JT Daniels Is A Coach

I wish him nothing but the best. Him and Eason both did things the right way after losing their jobs primarily due to injury. They both got healthy around mid-year but were firmly on the bench at that point, never complained, never pouted, just continued being great teammates and supporting the team then quietly transferred AFTER the season was over. Compare their situations to someone like Justin Fields and it's easy to root for guys like that.

And on another note, he was maybe the best deep ball thrower I can recall at UGA in a long, long time. It felt like every time he threw a long bomb it was perfectly in stride with the receiver.

Not every ball instride but JT was the master of not overthrowing the ball. Many times Pickens had to slow down and adjust but those passes are very high percentage. JT had the quickest release I've seen, necessary because of his lack of athleticism.

Our offense never scored against Clemson in 2021 but injured JT toughed out that game and set us on path to our first natty in 41 years. DGD

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Aaron Murray and Stetson Bennett (2021) can make a great argument that they were better than JT at the deep ball.

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I'm genuinely curious how many of our games you've watched lately because probably the biggest knock on stetson's game is his inability ot hit a deep receive in stride. Not saying he's never done it of course, but I can't even begin to count the times we've had to have some slow down almost to a jog to wait on one of his. Go watch any full season 2021 highlight reel and even on TD throws you'll see Arian, Pickens, and Burton constantly having to put on the brakes. There is truly no way whatsoever that stetson threw a "better" deep ball in 2021 than JT did in 2020.

I would say stetson was better for sure.

Well he did have a terrible interception in that game actually, but I get your point.

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He was good. Better than Stafford.
But I never thought he was great at the deep ball. Aaron Murray and Stetson Bennett (2021) can make a great argument that they were better than JT at the deep ball.

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As I read this I thought, "Someone will jump on this and say Bennett couldn't throw a deep ball." Didn't take long either.

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If you watch 2021, you would actually find that Stetson was the only player to ever hit Smith in stride. JT Daniels couldn't do it ever in the same season.

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that's great, but isn't the topic. If the topic was "which QBs in 2021 hit arian smith in stride" or "Did JT daniels hit arian smiht in stride in 2021" then you may have something. But it's comparing JT in 2020 and steton in 2021. Hell, Arian's first TD of his career was an "in stride" ball with 40 air yard for a TD against SC: LINK

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. Stetson's deep ball accuracy in 2021 was near elite.
2021 finished with 10.0 yards per attempt and 16 passing TDs outside the redzone.

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Utterly meaningless to the topic. He could have finished with 40 YPA and 50 TDs outside the red zone and it wouldn't speak to the point of the discussion. To my knowledge there isn't even a metric to measure this other than using your eyes and watching. There were dozens of times in 2021 where we would COMPLETE a long ball, so it goes down int he stats as a long reception, where the receiver was multiple steps past his guy but had to stop and go for a jump ball instead of simply continuing to run, because it was underthrown.

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Utterly meaningless to the topic. He could have finished with 40 YPA and 50 TDs outside the red zone and it wouldn't speak to the point of the discussion. To my knowledge there isn't even a metric to measure this other than using your eyes and watching. There were dozens of times in 2021 where we would COMPLETE a long ball, so it goes down int he stats as a long reception, where the receiver was multiple steps past his guy but had to stop and go for a jump ball instead of simply continuing to run, because it was underthrown.

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Stetson Bennett was top 3 in the country in completion percentage over 30 yards in 2021.
I don't have the stat as it was on one of the pay sites.
The knock on Stetson was that he rarely threw the ball over 30 yards downfield in the air in 2021. It was the Connor Shaw effect where Stetson was supremely efficient inside 20 yards and supremely efficient against man coverage the one or two throws downfield a game in 2021.
I keep throwing out 2021, because Stetson was not as efficient on those downfield throws in 2022.

In 2021, Stetson was throwing to green grass and killing defenses that had man coverage.
In 2022, he was fitting tight zone windows but struggled significantly more against man.

Too many injuries.

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Fromm lived off the sideline throw or back shoulder pass. Stet had the arm but seemed to either under or overthrow the long ones. IIRC a lot of his long completions were to guy cutting open downfield…not running deep. We made the catches a lot of times but rarely in stride so they could keep running to the EZ. JT was as good as any but had a small body of work.

Am I misremembering this?

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Statistically, Murray and Stetson are the best deep ball throwers. JT wasn't that good in terms of consistency.

Murray had Tavarres King (3 seasons), AJ Green (1 season), and smaller contributions from Chris Conley/Malcolm Mitchell/Justin Scott Wesley.

Stetson had Jermaine Burton, Ladd McConkey, and AD Mitchell with smaller contributions from Arian Smith/James Cook/Kenny McIntosh.

To be fair to JT, he only had George Pickens to go deep to and a healthy Arian Smith in the Peach Bowl against Cincy.
It really is not fair to a QB to measure the deep ball without acknowledging the need for someone to go out there and get it.

I was disappointed with Carson's deep ball efficiency last season. It felt like a bunch of near misses. But Stetson improved over his weaknesses in 2022. And I'm optimistic that Carson will see similar improvement driving the ball downfield and in the red zone.