Athlon Ranks Top 50 Players in SEC

[anon_7tbtqcx308nxh]

Melvin Lewis at #41 and Patrick Towles at #50.

The entire list can be found here.

 

[southindycat]

That is exactly the way that list should look given the age of our better players, but for the omission of Josh Forrest and AJ Stamps, who should check in near the end of the list.

 

[Blue Decade]

That is exactly the way that list should look given the age of our better players, but for the omission of Josh Forrest and AJ Stamps, who should check in near the end of the list.

I agree. But this list would look a lot different around Thanksgiving.

 

[WildCard]

I generally don't put a lot of stock in what Athlon says (check their #32) but I certainly have no argument with the top 2 names on that list. Chubb is the best RB I have seen since, well, maybe you-know-who at GA and Hargreaves is best cover corner I have seen in years. But let me ask this to those of you that know SEC football much better than I do...how is the untested Jeremy Johnson of AU the #2 QB and #16 player overall?

He was a 2013 Top 100 prospect and is playing for arguably the best offensive mind in the game. I get that. But over the past 2 years he has played in a total of just 11 games, completing 57 of 78 passes and has a ridiculous QBR in what I must assume was mainly mop up duty. Does that warrant being a Top 50 players in football's toughest conference? If you are going to look for the 50 best players in the SEC I don't think "potential" should have much to do with it when there are so many proven commodities. Yet, FWIW, Steele has Johnson on his #2 All SEC squad behind Prescott.

Peace

 

[hmt5000]

I generally don't put a lot of stock in what Athlon says (check their #32) but I certainly have no argument with the top 2 names on that list. Chubb is the best RB I have seen since, well, maybe you-know-who at GA and Hargreaves is best cover corner I have seen in years. But let me ask this to those of you that know SEC football much better than I do...how is the untested Jeremy Johnson of AU the #2 QB and #16 player overall?

He was a 2013 Top 100 prospect and is playing for arguably the best offensive mind in the game. I get that. But over the past 2 years he has played in a total of just 11 games, completing 57 of 78 passes and has a ridiculous QBR in what I must assume was mainly mop up duty. Does that warrant being a Top 50 players in football's toughest conference? If you are going to look for the 50 best players in the SEC I don't think "potential" should have much to do with it when there are so many proven commodities. Yet, FWIW, Steele has Johnson on his #2 All SEC squad behind Prescott.

Peace

I agree about auburn. They could be real good but it's all a guess right now. They will breaking in 5 jucos into starting rolls and have new starters at several other spots.

 

[TBCat]

I generally don't put a lot of stock in what Athlon says (check their #32) but I certainly have no argument with the top 2 names on that list. Chubb is the best RB I have seen since, well, maybe you-know-who at GA and Hargreaves is best cover corner I have seen in years. But let me ask this to those of you that know SEC football much better than I do...how is the untested Jeremy Johnson of AU the #2 QB and #16 player overall?

He was a 2013 Top 100 prospect and is playing for arguably the best offensive mind in the game. I get that. But over the past 2 years he has played in a total of just 11 games, completing 57 of 78 passes and has a ridiculous QBR in what I must assume was mainly mop up duty. Does that warrant being a Top 50 players in football's toughest conference? If you are going to look for the 50 best players in the SEC I don't think "potential" should have much to do with it when there are so many proven commodities. Yet, FWIW, Steele has Johnson on his #2 All SEC squad behind Prescott.

Peace

I don't have any problem rating people totally on potential. The problem I have is the inconsistent application of potential. If you are going to use potential as a reason then how in the world is Boom not on the list. Just on potential if he's given the carries he should easily be top 20 and possibly top 10. Still they don't rank Boom and they lower Towles ranking because they aren't proven but some how the Auburn QB makes it?

I also noticed their #32. This proves how worthless these lists really are. They first list the entire Arkansas line at #32 and then proceed to rank each member of the line individually as well. This is what happens when you have a list of top 50 players compiled by someone that doesn't have the depth of knowledge about the SEC to know the best players for each team. Someone with real depth of knowledge about the SEC would have to put Stamps and Forrest on that list somewhere. These guys should just stick to a top 10 list instead. That seems to be the limit to their credibility.

 

[PowellVolz]

If Josh Dobbs picks up where he left off last year he is no doubt a top 15 player.

 

[Grumpyolddawg]

I generally don't put a lot of stock in what Athlon says (check their #32) but I certainly have no argument with the top 2 names on that list. Chubb is the best RB I have seen since, well, maybe you-know-who at GA and Hargreaves is best cover corner I have seen in years. But let me ask this to those of you that know SEC football much better than I do...how is the untested Jeremy Johnson of AU the #2 QB and #16 player overall?

He was a 2013 Top 100 prospect and is playing for arguably the best offensive mind in the game. I get that. But over the past 2 years he has played in a total of just 11 games, completing 57 of 78 passes and has a ridiculous QBR in what I must assume was mainly mop up duty. Does that warrant being a Top 50 players in football's toughest conference? If you are going to look for the 50 best players in the SEC I don't think "potential" should have much to do with it when there are so many proven commodities. Yet, FWIW, Steele has Johnson on his #2 All SEC squad behind Prescott.

Peace

I think you give Gus too much credit, his offense is a basic option offense that he added a little twist too, a deeper route if you have to commit the S to stopping the dive. Stop the dive and AU's offense is in trouble. Johnson played a couple of series against us last year and we wore him out, sacked him a couple times, intercepted him, but that was Marshall's offense. He can't do the things Marshall could, but is a better passer, but against us he wasn't very elusive. He may be all they claim, but against us he looked like what he was, a backup getting mopup duty.

 

[WildCard]

I think you give Gus too much credit, his offense is a basic option offense that he added a little twist too, a deeper route if you have to commit the S to stopping the dive. Stop the dive and AU's offense is in trouble. Johnson played a couple of series against us last year and we wore him out, sacked him a couple times, intercepted him, but that was Marshall's offense. He can't do the things Marshall could, but is a better passer, but against us he wasn't very elusive. He may be all they claim, but against us he looked like what he was, a backup getting mopup duty.

Thanks for the response grumpy. I always enjoy your posts about all things SEC.

I have been reading up to try to get an idea of what to "expect" from AU but I don't get the impression they are a "dive option" type of team. They very much do want to run the ball between the tackles but it looks like that is more power off tackle (i.e., block down, pull/kick out type stuff) and maybe some inside zone stuff rather than inside read option (ala Wishbone/Veer and whatever GA Tech does). Then they go outside with some jet sweep, read option and reverse stuff. But I totally agree about the safety; you need to defend the run with 7.

In looking at some game clips I see Marshall was a very clever QB for what they are trying to do. But in looking back at his time in D1 football I think Malzahn has done an excellent job of tailoring his offense to whatever his QB can do best.

Peace