40 Acres Sports

Texas needs a big 2013 from David Ash.

Big things are coming for Texas in 2013: Especially for Junior quarterback David Ash. I’m not calling for an improvement over his sophomore campaign. I’m calling for a transformative season. A season in which each and every one of us has to applaud and give credit where it is due. A season that will require Ash to be mentioned in the same conversation as (gasp!) Layne, Street, Applewhite, Young, and the McCoy (the good one, not the amateur film maker).

Yes. You’re correct — you just read that.

Colt McCoy left Texas as the winningest college quarterback of all time. His junior and senior seasons were two of the best ever by a Texas passer. Check out McCoy’s stats for a reminder of just how great he was in his career and his two Heisman finalist seasons:

Here’s where I feel Ash will be for the upcoming season. Yes, his predicted passing total of 4,014 yards surpasses McCoy’s best year of 3,859 yards (2008). The 36 touchdown prediction also surpasses McCoy’s best year of 34 (2008). This is where I get crazy, the point where if you had yet to question my sanity-you begin to. I think Ash out rushes McCoy’s best year as well. I should be on medication and a strong dose of it, correct? Ash will come away with a grand total of 780 yards and 9 rushing touchdowns. That total surpasses McCoy’s best season on the ground (561 yards in 2008), but falls short in the number of touchdowns (11, in 2008). It also surpasses the best single-season passing yardage and touchdown totals of Vince Young in 2004 (3036 yards/26 touchdowns), Chris Simms in 2002 (3357 yards/ 21 touchdowns), and Major Applewhite in 1999 (3357 yards/21 touchdowns).

Check out my predictions for each game in 2013:

This would be a monumental season for Ash and the Longhorns. An 11-1 record places them at the top of the heap come play-off time and poised to fight it out for a national championship. Quarterbacks over time have shown the most growth between their sophomore and junior seasons. It will be interesting to see how well Ash performs when he has an Offensive Coordinator that will make it imperative to get the ball to his best play makers in areas where they can maximize their abilities. No more multiple shifts and personnel groupings.

Yes, I am pumping sunshine. Bask in it. Soak it in.

I can’t wait to see the first time the Longhorns come out 4 wide with Jaxon Shipley, Mike Davis, Daje Johnson, and Cayleb Jones and either Jonathan Gray or Malcolm Brown in the backfield.

How do you cover that?

Whose the poor linebacker tasked with keeping up with Johnson or Gray/Brown?

Feel free to let me know just how crazy you think I am in the comments below. I’m sure many of you will have something witty to say. I will be more than happy to eat crow if I’m off base and rest assured I will say “I told you so!” if given the opportunity.

Here’s to hoping I get to do that a minimum of 12 times next year.

Great early coverage of Texas football moving on from Colt McCoy to new quarterback Garrett Gilbert from ESPN. Read Ivan Maisel’s excellent article on Gilbert with quotes from Texas coach Mack Brown, McCoy, and current teammates, and then be sure watch the video of on the story.

Link: Texas moves on with Garrett Gilbert

According to ESPN blogger Tim Griffin, Garrett Gilbert’s job may be the toughest in the Big 12 for 2010…

Texas QB Colt McCoy: He leaves school as the most statistically proficient quarterback in school history, although his career will forever be marked by his near misses in the Heisman Trophy balloting over the past two seasons and his injury in his final college game against Alabama. Garrett Gilbert will be facing some big shoes to replace when Texas practice starts later this month.

Read the full top 5 biggest shoes to fill.

The Statesman ranks the top Texas quarterbacks of all time. Where does Colt McCoy rank?

Link: McCoy needs to win a title before topping the likes of legends Young, Street.

Texas quarterback Colt McCoy can work on his footwork to further improve his accuracy.

Yes, Texas quarterback [tag]Colt McCoy[/tag] was the most accurate passer in the history of NCAA football last season, but a completion doesn’t always mean a perfect pass. ESPN draft guru Todd McShay has a few small changes the McCoy can make to get even more accurate and improve his draft stock this season:

McCoy completed a ridiculous 76.7 percent of his pass attempts in 2008. As crazy as it sounds, there’s no question he can become more accurate by polishing his mechanics.

First off, McCoy has gotten into a bad habit of short-striding many of his passes, which leads to him throwing off-balance. Secondly, he needs to be more consistent with his follow-through as he tries to sling the ball too many times from off his back foot.

