated recruit who turned out to be merely solid into being a complete bust who was an embarrassment to any team that fields him. The extremely vanilla offense on display in the spring game going up against a defense allowed to do a bit more than just vanilla base stuff certainly didn’t help anything.
That notion then festered over time, only getting knocked out of the zeitgeist recently by Billy Napier’s hot streak on the recruiting trail. But as we get into preview season, it’s going to keep coming back.
Consider this newsletter to be me pushing back on it, for real this time. Mertz is not terrible. If he comes out and is just bad all the way through, I will be surprised.
Last year, in a stale Wisconsin offense that seldom used play action and had no playmakers to speak of outside, Mertz had a passing efficiency of 135. That put him 63rd nationally, and he was nearly tied with several players above and below him.
So was it good? Not really. It was average. Mertz is about average, or was in Paul Chryst’s scheme. His experience may help wring some more production out of him in Napier’s more modern RPO-heavy attack.
Passing efficiency isn’t everyone’s favorite QB stat, but it’s decent enough for quick assessments. The mid 130s are, again, about average.
Some of the dreadful Florida offenses in recent memory had PEs lower than that. The bad 2013 offense post-Jeff Driskel injury had PEs in the 120s from Tyler Murphy and Skyler Mornhinweg. Driskel was barely above 100 in 2014 before he got benched for Treon Harris. Harris was at 118 after Will Grier’s PED suspension in 2015, which is almost exactly where Luke Del Rio was in 2016. Austin Appleby at least got to the high 120s that same season. Feleipe Franks’s rather helpless debut in 2017 saw him down at 113.
Mertz was in the 120s in his first two seasons, but he progressed to 135 with little help from skill position players or from play action in his third season. I expect him to be in the 130s again this year, if not edging up into the 140s if all goes well.
That’s not great, but it’s not terrible. Mertz is not a terrible quarterback, and he won’t be the worst one in the league this season if as expected he holds off Miller and wins the starting job.