Friday, January 15, 2010
2010-11 shaping up as year of the QBs
Can’t beat the flank steak at Coffee Pot buffet
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.
Find his College Notebook from The Roanoke Times in Thursday's college sports section
Miss the Insider column? Check out the Insiders blog
Recent columns
So, here it is, 4:26 p.m., and I’ve spoken to Al Groh, Cadillac Harris, Bryan Stinespring, former UVa football coach Dick Bestwick (via e-mail), Hampton High School football coach Mike Smith and Robinson High School football coach Mark Bendorf.
I’ve also had lunch with the SEC Roundtable at the Coffee Pot, where flank steak was available as part of the $8.55 buffet, and gotten my hair cut. In the process, I mentioned to the hair stylist that I might look better if I were bald and she said that would be a horrible idea.
What I haven’t done is write a College Notebook in time for editor Jim Ellison to post it before he goes home. I’ve also established myself as a huge name-dropper, but, once more, this week’s column will be devoted to the Virginia football prospects in the signing class of 2011.
What strikes me is the abundance of impressive quarterback prospects in the 2011 class. This was not the year of the quarterback in Virginia, although Alabama-bound quarterback Phillip Sims from Oscar Smith High School is rated No. 1 in the state by The Roanoke Times and almost everybody else except the services who went with J.R. “Ego” Ferguson, a defensive lineman from Hargrave Military Academy.
(Ferguson is from the Frederick, Md., area but he is in his fourth year of high school, although he played on the postgraduate team. Some people would say that Ferguson, as an out-of-state kid, didn’t belong on the Top 25, but there’s a precedent in this case.
(Heck, Woodberry Forest seniors Ed Reynolds II and Aramide Olaniyan are from Jacksonville, Fla., and Bowie, Md., respectively. Vidal Hazelton made the Top 5 as a high-school senior playing on the Hargrave postgrad team and Ferguson probably should have been on the Top 5, too).
I’d always pick a skilled player over a lineman for the No. 1 prospect in the state, no matter how many offers the lineman had. But once you got past Sims in the state this year, there wasn’t another quarterback in the Top 25, and that’s unusual. The two other in-state quarterbacks to make Division I-A commitments were Connor Reilly from W.D. Woodson in Fairfax and Mike Rocco from Liberty Christian in Lynchburg.
Reilly, who moved to Virginia before his junior year in high school, passed for 2,279 yards and 18 touchdowns in 13 games this year. In one game, he was 34-of-53 for 503 yards and three touchdowns in a 43-42 road win over eventual state runner-up Lake Braddock. Reilly (6 foot 3, 185 pounds) committed to Temple over the summer.
Rocco, who passed for more than 2,000 yards in each of his sophomore and junior seasons, was injured for past of the 2009 season but not before he made an oral commitment to Louisville and then-Cardinals head coach Steve Kragthorpe. Kragthorpe was fired after the season but Charley Strong, the new coach, has honored the offer and Rocco has honored his commitment.
That shouldn’t be a surprise because Strong is expected to announce shortly the appointment of Alabama graduate assistant Mike Groh as his quarterbacks coach. Groh was the UVa offensive coordinator at Virginia from 2005-2008 and I’m told that the Cavaliers were once close to offering Rocco, the nephew of former UVa assistant and current Liberty head coach Danny Rocco.
When Groh was pushed out and former Bowling Green head coach Gregg Brandon was brought in to coach the quarterbacks, Brandon felt that Mike Rocco was not the best fit for the Cavaliers’ new spread. So, the Cavaliers went in another direction, taking a commitment from Waynesville, N.C., quarterback Tyler Brosius before he decommitted and chose North Carolina State.
AT LEAST ONE Division I-A recruiter has told me that 6-5, 210-pound Jake McGee from Collegiate in Richmond is the second-best quarterback in Virginia’s senior class and, given the mistake that mostly Virginia made on former Collegiate QB Russell Wilson, it’s a surprise that McGee was allowed to slip to Division I-AA Richmond this year.
I’m not saying that there will be a throng of quarterbacks in next year’s Roanoke Times Top 25, but I don’t imagine a year when the statistics have been any more impressive for a group of underclassmen, headed by Lake Braddock’s Mike Nebrich, the loser in the above-mentioned duel with Woodson’s Reilly.
Nebrich, a 6-1-1/2, 185-pounder, was named second-team All-D.C. Metro by the Washington Post and set a Group AAA state record by accounting for 4,600 yards in total offense (more than 3,000 passing; more than 1,000 rushing). Nebrich is a protégé of former West Springfield coach Bill Renner, who came out of “retirement” to serve as Lake Braddock offensive coordinator.
Other Northern Virginia junior quarterbacks of note include 6-6, 215-pound Blake Frohnapfel from Colonial Forge in Stafford, who passed for 1,609 yards and 17 touchdowns and is being recruited nationally, according to veteran coach Bill Brown; as well as Langley’s 6-3, 189-pound Braden Anderson, who set school records by passing for 1,715 yards and 13 touchdowns.
Loudoun Valley junior Andrew Taylor passed for 1,628 yards and 15 touchdowns; junior Jimmy Boone from Oakton passed for 1,344 yards and 10 touchdowns, and there were others. Sophomores Austin Nelson from Heritage and Connor Jessup from Broad Run also had big years.
Far be it from Hampton’s Smith to engage in hyperbole but he has a pretty good reference point in former Crabber quarterbacks Ronald Curry and Tyrod Taylor. Smith thinks that 6-1, 185-pound David Watford could be big-time after passing for more than 1,500 yards as a junior.
“He’s by far the best quarterback in the league,” said Smith, whose team plays in the long-heralded Peninsula District.
Two other in-state juniors who passed for more than 2,000 yards this past season were 6-4, 225-pound Chris Hall from Dinwiddie and 6-3, 200-pound Brent Hudson from Great Bridge in Chesapeake, and who knows who I’m leaving out
A good place to wrap up is a couple of prolific passers from the Roanoke Valley, both in the 6-3, 180-pound range. Shawn Christian from Eastern Montgomery tied a Timesland record by throwing 27 touchdown passes and Cave Spring’s Josh Woodrum accounted for more than 2,500 yards in total offense.
I thought enough of Woodrum after seeing him 3-4 times to rank him 19th on a list of the state’s top juniors, with Hall the only other quarterback on the list. That was because Lafaunte Thoroughgood from Virginia Beach Ocean Lakes was listed incorrectly as a junior, but I’m almost sure that QBs will be well-represented in future updates.
