But we are not privy to the information of whether or not Rashada is playing next year. If Rashada is playing next year, Leary does not want to come here.
Ok let’s look at Devin Leary situation. Transferring to better his pro chances. At Kentucky you have a situation where they are about to put their quarterback in the league. There is no one behind him so you start immediately and you have a proven wide receiver core in Key, Brown and Robinson as targets. At Florida you also had quarterback go high to league. You have a 5 star Frosh coming to campus early enroll and you get to throw to a wideout group that might have Pearsall but otherwise Douglas, Fraziars and a bunch of Frosh. And you are one injury from being replaced and maybe not getting job back from Rashada. So where do you choose? Billy could be PT Barnum and couldn’t spin that situation as Florida is better. Now we can all lament that we are in this situation but we needed a body. Leary had better landing spot, McCall transcripts, Platt stayed put. So who do you like better as that body??? Merry is serviceable and hoping Rashada is real deal. Please give me a name before the rest of you rip a kid that wants to lead Florida. Who???? And if they are still coming to portal and Mertz is so bad he certainly won’t scare them off. I think he was the best option actually obtainable. And I think Rashada beats him out before end of season but he will be great help to develop him and serviceable if he goes down
I’ve read most of this thread so I don’t think this has been said before or not in the exact words. Mertz is not “the GUY” - 1) but he’s NOT supposed to be - 2) he is not meant as a ceiling play, he’s a floor play 3) he is a Well known and very experienced player who will assumedly take coaching and hand the ball off and execute the offense without completely melting down (hopefully); 4) he is coming in to have a proven floor and extensive game experience in the QB room, which we don’t presently have, and hopefully get us to 7-8 wins in year two 5) Sam Hartman is coming anyways, so who cares ……..
well, some of the blame should be on the coaches if they were pinning their hopes on a guy who hadn’t even entered the portal. Need to talking to all of the best options early - expand the board - so in case option 1 or even 2 goes off the board we have better options then Mertz. It is seems we have a similar lack of good back up plans with high school recruits as well.
your first paragraph alone spells out the problem….that in any scenario, for a QB to be in a better situation he should go to UK over UF. Ouch.
You seem very personally invested in this, but I think at this point it's time to just accept that Mertz, Miller, & Rashada is who we're rolling with. They're all Gators now, and no amount of continuing to complain is going to change that.
I have it on good authority that the more I complain that I can change things. Way to burst my bubble, man.
Go back and look at Napier's offense at ULL. The QB didn't run much. AR was an anomaly in his offense. In 2021 the QB had 100 att for 343 yards, in 2020 55 atts. I would bet that 60% of those atts were scrambles, not called QB run plays. When you say BN has a run heavy offense, it comes from the running backs. Mertz has negative yards because UW's Oline was swiss cheese.
LSU wouldn't have won the CFP if not for Burrow. Sometimes, getting that gem for one year is enough to win it all.
Sheisty Joe was very uneven in his first year at LSU, but we all saw the gem he turned into in year 2. We don’t have a 2 year opening, hopefully it’s only half a season until Rashada is ready especially since he is an EE. Harder to sell in the portal.
I personally think we are going with the (5) we already know, (Brown included) but when Coach Napier held his signing day press conference, he used terms like anticipate, plan, expect. That language is intentional, they are not absolute terms. He never says “we are finished with QB’s, when we get the transfer (Mertz) and the PWO. He always leaves the language nuanced enough to allow a possible adjustment, and not be caught in a outright deception. It’s a lot like a politician’s answer, but then again most Coaches at that level are careful with their choice of words… we like to call it Coach Speak, but it’s not exclusive to coaches. Spurrier was an outlier. There are a few others, but they are few and far in between. Unfortunately we just lost one of those few. It’s not a pejorative against most of the coaching profession, we love Spurrier for it, others don’t see it that way.
Who was the last coach we had that was able to pull in two 5 star QBs within a month . One for each of the next 2 classes
