Saturday Down South Ranks SEC QBs… And Conner Weigman Is Way Too Low

Conner Weigman DISRESPECTED?!?!?

Okay, maybe that header is a bit much, but mine eyes cannot believe what they hath seen.

Sixth. In the conference. Conner Weigman. Behind Carson Beck? KJ Jefferson?? No disrespect to those guys, but come on!

Listen, to be fair, I guess I don’t know the specific criteria that they were judging on. Maybe the biggest piece for whoever wrote this list is how much he’d like to grab a beer with each guy. Who can really say? But if you’re looking at football statistics and in-game acumen, then there is no way Weigman should be this low.

Consider the following:

• Weigman: 286 yards, 7.5 YPA, 3.5 TDs, 1 INTs, 64.5% completion, 89.5 QBR
• Rogers: 162 yards, 9.5 YPA, 3 TDs, 0 INTs, 76% completion, 84.7 QBR
• Rattler: 353 yards, 9.1 YPA, 0 TDs, 0 INTs, 76.9% completion, 46.6 QBR
• Beck: 283 yards, 9.4 YPA, 2 TDs, 1 INTs, 76.7% completion, 60.5 QBR
• Jefferson: 136 yards, 7.2 YPA, 2 TDs, 0 INTs, 68% completion, 67.3 QBR
• Dart: 267 yards, 9.9 YPA, 2 TDs, 1 INTs, 63% completion, 68.2 QBR

This, in reverse order, is the statistical profile of each QB from Weigman up to Dart on that list on per-FBS-game basis (and in the case of Jefferson, hardly even that! Kent State is really bad!).

So as you can see, there is some rearranging to be done. Weigman has the highest QBR of any of these quarterbacks in FBS games, which is a convincing argument in and of itself. He’s averaged the second-most yards per game on this list (behind only Spencer Rattler’s one-game sample) and has the most TDs/game. Surely that merits him higher than sixth on this list! If anything, Dart should surely not be first on this list. I guess it might be because of his ability to run, but even that is comparable—if not wholly lesser than—Conner’s. Here are the per-game rushing stats against FBS competition for Weigman, Dart, and Jefferson (the three mobile QBs in question):

• Weigman: 4 CAR, 6.4 YPC, 0.5 TDs
• Jefferson: 13 CAR, 3.7 YPC, 0 TDs
• Dart: 14 CAR, 2.9 YPC, 0 TDs

The signal caller for Texas A&M football is clearly the most effective rusher on this list, though he has carried it markedly fewer times in this small sample. He’s the only one to have scored a touchdown on the ground and has a per-carry average much higher than either Jefferson or Dart. Now, naysayers might proclaim that sack yardage plays in here, so this is why his average beats Jefferson’s and Dart’s so decisively. To that, I would answer that the ability to avoid sacks—as we saw Conner do time and time again in the face of pressure in both of the first two contests for this Texas A&M football team—is a huge factor in considering the quality of a quarterback.

This list is bad. Conner should be no lower than third. Third I could accept. The guy is still breaking into the mainstream. But sixth? No way.

Just have to keep proving the doubters wrong.