It was really weird watching the Bengals play the Titans in the NFL Playoffs this weekend.
I don’t really care about the Bengals. I definitely don’t care about the Titans. But I still had a vested interest in seeing Cincinnati win because I’ve been following Joe Burrow for so long at this point.
Back in May of 2018, I called him “the most important recruit of the Dan Mullen era” and considering what he became and how 2019 was Florida’s best defense under the Mullen/Grantham regime, I think I (at least for that one) got it right.
That came to mind again when Bud Elliott tweeted this about Burrow after the game.
Without the transfer portal, is Joe Burrow in the NFL? How many stud talents over the years before transfers were common , especially at QB, went to go sell insurance because they didn't get picked to be the starter?
— Bud Elliott (@BudElliott3) January 23, 2022
I think that’s probably unlikely. Usually the best QBs get to play eventually. In the case of Burrow, he would have been able to transfer and play at least a year after losing the QB competition to Dwayne Haskins, or would have been able to win the job after Haskins left following the 2018 season.
But it’s still a great question.
Are there players who are being overlooked right now at the college level who are going to become elite? Or are there recruits who are being overlooked for some reason that a smart staff heavy on analytics – you know, like the one that Billy Napier is building at Florida – would be able to target and develop?
And that brings us to the question I’ve been asked most this week on Twitter: what do I think about the Gators targeting Lincoln High School (Tulsa, OK) 3-star QB prospect Max Brown?
How to analyze high school QBs
Lost in the analysis of how coaches missed that Burrow would become BURROW is the reason I thought he would become a star: his completion percentage.
Burrow was a 4-star recruit, but he wasn’t a can’t-miss prospect. There are plenty of guys ranked in the 250-350 range every year who don’t pan out. I wrote just a few weeks ago that I suspect new Gators QB transfer Jack Miller is going to be more of a backup than be able to replicate Burrow’s path.
The thing about Burrow was that his high school stats were otherworldly. He didn’t play at a small school or against significantly lesser opponents than his Ohio peers (Athens high school makes honorable mention on the 25 most dominant Ohio public high school football programs).
But his athleticism didn’t jump off the film, nor did his arm. He still doesn’t have a cannon. In fact, that was my biggest concern for him making the jump to the NFL, where you have to fit the ball into much tighter windows.
But he was as close to a sure thing as I’d ever seen from a high school perspective because here’s what the stats told us.
- Burrow wasn’t dinking and dunking – He averaged 12.8 yards per attempt his senior year in high school (11.7 his entire career). He was throwing the ball down the field with success.
- Burrow reads defenses well – He had a 68.6 percent completion percentage in his three years as a starter and a 72.3 percent completion percentage his senior year. You don’t get to that percentage by “fitting the ball in” if you’re not dinking and dunking.
The thought process here is pretty simple. The high completion percentage didn’t just come from being accurate, but also from throwing the ball continuously to the right spot. Receivers at the high school (and college level) can almost always beat one-on-one coverage, so if you can identify where to go with the ball, you should have a higher margin for error on every throw.
You could see that when you looked at Burrow’s film, both in high school but also in his limited playing time at Ohio State. He went to the right place with the ball almost all the time. The only time he got in trouble was when he got pressured and tried to fit the ball in.
I think this analysis holds for most high school evaluations of quarterbacks. I have shown previously that completion percentage translates pretty closely from high school to college. But I think the thing that was missing from that analysis was the conclusion from bullet point one above.
The thing that made Burrow special was that he wasn’t dinking and dunking. Luke Del Rio – who was in a long line of forgettable QBs for the Gators – completed 70.2 percent of his throws his senior year of high school.
The issue was that Del Rio only averaged 8.9 yards per attempt that season, and he only completed 55.2 percent of his throws the year prior (8.0 yards per attempt). So what you had was someone padding his accuracy numbers with a bunch of swing passes and check-downs.
That doesn’t mean Del Rio shouldn’t have started over Feleipe Franks in 2017. But it does mean that any expectation that he was going to be a savior was misguided given his track record prior to arriving in Gainesville.
What does this mean for Max Brown?
I suspect Billy Napier’s staff knows this statistical analysis is a big part of evaluating QBs. They probably have more in-depth numbers, but the idea that they would be evaluating decision-making rather than just pure arm strength makes sense for two reasons.
