Must be true what they say, "The smaller the ... the bigger the ego." Save yourself some energy and stop giving me advice on what I "NEED" to do. I only listen to advice from people I respect.
Seems like groundhog day. Same old song and dance. You respond to one of my posts. I don't bow down and worship your opinion and say "slim you are right and so amazing. Your opinion is the only one that counts," or think you are the football guru you appear to think you are. You take a few shots at me and then say how you are above responding to me. Here is an idea...don't respond to me to begin with, or the 2nd time, or the...That way you don't have lower yourself to begin with.
btw...once again you are "incorrect" with the statement "I didn't say Locker was worth the 15th pick in the draft, nice attempt at a strawman there..." as I never said you did. My response was to someone else. But once again, you just butted in and acted like I said you did.
Let's get back on topic...evaluating Jake Locker requires more than repetitive stat thumping.
Locker never even had a QB coach his first 2 years at UW under that disaster of a head coach known as Tyrone Willingham. Let that sink in for a minute.. He never even had a POSITION COACH until Sarkisian arrived. He was just asked to go out there and improvise in an attempt to win games based off nothing but his athletic ability and raw talent.
As a sophomore, Willingham called a reverse play that sent Locker to be a lead blocker for the WR, which resulted in Locker getting his thumb caught on the defender and broke it. Locker tried to get the coaches to let him play safety since the thumb on his throwing hand was broken just so he could help his team, the coaches of course denied his request. He ended up missing basically the entire season and Washington went 0-12. They were the worst team in the country by far.
As a junior after Sarkisian arrived, he had a position coach for the first time in his LIFE, and a guy who actually knew what the hell he was doing. Locker performed extremely well in his first season in a pro style offense despite being surrounded with 0-12 talent. Completed 58% of his passes, threw 21 TD's and 11 INT's. He took 0-12 talent and made them 5-7. He was highly regarded among the scouting community and viewed as a lock top 5 pick if he came out, perhaps even #1 overall. Anyone who paid attention was aware of how well he adapted in his first season in Sark's pro style offense, and how he was doing it all on his own with such a poor supporting cast.
This year, Locker's stock took a huge hit for that clunker he put up against one of the best defenses in the country against Nebraska, with his offensive line demolished, and his receivers getting literally ZERO seperation against the Husker DB's. He tried to do too much and ended up turning the ball over a few times. But it didn't matter anyway... Nebraska had tallied up almost 400 yards rushing on the ground before UW even knew what happened...
He had a bad game against UCLA because he shouldn't have been playing in the first place from cracking his ribs against Oregon St. only a month earlier. He toughed it out and played the next 2 games anyway because he's one helluva competitor and a tough son of a b*tch. He had to sit out against Oregon because of the ribs, he played against UCLA anyway while he was still hurting because Washington had to win their last 3 games to make a bowl game...
Led a game winning drive the next week against Cal on the road to win by 1....
Led another game winning drive the next week on the road to beat Washington St. and make the Huskies bowl eligible for the first time in 8 years...
Washington was supposed to get slaughtered again by Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl. While his passing stats don't look good in that game, he actually played a good game if you watched it... making the correct decisions by throwing the ball away on several occasions, and didn't turn the football over despite his receivers being completely outmatched again. Hell, go watch the tape. His receivers are literally getting pushed out of bounds before they can even get 10 yards downfield. It was a complete joke watching his receivers trying to go up against Amukamara and Alfonzo Dennard. Once again, Locker took a shot that would've sidelined most any other quarterback for the rest of the game... instead, he comes right back in the game and WILLS his team to a victory against a far superior team...
When you watch the tape of Locker, you realize that he never had a checkdown receiver the entire year. The tight end is huge in Sark's offense, and UW's only TE was kicked off the team before the season even began... and the backup quit during the season.
Locker's receivers dropped 41 passes this year (yes...41). Andrew Luck's receivers only dropped 17. If Locker's WR's had only dropped 17 passes, his completion % would've been right around 63%.
He never had time to let a play develope due to his offensive line being so poor. Washington used NINE different combinations on the offensive line this year trying to find the right guys. Which is why Sark obviously had him rolling out and executing bootlegs so often... it was essentially the only way to let a play develope and give Locker any chance of completing a pass...
He had no safety valve, and played half the year with a broken rib.. which caused his stats to suffer even more.
Jake Locker could've sat out with the injury and kept his draft stock high, but he wanted to play through it, and go out fighting.. he wanted his teammates to have a winning season... and that's exactly what he did.
He's been clutch, he led Washington on 3 game winning drives, plus an overtime victory this season, which is tops in the country...
You don't have to bow down to me... but if you're going to talk draft prospects, is it really too much to ask that you actually watch the kids play and know what the hell you're talking about?
If it is, then do us all a favor and leave your useless stat thumping for the main board in your attempts to justify passing on Matt Ryan... they're even more useless in here...
