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Slimm's 2018 Quarterbacks (Seniors)

Kudos to Slimm for sticking Dalton Sturm onto the list.

One of my very favorite quarterbacks in this class. He's being coached by Frank Scelfo, who spent three years with the Jaguars coaching Blake Bortles and Chad Henne. He got bumped up from QB Coach to senior offensive assistant in 2015 the year Bortles had that great season throwing 35 touchdowns. In college, Scelfo coached Shaun King, Patrick Ramsey, and Nick Foles.

You watch what UTSA does on offense and they're having Dalton Sturm do stuff that translates directly to Sunday football.

I love listening to Scelfo talk about the offense and Sturm.

He's not the biggest guy nor does he have the strongest arm. But for two years he's already been learning the pro game the hard way. When he had to learn that stuff in 2016 it didn't always work out or look pretty. But he's made enormous strides in 2017 understanding how he can work the offense in his favor, and the results are stupendous.

Scoring 33+ points a game and having a 122 passer rating while operating a pro style offense at the college level is not always easy, regardless of whether it's Power Five or Group of Five. Cooper Rush found that out at Central Michigan under former Dolphins Special Teams Coach John Bonamego.

The team upset Baylor, walloped Texas State, lost 29-31 to Southern Miss on a failed 2-point conversion at the end, and lost 26-29 to North Texas last week.

The quarterback Sturm is playing situational football and putting his team in position to win games. He executed a comeback against Southern Miss and scored the potential tying TD in the final minute, but then the 2-point conversion failed. He got the ball with about 8:30 left in the 4th quarter, down 20-22 against North Texas, and he engineered a 87 yard drive that took 5+ minutes off the clock and finished with a touchdown to go up 26-22 (another failed 2-point conversion). The other team went three-and-out, and gave the ball back to Sturm, but the coaches never called his number and ran the ball three straight times trying to run out the clock. It failed, they gave the ball back to North Texas with a full minute left, and the defense gives up two big plays and they lost the game 26-29.

Unfortunately we're not going to get a chance to see Sturm tested hard the rest of the year until perhaps their bowl game (and I've no doubt they'll get into one). It's not as if Sturm has the highest quality receiving options and blockers in front of him, although I do have a lot of respect for the lead WR Josh Stewart. The toughest remaining game on schedule for UTSA will be Marshall.

Sturm was invited to Manning Camp to be a counselor for a reason and not just because Frank Scelfo tossed his name in for consideration. The game tapes actually look really, really good. He's such a good execution-oriented quarterback with great feet and hands. He manages a pocket and senses pressure like a pro. The arm isn't great. It's good enough. The real question for him is how much information he can process and handle because Scelfo keeps pushing him and asking him to take the next step and the next step and the one after, and so far the kid hasn't plateaued.
 
You can't really make much more of a splash than Kyle Kempt has made since taking over for Jacob Park against #3 ranked Oklahoma, leading the team to victory behind 18 of 24 passing for 343 yards, 3 TDs and 0 INTs. He followed up with an efficient game against Kansas, routing them 45-0. Now he's beating the tar out of Texas Tech on 19 of 25 for 168 yards, 3 TDs and 0 INTs passing. The senior is on a truly incredible run.

He looks the part at 6'5" and 210 lbs with smooth footwork. He throws a very catchable football and obviously he's accurate (50 of 69 thus far). Iowa State has some talent at the WR spots and they do a great job coming back down the stem to work for the football, but he also does a good job with his decision making, timing, and placement to let them do their jobs. Some of those studs he's throwing to are pretty tall and he knows how to get the ball to them high to let them get it. He turns and hits the flat really well whether it's a back or a screen. He's physically strong and tough, runs the football on designed runs and does OK with it even though he's not necessarily a great athlete. He'll block when the play swings back around on him. They don't ask him to do a ton in the way of managing a huddle, play calling, etc. He does have to adjust the play according to what he's seeing in the defense. He just does a really good job from what I can tell letting the offense and the skill players work for him.

But how much mental toughness do you have to have to be getting your FIRST action as an FBS player IN OKLAHOMA against the #3 college football team in the nation, get down 14-0 on the scoreboard, and then just go to work and have just about a perfect day en route to one of the biggest upsets I've ever seen. And he hasn't taken his foot off the gas pedal since.

This guy benefits from all the stuff everyone usually complains about with this type of offense. There's no sugar coating that. Cheap yardage and completions via screens, coaches calling changes from the sideline, spread concepts, shotgun, etc. But so many of the other guys out there are doing the same stuff. This guy is generally managing pressure well, putting the ball on the money, and hurting teams vertically. It's an impressive run and I'm anxious to see how he finishes out the year.
 
You can't really make much more of a splash than Kyle Kempt has made since taking over for Jacob Park against #3 ranked Oklahoma, leading the team to victory behind 18 of 24 passing for 343 yards, 3 TDs and 0 INTs. He followed up with an efficient game against Kansas, routing them 45-0. Now he's beating the tar out of Texas Tech on 19 of 25 for 168 yards, 3 TDs and 0 INTs passing. The senior is on a truly incredible run.