First, decision-making seems to translate to success much more than pure measurable. But second, at places like Louisiana, you don’t get 5-star recruits who have every physical tool you could dream about. You have to find QBs who make the most with what they have.
Coming into Gainesville just 10 days before early signing day meant that the big QBs were already off the board. So Napier had to make a decision about going after big-time names in the transfer portal or trying to find a diamond in the rough.
Going after a player in the portal who was a stud (and would expect playing time) would have risked alienating Gators QB Anthony Richardson (and the Florida fan base). But focusing on bringing in a 3-star QB to ensure depth at the position who could potentially build into more makes a lot of sense.
That’s doubly true if Napier has managed to make any inroads with an elite signal caller (cough…Arch Manning…cough) for the 2023 class. You want that player to see a clear runway to playing time as well.
That’s why Napier’s interest in Tulsa’s Max Brown makes a lot of sense. Brown officially visited the Gators on January 21 and while he is committed to Central Michigan, he does have offers from Washington and Temple as well. That isn’t someone you stake your program on, but fits the profile that I mentioned above, particularly when you look at his high school stats.
Max Brown high school stats in 2020 and 2021, courtesy of Maxpreps.com.
These are not quite Burrow-level numbers. But they are more in that direction than they are towards the numbers I cited above for Del Rio. Almost 12 yards per attempt his senior year suggests going downfield quite a bit with an elite completion percentage.
He also was able to run the ball well, averaging 7.8 yards per carry and 1343 yards total on the ground his senior year.
So what it that has Brown as a low 3-star recruit?
Are the knocks on Brown fair?
The big knock on Brown as a prospect is the level of competition he has played against.
While Burrow played for Athens High School – a big-time Ohio school – Brown has played at Lincoln Christian School, a 3A school in Oklahoma. What 3A means is that there are 96 schools in the state bigger than his at the higher levels in the state.
Oklahoma is known for success in college football, but that’s not necessarily because elite football talent is oozing out of the high schools in the area like some other states. Bleacher Report had Oklahoma ranked 23rd back in 2017 for high school talent. Perhaps not coincidently, Texas was ranked first and that’s where a bunch of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State’s players hail from.
So what we have is a state where the big-time programs have to go outside the state for a bulk of their players overlooking a player who is an hour drive from Stillwater (Oklahoma State) and a two hour drive from Norman (Oklahoma). It makes sense that there would be some trepidation about a player like Brown only having offers from schools like CMU.
This manifests itself in a few different ways. This looks like a great play. After all, it turned into a TD run where Brown had to juke all over the field to get there. But you and I both know you can’t do that in the SEC.
The thing that Brown missed was that when Lincoln motioned its running back, nobody went with him. That screams zone defense at the linebacker level. Sure enough, that’s exactly what he got, meaning that Brown had his slot receiver one-on-one with the safety with a ton of space in front of him.
This should be an easy TD throw. Instead, you can see Brown think about throwing it, but then decide to pull the ball and run. This is about the easiest throw you’ll get in the SEC and he’ll have to learn to pull the trigger because this is a 2-yard gain in college.
You can say the same thing about this next play.
The safeties start this play so wide that Brown should know that his opponents are doubling his receiver at the bottom of the screen. What that means is that he’s going to have single coverage on his three receivers on the wide side of the field, including one on a deep safety (the red arrow).
Brown completes this to who I’d have to assume is his most dangerous weapon. It ends up as a touchdown. But he ignored a wide open receiver in the flat with a favorable matchup to go over the top. Again, you can do this in high school, but you’re going to get burned throwing into double coverage in the SEC.
But it’s not all bad for Brown.
On this play, Brown should see that based on the alignment of the defense, they have three cover guys for two receivers. Two of the defenders take his receiver running the post down the middle (an easier throw). Brown is able to step into the throw and deliver a laser for a touchdown.
Not only did he throw the ball to the correct receiver here, but he also threw a rope that prevented the defender from having time to adjust. This is a big-time throw.
Takeaway
Browns stats are really encouraging.
He clearly isn’t afraid of throwing downfield and also clearly is accurate when he decides to do so. The film tells a slightly different story though, because his receivers are getting open even against double coverage, which means he hasn’t yet had to become adept at reading defenses.
