I think it's bball fans that have the weird opinion that winning at football hurts bball. So they would rather have a 4 win football team to help the bball team. They honestly think this way.
Mertz > Leary, IMO
- Thread starter Philstat
- Start date
It's gotta be something mechanics-wise that's holding Leary back. Footwork or something. If he still wasn't 100 percent, as has been suggested, he'd have a noticeably weak arm and would be looking for dumpoffs at every opportunity. Instead, he's air-mailing throws and zipping lasers over guys' heads 10 yards away when it's totally unnecessary to. There was a play today where Robinson was wide open in the flats and the ball looked like it was shot out of a cannon.
Maybe the offensive coaches and him and watch film and figure something out.
Maybe the offensive coaches and him and watch film and figure something out.
Would be nice to actually get elite QB’s out of HS and not some of these 12th year seniors. 🤷♂️
I'm seeing a lot of CJ Fredrick in Leary.
Hard to tell what his ceiling is post injury and you kinda have to question how good he was pre injury.
ACC football is not SEC football.
Right now Leary is a bottom 3 QB in the SEC.
I don't know if he has the ability to go higher.
Hard to tell what his ceiling is post injury and you kinda have to question how good he was pre injury.
ACC football is not SEC football.
Right now Leary is a bottom 3 QB in the SEC.
I don't know if he has the ability to go higher.
Leary is not as good as advertised but we are 5 and 0 so I am not going to knock anyone on the team.
Who won the game? Some of you guys completely miss the point of the competition consistently.
It’s not about just this game, we want to compete for championships, not just be satisfied with beating Florida. We aren’t competing with the big teams with Leary. Hopefully he proves me wrong but I’m doubting it at this point.
Yes, Mertz hit a lot of short stuff that did not do much damage and he is good at throwing on the run which he had to do a lot of, again which did not do much damage.
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"Let's see, we're 5-0 stomped a ranked Florida squad, let's see how I can poop on out team......."
And the part that I'm missing is that Coen said the big reason that he came back was because of Leary (money might have something to do with it also)
If people rewatch the game without all of the emotion attached and the sound off they should see things differently.
Started out fine.
Had some drops.
Had some throws where he was being overcautious.
Had some throws where the receiver misread the coverage and thus ran the wrong route, one if the receiver turned upfield slightly might have been a TD.
Had defenders in his face on some.
Couple overthrown.
1or2 seemed behind the receiver, but may also have been misreads.
Bottom line-
He didn't hurt us.
Didn't lose his sht (composure)
Got the ball out quickly.
DIDNT scramble unnecessarily into the rush.
(Stayed in the pocket better)
This young man has NEVER been under center in his career like he has HERE. It's coming together for him now, and it's impressive to see his development game to game
Work in progress
Started out fine.
Had some drops.
Had some throws where he was being overcautious.
Had some throws where the receiver misread the coverage and thus ran the wrong route, one if the receiver turned upfield slightly might have been a TD.
Had defenders in his face on some.
Couple overthrown.
1or2 seemed behind the receiver, but may also have been misreads.
Bottom line-
He didn't hurt us.
Didn't lose his sht (composure)
Got the ball out quickly.
DIDNT scramble unnecessarily into the rush.
(Stayed in the pocket better)
This young man has NEVER been under center in his career like he has HERE. It's coming together for him now, and it's impressive to see his development game to game
Work in progress
Regardless of how he played at his last school vs,. how he has to play in this system, he has an 8 game college career in front of him.
He has to get it together quickly.
There's no "he's still young" or " next year"
I guess where we disagree is his game to game development.
I haven't seen him improve from game to game.
Lol, dude you’re obviously the one wound up. And show me where I said we should bench anyone. Gaslighting just shows you’re pissed and really have no argument. Like I said, if you don’t want to discuss poor QB play, why even click on the thread? You realize it’s ok if people discuss things you don’t want discussed right?
Honestly both arguments are true. Our receivers and quarterback have been at best average. So hopefully room for lots of improvement. If the receivers start catching balls that are well thrown and our quarterback stops sailing the occasional ball then we have better than average play from both. Numbers look much better and everyone feels a little better. But what we need are receivers who can also catch an an off target ball to make our quarterback feel like he doesn’t have to be perfect, which takes pressure off and makes him more confident. A great receiver always makes the quarterback look better than he is. We all hoped we had 1-2 of those on this squad. So far it’s not materialized. I keep hoping they will speed the game up a little to give Leary a chance to get in a rhythm because he came from a quicker pace offense but as of now I doubt that will happen. All in all it just takes a few less drops and a few less errant throws and we will all be happy. Because then that stat line goes from 9/20 to 15/23 and double+ receiving yards and probably another touchdown. We just have to hope that that’s what we get going forward.
