JSeahawks":1puy4aks said:
Interesting list. I'm not going to argue because its all in the eye of the beholder and there's no wrong or right answer. I do disagree with you on Barkley though. I dont understand how you can say he handled adversity better then anybody when he was the quarterback of the 1st ever preseason number 1 team to end up unranked. To me thats failing as soon as adversity hit.
Oh come now, that's lame and you should know better.
First, football is a team game. You can't blame a QB wholesale for a teams record. If I blamed anyone, it would be their coaching staff. Biggest "less with more" staff in the Pac-12.
Second, you might recall that I thought USC was vastly overrated in the preseason and thought Oregon was going to have a far better season. I predicted USC would have at least 3 losses.
Third, the only reason they were so over-rated to begin with was because they were so good to end the prior season. And why was that? It was because Barkley was white hot. Unsustainably white hot, but he was on a serious tear nonetheless.
What I mean by adversity is having to lead a team back to win a game even when most of the rest of the team is trying it's hardest to lose you the game. Their defense was a joke last season, and their pass protection wasn't much better. It was a little like Jake Locker's situation at UW, but with more talent at WR.
Russell Wilson is incredible. But he still lost 3 games playing for a LOADED Wisconsin team that year. He lost six games playing for a LOADED Seahawks team this year. You can't just assume that great QB = almost never losing. And USC was hardly a good team last year. I don't care what their rivals star rankings says. UW was kicking USC's ass in the 2nd half and probably would have won if not for Keith Price fumbling the game away with 3 turnovers in the 4th quarter. Many times that year, (including that game) I saw Barkley lead a sinking ship to wins. They better really hope that Max Browne is ready, because that team could threaten a losing record in 2013 at the rate that roster is underachieving.
Generally speaking, if you are evaluating a QB by wins, you stepped way off the reservation. I could name many fantastic winners in college that were horrible prospects. I believe David Greene was and might still be the winningest QB at Georgia. Then you have Tim Tebow, Colin Klein, etc.
As far as Luck, he was in an extremely favorable situation at Stanford. He had a great defense and an all-universe O-line and probably the best group of TEs in college football. When he was rarely thrown into adverse situations, and it was really really rare, the cracks in his game quickly showed. It's not surprising to me at all that he struggled with incompletions and interceptions this year. He's throws a very pretty pass and is clutch, but he's not Mr. Amazing like people think.