Normally you could say I was cherry picking plays and you would be correct. But the problem is that I’m cherry picking plays from a highlight tape of the best that Brown has to offer.
Normally I see stats like Brown’s and assume he is being overlooked because of size or arm strength. That’s not the case here as Brown stands 6’3” and 200 pounds, and the film seems to suggest that he has plenty of arm to make any throw you’d want to make in the SEC.
Instead, the film seems to show that he is going to be more of a developmental prospect than his statistics suggest. I don’t think he’d be able to get away with what I saw on his highlight tapes against elite Oklahoma talent, which means coming to Florida is going to be a major adjustment.
None of that means that Brown can’t be a good QB for the Gators, but it does suggest that he is a developmental prospect. Of course, that’s exactly what you’d expect from a 3-star recruit ranked 1728th overall in the country.
And it’s also likely a reason that Florida didn’t offer him until just now.
Napier is going to have to start squeezing out current Gators as he brings in more recruits and/or transfers in this cycle due to scholarship limitations. Depending on how many players are actually planning on leaving either after signing day or after spring practice likely will determine how many developmental prospects the Gators can decide to take.
I think Brown is worth taking a risk on so long as you acknowledge that he’s a developmental prospect and that the decision about whether to offer Brown really comes down to value.
There’s value in having a skilled player at the position to add depth who has starter-upside. There’s value in having someone who isn’t so high profile that they’re going to transfer elsewhere if they don’t play right away. There’s value in having someone ranked at a level that they won’t scare off elite 2023 prospects.
But there’s also value in a scholarship, and Napier has now decided that the value of filling a 2022 roster spot with a QB is worth the trade-off of a player he’ll need to jettison.
The ONE Thing
I’ve been reading a book by Gary Keller recently called “The ONE Thing.”
The premise of the book is that being successful is tied to narrowing your concentration to one thing, and then building on that thing over time. It’s an interesting concept to think about both as Billy Napier builds the program, but also as I work on this website in the time I can carve out away from my family and work.
But I’m not bringing this up just to talk about focus and discipline. I’m bringing it up because it’s a great example of what brought me to exploring – and eventually committing to – Christianity. Keller has a lot of examples of social scientists and the research that they’ve done regarding multitasking, discipline, willpower and the like.
But what struck me as I was reading the book was that it motivated me not because of the scientific studies or because it was introducing some new and novel concept, but that it reinforced a concept that was written in the Bible thousands of years ago.
When I was just starting to explore my faith, people tended to point to the Gospels as a place to start, particularly with John. I can’t say that’s necessarily a bad place to start as it does outline the core tenets of the faith.
But for those who have scientific backgrounds or struggle with miracles, might I suggest instead starting with the book of Nehemiah.
Nehemiah is unique in biblical terms in that it doesn’t include any miracles. It also has less to do with faith specifically than it has to do with finding your purpose. The first chapter shows Nehemiah’s heart being broken at his homeland of Jerusalem being under attack, and then the exact moment where he decides to do something about it.
My favorite line is when he, in fact, does decide to do something about Jerusalem’s situation. After weeping and praying, he states the following, “I was the cupbearer to the king.”
For a long time, the use of the past tense in that phrase confused me. I wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at. But after 40 years on this earth, I think I get it.
Nehemiah figured out his purpose in the moment he was moved to do something about a situation that broke his heart. Then, he spent the entire rest of the story focusing on that one thing to fulfill his purpose.
He couldn’t have known what hung in the balance. Nearly 500 years later, Jesus would come riding through that wall on a donkey. That wasn’t Nehemiah’s intent, but it’s amazing how fulfilling your purpose has that sort of ripple effect.
But that ripple effect still exists. Had I just trusted Nehemiah’s story, I wouldn’t have needed to read Keller’s book. But I’m glad I did because reinforcement that the scientific literature backs up those ancient teachings gives me even more confidence in their veracity.
And it also reminds me that you never know what sort of ripple effect will come downstream from you fulfilling your purpose.
YouTube Articles
The response to last week’s article done on YouTube was overwhelming positive, so I’m doing it again for this one. If you’d like to check it out, head over to our Read & Reaction YouTube Channel and check it out!
