Swoopes made his living with his athleticism and running the ball. He's a passer 2nd. You can be fast and mobile but you have to be able to pass the ball. That's when he looked lost before. If he can't get comfortable then defenses will just run a spy and keep him contained. Seems like revisionist history. They act like Colt was a fluke. He wasn't suppose to start but he beat out Sneed for the job because he was better and he went on to become (at the time) the winningest QB in history and lost 2 games in his last two years. Really weak that they just neglected to mention Gilbert was one of those once a generation players. He is maybe the best high school QB in Texas history (at least top 3). They also got Connor Wood in 2010 who was a very highly regarded QB but he just didn't pan out.
Start Swoopes, run the hell out of the ball, and rotate Heard in, there's not much else they can do. That's some good journalisimin' right there. I bet that boy went to college, even.
You are right in it's biased presentation, but the point is that Mack didn't have a back-up plan in place at the most important position on the field.
Agree with this. The piece is definitely revisionist in most places, but Mack's lack of foresight is worth noting.
I think Mack has never really developed a quarterback. Major was good coming in. Simms never got any better. Vince was Vince coming in. Colt was lightning in a bottle. This is why I'm going to reserve judgement on Swoopes. He was a true freshman last season and was thrown into the mix when he obviously wasn't ready.
Not sure if foresight was the big issue. Mack actually brought in some highly rated prospects his last 5 seasons. Interestingly enough, all of them transferred other than the 2 lower rated ones. 2009 - Gilbert 2010 - Wood/McCoy 2011 - Ash 2012 - Brewer 2013 - Swoopes
That is always the counter point to Vince. If that was true then his stats would be the same for every year but that is obviously not the case. 128 passer rating to 163. 1-1 TD-INT ration to 2.5-1. His rushing stats were pretty consistent but he developed a lot as a passer. Why was colt lighting in a bottle? Because he was 3 stars out of high school? Not every good QB is a 5 star recruit. It's really silly how the Mack recruiting bashers constantly come up with excuses when it comes to giving Mack credit for VY and Colt. All the bad ones are relevant to the conversation but not the good ones. There is a lot you can criticize Mack for but you can't be taken seriously if you don't acknowledge he did a great job with 7 years of QB play. In reality, he should get credit for planning with Gilbert. Best QB in Texas high school history and he had a year to learn the system behind Colt. That just turned into a disaster but it was well setup when considering the turnover after Colt would leave.
I'll give Mack a ton of credit for Colt. VY was the consensus #1 recruit in the country, so I don't know how much credit I give Mack for that one, especially since there are rumors that Mack preferred some guy named Billy Don Malone. I give him absolutely no credit for planning related to Gilbert. 5 star busts happen all the time, and it was absolutely inexcusable to not have planned properly around that. Our current QB depth chart is laughable. With Ash out, we are down to two guys who, while talented, should never have seen the field before their 3rd or 4th season in college. Since the Gilbert debacle, we've at least smartened up enough to take a QB every class, but have completely missed on evals. Until recently, we also pretty much had first pick of in-state QBs, which makes it even more inexcusable that we are still in this predicament 5 years post-Colt. It's one thing to not have all-conference type quarterbacks - it's another to not have even passable QB play. We've been in that situation since 2009 (save for a brief period in 2012 when Ash was healthy and playing pretty well). If Swoopes has improved since last season and Watson comes up with good gameplans, I could see us squeaking out 7 wins. If Swoopes hasn't progressed or if Heard has to play, I think things are going to get very ugly.
Because Snead was the heralded recruit, and Colt was supposed to be like Case. A small framed guy with limited arm strength. The fact that Colt turned out to be a great quarterback from the get-go also adds to it. I personally don't think he developed Colt much. Most of Colts improvement could be attributed to experience and added arm strength from getting older.
I don't think even Mack specifically recruits guys because they are small-framed guys with limited arm strength. He recruited Colt because he saw a smart, talented guy that could develop into an excellent college quarterback. He was recruited for the same reason that Snead was recruited. Realistically, Case was probably recruited to keep Colt around for another season. Nepotism and ease of recruitment are another couple of issue that caused Mack's downfall toward the end.
I think the real question with Mack was depth. If Plan A didn't work or got injured, there didn't seem to be a good Plan B. Granted, its rare to have a good backup QB, but Texas seemed to be in worse shape than other top teams that seemed to more seamlessly transition from year to year. For whatever reason, whenever a starter was named at UT, it seemed everyone else on the depth chart would transfer instead of being a backup. No idea why that was the case, though.
Because Mack/staff anointed people (not just at QB) to be saviors, and it was difficult to lose your position. Case McCoy was the backup and pretty much couldn't lose his job despite not being very good and various off field transgressions - no wonder the guys behind him quit . Same thing with his staff. They phoned it in, but basically couldnt get fired except as a last resort. NOt that it didn't have a positive side (family atmosphere and all that) but complacency which is stunningly obvious now in terms of recognizing a changing landscape was devastating, which is how you get passed up by Baylor.
I give credit for VY and Colt. But you can't do anything but bash a man that didn't land 3 heisman winners that wanted to play for him....IN A ROW. Applaud for the good and criticize for the bad.
That's fair. They brought in a 4 star QB in Connor Wood in 2010, 4 star Jalen Overstreet in 2012 and 4 star Connor Brewer in 2013. That is good planning. You can criticize them for not developing these guys but it was good recruiting and seemingly good depth.
It's not good planning if you can't keep them from transferring/on the team. If you can't, then you have to bring in more that And lol @ saying "oh I got a 4 star so I did my job" - Putting aside the tenuousness of a single star rating, that's what Mack's plan was and it didn't work out becuase while it may have been adequate in 2002, it's not adequte in 2014 because of the way both the high school and college games have evolved.
That goes exactly to my point. Mack's problem was that he couldn't keep any of these guys - other schools don't have a problem with all their QBs transferring away all the time.
It's not just that...all those guys turned out to - for lack of a better word - suck. I understand that recruiting isn't an exact science, but having your pick of in-state QBs and missing on evals for 5-6 years in a row in a state that's churning out D1 and NFL QBs takes a special level of incompetence.
