Danny Wuerffel and Shane Matthews both give Graham Mertz glowing reviews. Matthews will subtly criticize Billy Napier for not explicitly drawing up plays to go deep, but he still praises Napier as a head coach. All that say: if two Gator Great QBs say Mertz is a good QB I tend to believe them over the social media experts. Mertz currently has a passer rating of 163. Assuming his rating takes a slight hit in the next few games he will still finish with one of the five highest season passer ratings since 2009. For reference, Tim Tebow finished with season passer ratings between 163 and 200 from 2006-2009. In short, Mertz is a very good QB, one of best since Tebow. Kyle Trask 180.0 (2020 Florida) Feleipe Franks 173.4 (2019 weeks 1-4 Florida) [projected 163 if he would have finished the season] Graham Mertz 163.7 (2023 weeks 1-7 Florida) [projected 158 through week 12] Feleipe Franks 163.1 (for historical reference: 2020 Arkansas) Kyle Trask 156.2 (2019 weeks 4-12 Florida) Jeff Driskel 154.1 (for historical reference: 2015 La Tech) Will Grier 145.6 (2015 weeks 1-6 Florida) Feleipe Franks 143.4 (2018 Florida) Emory Jones 141.1 (2021 Florida) John Brantley 140.8 (2011 Florida)
By the way people The Florida Gators still control their own destiny in the 2023 football season... Lol... what kind of person gives out a "optimistic" rep about a stated fact? The funny thing is that they seem to have a built in confusion/bias about what a fact is... and what the think will happen... TWO VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.
The only other thing I would say is some of the other playmakers stepping up is helping Mertz out as well. ETN and Montreal have become very trustworthy outlets when deeper throws aren’t there. Boardingham and Hansen have stepped it up as well. Throw in Khalil and Tre and teams can’t sit on Pearsall. Tre has added another dimension to the offense.
Mertz has been better than I expected. I thought he was going to be solid. But the morons who picked him last in the conference behind a bunch of guys with minimal to no starts are just clueless. You can see what it looks like to have 30+ starts under your belt. His accuracy is better than I could have hoped for and has done an excellent job taking care of the ball. Interesting to see if he returns for another season and helps groom Lagway. Shown to be a professional that could cash NFL paychecks for quite awhile.
I would love to see some overlap and continuity. Even if Mertz balls out the rest of 2023 I do not see him getting drafted next April. If he sustains a QB rating above 150 by end of season and improves it slightly in 2024 I could see him being a late draft pick or undrafted free agent—at the very least viable for USFL/XFL.
He has "practice squad" written all over him. Not that that is a problem, just that he will be making mainly "learning" money with a couple of "active roster" paychecks thrown in for 3-4 years. If he aspires to be an NFL QB, that is not a bad hand to be dealt.
I see him as a QB2 in the NFL. I think he's as good as some guys holding clipboards in the NFL. See him as a guy that prepares the right way and could cash a lot of paychecks in the NFL quietly in the background. Nice work if you can get it.
If it was said without malice then you are forgiven. His receiving options sure have improved but his protection still subpar. I don't see any Oline leaps on the horizon so we need to get really creative with getting it out quick and rollouts. Getting creative with Wilson alone should affect pass rushes.
It definitely wasn't said with malice. I'm pretty level-headed when it comes to the Gators (IMO anyway). It was said more in the context of: this guy isn't going to be a difference maker. Turns out, he can be! Not the first time I was wrong. Usually, I don't judge that quickly... it probably had something to do with the results of that game... lol.
Statistically he's better than Burrow's first year at lsu. Only metric Burrow has in his favor is yards/completion. However, that is somewhat offset by Mertz having a higher yards/attempt. Burrow had an 18.5% completion jump in his 2nd year. Be hard for Mertz to duplicate that jump considering he's already at Burrow's Heisman season completion percentage. Probably his biggest room for growth is with more consistent deep shots to increase his yards/completion. Seems we got a little taste Saturday. They've been there, just need protection to hold up a little better.
There’s a lot of people out there who don’t want Florida to be great again and they’ll say anything to try and slow down that happening. But it’s happening