He looks the part at 6'5" and 210 lbs with smooth footwork. He throws a very catchable football and obviously he's accurate (50 of 69 thus far). Iowa State has some talent at the WR spots and they do a great job coming back down the stem to work for the football, but he also does a good job with his decision making, timing, and placement to let them do their jobs. Some of those studs he's throwing to are pretty tall and he knows how to get the ball to them high to let them get it. He turns and hits the flat really well whether it's a back or a screen. He's physically strong and tough, runs the football on designed runs and does OK with it even though he's not necessarily a great athlete. He'll block when the play swings back around on him. They don't ask him to do a ton in the way of managing a huddle, play calling, etc. He does have to adjust the play according to what he's seeing in the defense. He just does a really good job from what I can tell letting the offense and the skill players work for him.

But how much mental toughness do you have to have to be getting your FIRST action as an FBS player IN OKLAHOMA against the #3 college football team in the nation, get down 14-0 on the scoreboard, and then just go to work and have just about a perfect day en route to one of the biggest upsets I've ever seen. And he hasn't taken his foot off the gas pedal since.

This guy benefits from all the stuff everyone usually complains about with this type of offense. There's no sugar coating that. Cheap yardage and completions via screens, coaches calling changes from the sideline, spread concepts, shotgun, etc. But so many of the other guys out there are doing the same stuff. This guy is generally managing pressure well, putting the ball on the money, and hurting teams vertically. It's an impressive run and I'm anxious to see how he finishes out the year.

Absolutely dead on and it's very interesting to me that you noticed this kid too, and what the situation was surrounding him.

I've been impressed with your eye for noticing a lot of these lesser known players lately and being aware enough to appreciate what you're seeing. Your eye for college talent seems to be improved a lot. Very impressive.
 
Something that interests me is trying to contextualize some of these guys like a Dalton Sturm who is so clearly translatable to NFL Sunday in terms of what he runs and what he's good at, versus other guys who will get higher grades but are either really far from where they would need to be experience-wise in order to process the information they're going to need to process at the next level (i.e. system barriers), or are just plain less effective right now.

It's tough because when I look at the last four elite level Hall of Fame type passers that have come down the pipe, we're talking about Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers..you couldn't make the case that any one of these guys fit the bill as a physical prototype, or "high ceiling" guy, with the potential exception of Rodgers who was on the shorter end at 6'2" with a bit of a skinny frame. Peyton Manning was slow and never had a cannon arm. Drew Brees is short as hell and doesn't really have a huge arm. Tom Brady is slow, was physically under-developed, and didn't necessarily have a great arm coming out (not bad, either).

These guys achieved at the pinnacle level for NFL passers, so where did the "ceiling" ultimately end up for them? It ended up being high as hell. So how can we in good conscience make "ceiling" arguments based on physical attributes and then apply them in nuanced ways?

Yet that's what we (self-included) are going to do with a guy like Dalton Sturm versus a guy like Josh Allen, both of whom are running pro concepts, one of whom is clearly making better decisions, handling the full offense, and throwing more catchable footballs than the other. And I'm not saying we're wrong for doing it. It's just an interesting dynamic.

To put a number to the difference between them physically in terms of arm strength, I had Sturm driving a throw about 31-32 yards through the air clocked at about 43 mph (usually give or take 1 mph on either side), whereas I had Josh Allen in 2016 driving a throw about 28 yards through the air up the field at about 49 mph (and that was truthfully probably a bit on the slower end for him for a throw like that).

There's a pretty significant difference there. But when you get right to it, Peyton Manning didn't throw better than that especially in the later years when he was setting records with Adam Gase. In fact Sturm is significantly better throwing multi-directionally and on the move than Peyton was. Tom Brady might throw a little better than that but it doesn't translate on the deep ball unless he happens to have Randy Moss in his prime, and not exactly a guy that's going to do it on the run, either.

Dalton Sturm was a state hurdles champion and he's out there running for 70 yards in some games. He's got physical mobility attributes some of the Hall of Fame caliber guys didn't have. Not exactly Russell Wilson, but pretty close to Andrew Luck that way.
 
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I'll say this, I watched Josh Allen throw a TD pass Saturday night to Austin Fort that none of these other quarterbacks can make. Maybe Sam Darnold can. But that's it.

He's always made throws on the move to his right that are just extraordinary.

He reminds me a lot of Ryan Tannehill coming out of college when I watch him. Tannehill would always make such tremendous throws on the run because he understood that he needed to square his shoulders to the target first. If you do that, you can get away with your feet not being set to throw a lot of times. And a lot of quarterbacks don't do it.

Tannehill needed development from within the confines of the pocket. I see the same sort of thing with Josh Allen. He's still so undeveloped, but that's why his ceiling is so high. Believe me, you don't want this guy to escape to his right if you're an opposing defensive coach.