After studying McCoy’s passing skills on film, his deep-ball accuracy is underwhelming and he completes a lot of intermediate attempts that take his receivers out of stride. Sure, it goes in the stat book as a completion, but McCoy is leaving too many yards after catch on the field by missing within the strike zone.

The only way McCoy will improve in those areas is by learning to step to his target, lengthen out his stride and follow through on his throws.

If you’re an ESPN Insider read the full article to read more about McCoy and also McShay’s ideas on how fellow Heisman finalists Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow can improve their games.

Lake Travis' Garrett Gilbert will continue the spread quarterback lineage at Texas.

ESPN has several excellent articles this week on the spread offense in college football and some on it’s origins as well. Their articles feature Longhorn QB’s all over, from several generations. They think the perfect spread quarterback starts with Colt McCoy’s accurate arm and their history article gives a lot of love to future Horn [tag]Garrett Gilbert[/tag] and former Horn and current UNT coach [tag]Todd Dodge[/tag].

ESPN Spread Offense Articles

• Spread concepts around for decades
• Spread traces its roots to Depression-era Texas high school football
• Who runs the spread offense?
• Defending the spread offense
• Andre Ware: ABC’s of the spread
• Crosshairs: Building a spread quarterback
• The 10 most dangerous spread offense QBs (*)
• Is 7-On craze helping?

The 2005 recruiting season was an up and down one for the Texas Longhorns full of hits and big misses. Nothing had a bigger impact on the future of Texas football than the roller coaster ride that was Ryan Perrilloux. Perrilloux eventually decommitted (after months of lies) leaving the Horns with only a unheralded 3-star QB named [tag]Colt McCoy[/tag]. Guess that turned out alright after all.

Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated takes an interesting look back at the 2005 quarterback class and finds a lot of busts and only a few stars, of course including our own McCoy. Bill Walsh and [tag]Greg Davis[/tag] have a hypothesis on why QB recruiting is full of so many misses, too much focus on arm strength:

Texas offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Greg Davis says most talent evaluators put too much emphasis on a quarterback’s arm strength. Several years ago, while coaching in the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco, Davis got to sit with 49ers legend Bill Walsh at a dinner. He asked Walsh the most important qualities he had identified in the many successful QBs he drafted.

“He didn’t hesitate,” said Davis. “No. 1, he said: ‘Accuracy.’ Then he talked about athletic ability, intelligence. Way, way down on the list was arm strength.”

Davis knows well the importance of digging beyond the recruiting rankings. During his and head coach Mack Brown’s 11-year tenure in Austin, the Longhorns have signed two QBs who were No. 1 in their class — [tag]Chris Simms[/tag] (1999) and [tag]Vince Young[/tag] (2002) — and originally received a commitment from Perrilloux.

However, they found their current star quarterback — three-year starter and 2008 Heisman runner-up Colt McCoy — tucked away at a small school in rural Tuscola, Texas. In the ’05 class, McCoy — then listed at 6-foot-1, 180 pounds — was ranked just 15th among pro-style QBs, behind Pittsburgh’s Bill Stull, Notre Dame’s Evan Sharpley and Wisconsin’s Dustin Sherer, among others.

Source

Okay he doesn’t suck, but Tennessee Titans’ current starting quarterback Kerry Collins isn’t better than average either. Peter Bean of Burnt Orange Nation takes a Music City Miracles article where they finally realized that Collins wasn’t actually having a “fantastic” season and does an excellent job stating the obvious: The Titans need to start playing Vince Young and do it in a hurry.

Some really cool stats from ESPN’s Big 12 blog on how [tag]Colt McCoy[/tag] and his fantastic 2008 season stack up against the best all-time seasons by Texas quarterbacks. Five games into the season, Colt’s QB rating is by far the highest and his total touchdowns are eight more than [tag]Vince Young[/tag] in 2005. The stats are also a reminder of just how good Major Applewhite’s 1999 season was. Check them out below:

ESPN has up a great write up from Ivan Maisel on the talented crop of Big 12 quarterbacks as well as a poll to rank them.

Maisel thinks Texas signal caller [tag]Colt McCoy[/tag] is the fourth best QB in the conference behind Chase Daniel, Graham Harrell, and Sam Bradford. I can’t argue with the top two but I think Kansas’ Todd Reesing and McCoy could be in the top 3 but Bradford deserves consideration as well.

Currently in the fan vote Daniel is leading with McCoy at number 5. If you don’t like the list go vote in their SportsNation poll and order them yourself.