Much more upside for Leary. Mertz doesn’t have the arm strength. And yes arm strength is important. You have a point but it won’t play out that way.
Respectfully you're Crazy! Leary isn't the challenge right now, it's the Receivers [in this case 2 in particular}. They get it figured out along with the OL/TE Blocking combo, Sky is the limit!
Don't worry about Leary! We forced Mertz to Beatus===How did that workout?
This, but he missed at least 5 targets wide open yesterday. The opening field goal should have been a TD twice. Leary, Key and Brown need to pick it up asap! Key and Brown need this...
You can say 5-0. Leary missed most of last season with an injury. His arm slot is messed up and some of the throws are sailing. If I can see that, Coen can. It is correctable. Some of you guys are so relentlessly negative that it has become comical.
If brown and key and the other receivers don’t drop passes they should catch every week then Leary is sitting at 65-66% completion percentage and probably only 2 picks. The vandy pick last week and the one week one were his fault, the other 3 were bad luck. Leary isn’t playing to level he should but he also has a lot of factors out of his control not helping him
Mertz isn’t a winner. Throws a bunch of dinks. He couldn’t get it done out of the gate
LOL! It IS about the game. Our coaches and players take one game at a time, and they know what they are doing.
We are 5-0, but some of you poor people still can't understand what that entails. We all want championships. Are you blind to the progress that has been and is being made?
No team is perfect. Every team has issues to address. If you think AL, GA, and TN don't have issues to address, you haven't been watching. How would you like to be a FL or SCar fan this morning?
I will give you the answer on Leary. Believe me or don't. Leary missed most of the 2022 season and needed an operation. Now his arm slot is messed up, and his two starting WRs have dropped about 10 passes they should have caught. If you know anything about football, you can see for yourself this is the case.
No need to diss Mertz. We won the game.
Mertz had a very good game yesterday considering he had D'Eryk Jackson and Deone Walker in his jersey all day. I watched Mertz in their opener against UT and, trust me, he isn't getting adequate protection when FL plays against good defenses. Mertz is a respectable player but FL's season is in trouble.
Whereas UK's season looks very promising but Leary is still struggling to get his arm slot right. When Leary sets his feet and gets his shoulders squared, some of his throws have been excellent (although some of those have been dropped). When Leary turns to his right or runs laterally, his arm slot is dropping and some of those throws are sailing. Coach Coen obviously knows this, but our coaches aren't going to explain Leary's problems publicly.
Leary hasn’t been good,
But mertz is worse. He can only throw dump offs, that’s the only reason he has a high completion percentage. Leary isn’t getting any help from his WRs
Both of those statements are fair. However, Mertz just is way closer to passing the eye test. Leary has thrown a lot of really bad balls.
I like Leary and think his best is ahead of him, but he has definitely thrown some passes that are real head-scratchers.
That’s by design. Florida only trusting him to throw certain passes should tell a lot, every big pass he got was because the play broke down and our defense got scrambled. They got 14 points because he got lucky and somehow got out of 2 sacks. On Leary, I will 100 percent agree that he needs to start playing better football and some of the passes he makes are head scratchers for sure. But I would rather have Leary than mertz
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FL receivers got open 8-10 yds down the field and Mertz found them when he had time. I’m not a big Leary fan, YET. He’s got to get better with his accuracy. Our receivers haven’t helped him on the slightly misdirected throws, but Leary and Key have to get it figured out.
Florida got lucky on two plays that kept drive’s going, without them they probably get shut out.
The passing game definitely has some warts, but it’s not all on Leary! We’ve had several dropped passes in every game this season. I don’t know what is going on with the receivers. The Cats can be potent if they figure the passing game out. Can’t rely on Ray Davis every game!
The Key miss doesn't bother me too bad. Even great pro QB's will have a pass sail on them in the endzone occasionally. That BB drop was infuriating. Leary put that exactly where it needed to be and he just dropped it like it bit him.
I'm going to trust Van Hiles, Rembrandt, and Coach Coen over you. At some point, when people who are more knowledgeable than you come to a consensus, you gotta listen.
Leary ain't garbage. He has work to do, sure, but so do we all.
Him having the highest drop rate should tell a lot to people. You take that and his percentage goes to around 65 percent maybe even better, and he has more TD passes. He is missing throws he shouldn’t but his receivers are dropping some easy plays
It doesn’t take a football guru to see the obvious. I have played and coached football my whole life, and Leary doesn’t have what it takes to win championships. That’s our objective, right? Or are we watering down expectations again this year? If you are satisfied with 7-6 seasons and Music City Bowl victories, that’s cool, most of us aren’t tho.
