Georgia Southern Recruiting

[Yosef10]

LOL

[Rekdiver]

Thank you for taking a light hearted joke and assuming it was confrontational. It wasn't about you (or anyone specifically). It was actually about grown men not bad mouthing 17 year old recruits (ie, being a d*ck) on a message board.

In the sincerest, most assuredly non confrontational or sarcastic way, have a nice day!

Please accept my heartfelt nonsarcastic apology!

[App91]

Just curious what is the gumroots FCOA vs. ours Seems like theirs was somewhat higher when all of that came out. If I am not mistaken, and I certainly may be, isn't next year when that starts getting paid? I never saw anything where it was the same across the board for all schools or conferences.

[Yosef84]

It is impressive that GS has picked up some talent at WR. Although neither of your current QBs is a great passer, I saw several drops in the games I watched in 2015 where the ball was delivered but the Eagles simply didn't have the receivers to complete many. I only saw one guy who seemed pretty reliable.

It was my understanding that GS has been trying to improve the passing game the past two seasons but the players haven't been in place. Their schemes will always be run heavy (probably) but that is more a function of scheming to your strengths. It only makes sense to recruit for what you want to be and not for what you've been in the past.

[T-Dog]

Summers has said GaSo will throw the ball more but keep the offense basically the same. I get the feeling Fritz wanted to pass more, but Ellison wasn't a good passer and Upshaw was an athlete who happened to play QB sometimes.

[EastHallApp]

Summers has said GaSo will throw the ball more but keep the offense basically the same. I get the feeling Fritz wanted to pass more, but Ellison wasn't a good passer and Upshaw was an athlete who happened to play QB sometimes.

Yeah, Fritz said as much about wanting to pass more. They had a 3* QB who redshirted this past year, but he was considered a pro-style QB as a recruit, so not sure how much he can run. And then they have Werts committed this year (assuming they hold onto him), who is more of a runner/dual-threat.

It will be interesting with McConnell whether he can run the option part of the offense effectively. If he pans out, they'll have the improved passing game they want, but will they have to run a totally different offense with him in there vs. the pure option guys?

[JTApps1]

Summers has said GaSo will throw the ball more but keep the offense basically the same. I get the feeling Fritz wanted to pass more, but Ellison wasn't a good passer and Upshaw was an athlete who happened to play QB sometimes.

Yeah, Fritz said as much about wanting to pass more. They had a 3* QB who redshirted this past year, but he was considered a pro-style QB as a recruit, so not sure how much he can run. And then they have Werts committed this year (assuming they hold onto him), who is more of a runner/dual-threat.

It will be interesting with McConnell whether he can run the option part of the offense effectively. If he pans out, they'll have the improved passing game they want, but will they have to run a totally different offense with him in there vs. the pure option guys?

Let's not forget that we had Werts further down our board due to him not being as accurate of a passer as some of the other QB's we were looking at. So that makes me wonder how committed they really are to the passing game.

[EastHallApp]

Summers has said GaSo will throw the ball more but keep the offense basically the same. I get the feeling Fritz wanted to pass more, but Ellison wasn't a good passer and Upshaw was an athlete who happened to play QB sometimes.

Yeah, Fritz said as much about wanting to pass more. They had a 3* QB who redshirted this past year, but he was considered a pro-style QB as a recruit, so not sure how much he can run. And then they have Werts committed this year (assuming they hold onto him), who is more of a runner/dual-threat.

It will be interesting with McConnell whether he can run the option part of the offense effectively. If he pans out, they'll have the improved passing game they want, but will they have to run a totally different offense with him in there vs. the pure option guys?

Let's not forget that we had Werts further down our board due to him not being as accurate of a passer as some of the other QB's we were looking at. So that makes me wonder how committed they really are to the passing game.

I think there's a bit of lip service to it. My guess is that both Fritz and Summers would like to throw more in a perfect world, and they've hoped that by publicly saying so, they could attract a true dual-threat QB up front, without having to go through a painful transition by demonstrating the commitment to throw more before they have the QB to do it successfully.

[Eagle22]

Summers has said GaSo will throw the ball more but keep the offense basically the same. I get the feeling Fritz wanted to pass more, but Ellison wasn't a good passer and Upshaw was an athlete who happened to play QB sometimes.

Ellison had a solid 2014 season throwing the ball, despite being hampered all season by a shoulder injury sustained in the opener at NC State. He had a far better stable of WR's to throw to, which also helped our passing production. We really tailed off in the latter half of the season offensively as his conditioning deteriorated, especially in the Navy game when we had no passing threat.

Upshaw spent most of 2014 playing tentatively, not trusting his speed and learning how to keep pitch relationships with the backs. He wasn't reading well, and throwing worse. Upshaw had a horrendous opener vs. WVU, then ran silly around a slower WMU squad at home, but had a similarly up & down remainder of the season until he balled out at the Go Daddy Bowl.

Fritz had this absolutely annoying habit of inserting Upshaw into games on the 3rd series of the game, no matter the position or game situation. If you were at the ASU-GSU game this fall, I believe that was the moment that we conceded the chance of winning the game. Note, I'm not saying we would have won ... but that was such a dumb move to put Upshaw in at that point, after Ellison was playing relatively well. With the exception of the Go Daddy Bowl, Upshaw was sub 40% completion on the season. Ellison wasn't much better.

A retrospective look reveals this is primarily on our WR's, who dropped quite a few catchable balls. There were not many of those when we played in Boone, but we dropped 3 sure fire TD passes vs Georgia State in the most inexplicable loss I hope I ever see in my lifetime watching my team play this sport. Both Upshaw and Ellison have some work to do to get into that 50-55% completion rate which is very damaging when our running attack is working, but they can get there if our offensive gameplan includes some short throws and screens, both of which were missing all last year. We threw outs (usually over our WR heads) with the QB on the run, or deep flys and posts, which were either overthrown or dropped with alarming regularity.

McConnell may be the answer, but I don't expect him to log serious minutes in 2016. He can run, but he can't run with Upshaw's speed or Ellison's overall ability ... and no one has seen him pitch it with any regularity ... so that element will have to be replaced with some of those short passes or an altered offensive approach. We have three other QB's on the roster, LaBaron Anthony might be the best of the rest (including McConnell) ... he is a local kid transferred from West Alabama ... good size & arm, runs the offense .... just have to see what he does in the spring and fall.

We always like to sign at least 2 QB's per year. This year that might not happen.

[EastHallApp]

Fritz had this absolutely annoying habit of inserting Upshaw into games on the 3rd series of the game, no matter the position or game situation.

Whenever I've watched Southern over the past couple years (which admittedly was limited other than the App games), I never could understand why Fritz insisted on playing Upshaw. Always seemed like Ellison was the far better player to me. Of course I guess you have to say it paid off in the bowl game.

As far as QB recruiting this year... I'm sure you guys will have one of those 3* WRs under center soon enough if it comes to that.

[T-Dog]

If I was Fritz, I'd find a way to get Upshaw into the game as a wildcat QB/WR/RB/weapon X, but not as a full-series QB.