Evaluating talent is such an art form that you really can't even discuss most of it in person, much less on a message board.

There are lots of things that I see or notice about players that I still can't quite articulate in order to get it across to anyone else exactly what I'm seeing or how I seen it, and I've been doing it a long time. But I know it when I see it, and to what degree I'm seeing it. I know it when I don't.
 
The magic continues for Kyle Kempt. He is a ridiculous 4-0 having taken down the #3 ranked Oklahoma IN Oklahoma, and now the #4 ranked TCU.

To be fair, the defense did more than its share on that one, winning the game 14-7. Give Kempt his due though, as he put together an efficient 21 of 35 for 202 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT performance.
 
Curious if the NFL can find something to do for Chris Streveler. Other than playing quarterback, which I don't think is in the cards for him.

I want to make him a tight end based on his build and skill set but 6'2" & 220 lbs is a stretch for that position if the listing is accurate.

That's probably his fate, regardless...and I'll be damned if I'm not interested in seeing how that works out. Could be like a Zach Miller from Nebraska-Omaha.

When I wrote this, I was looking at his 2016 tape.

There are aspects of his 2017 tape that are NIGHT and DAY compared with what I saw. In this Youngstown State game he's throwing with true NFL zip, and has one of the damn quickest releases I've seen all year. His weight transfer isn't all there, doesn't get much rotation, all arm. I remember Andrew Luck being all arm a lot of the time, too. But the ball gets out so flipping quick, and it comes out accurate too. He's standing in there and making throws with contact coming in on him.

You know he's got legs. Hell he seems like he's 75% legs because he's got that kind of odd build. But he's a man. Built like a man, strength like a man, athletic as all get-out. You look at him play and you think I could probably put him somewhere on defense and he'd probably wreck a lot of sh-t. Or I could do some things with him on offense and do the same.

The difference is THIS year I'm watching him throw the ball and saying, damn I think I just want him wrecking sh-t as a quarterback.

He's the team's leading rusher in addition to being the quarterback. He's scored 31 touchdowns this year (21 passing) and thrown only 4 interceptions, completing 65% of his passes.

I'm loving what I'm seeing in this Youngstown State game. I wonder if all his 2017 games are like this.
 
My goodness. Seriously. Get a look at this game from South Dakota QB Chris Streveler.



What a deadly release.
 
I'd love for Slimm to weigh in on whether Streveler's mechanical perversions are just too much to make it at the next level. Certainly they're there. But we've seen other perversions succeed in varying degrees.
 
I'd love for Slimm to weigh in on whether Streveler's mechanical perversions are just too much to make it at the next level. Certainly they're there. But we've seen other perversions succeed in varying degrees.

I'm not very familiar with the kid, but just from watching the game you have there I don't necessarily see any mechanical red flags...nothing that I would determine to preclude him from having a shot to be successful at the next level. That release can make up for a lot of flaws anyway, as you alluded to.

He looks like a pretty good athlete for the position. Although one thing I don't see him do is throw to his left. That's the most difficult throw for a right hander, that's really where footwork has to be precise.

He looks like he'd get picked off a lot to me if he played at the FBS level. Looks like he'd throw a high number of interceptions...similar to Tanner Lee.
 
The mechanical issues I see are that he doesn't lead with his feet often enough, and the ball seems to come out at a pretty oblique angle relative to his shoulders. He's got a strong arm and quick release, but he's not getting much hip rotation, and from what I've seen in multiple games that is leading to this odd dynamic where he throws with NFL caliber zip at intermediate levels but can't consistently heft the ball at long distances (50+ yards).

He was at Minnesota and couldn't beat Mitch Leidner, so he volunteered to make use of his athleticism by moving to wide receiver. Eventually he transferred out to South Dakota, played QB last year and this year, and so he's a little inexperienced and unrefined. I think there's enough there to want to keep working with him. He's arguably the most dominant player in FCS football right now.
 
The mechanical issues I see are that he doesn't lead with his feet often enough, and the ball seems to come out at a pretty oblique angle relative to his shoulders. He's got a strong arm and quick release, but he's not getting much hip rotation, and from what I've seen in multiple games that is leading to this odd dynamic where he throws with NFL caliber zip at intermediate levels but can't consistently heft the ball at long distances (50+ yards).

He was at Minnesota and couldn't beat Mitch Leidner, so he volunteered to make use of his athleticism by moving to wide receiver. Eventually he transferred out to South Dakota, played QB last year and this year, and so he's a little inexperienced and unrefined. I think there's enough there to want to keep working with him. He's arguably the most dominant player in FCS football right now.

Yep, see what you're saying. Tries to throw all arm and doesn't get his lower body involved. Typical of a kid who's very strong in the upper body but underdeveloped strength wise in the core or lower body. Takes me back to how Brady Quinn threw the ball coming out of ND.

Didn't know he was at Minnesota. Yeah that's saying something if he couldn't beat out Mitch Leidner in my opinion.
 
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