Jim McElwain appears to still be unsure about who he thinks will win the quarterback battle.
Even though I wouldn’t even call it a battle.
While Treon Harris has played better lately in practice, he still appears to be miles behind Will Grier. In other words, Grier has simply dominated the competition so far. And as I’ve said before: the fact that Jeff Driskel and John Brantley also garnered high praise and looked good in practices makes me think twice about talking him up… but he’s looked so good that I’m gonna do it anyway.
The main thing that Grier has going for him is that he does all the things right that you want a QB to do- even the little, hardly noticeable things. There’s not really such a thing as pressure on the QB in fall camp (at least not to the extent where the QB has to fear getting sandwiched) but what little bit that has been allowed so far, he’s picked up on and acted accordingly. He has great touch on swing passes, which have to be thrown perfectly so that the receiver catches the ball in full stride and continues in his full sprint. He demonstrates great footwork and mechanics. He’s fast and can run away from defenders if needed to. And oh, yeah, he does have that big arm that made him so highly sought after to begin with.
That said, Treon did have a good day today. He displayed some nice touch, and used his escapability on a few separate occasions to extend plays. But even though he had a nice day throwing the ball, it didn’t help him gain much ground on Grier, who had a solid day as well, especially in the morning practice.
McElwain had previously stated that he didn’t see much separation between Grier and Harris, but given what I’d seen with my own two eyes and what people were telling me, I surmised last week that this was because he didn’t want Grier to get a big head. Which is totally understandable, given Grier’s popularity, being the brother of vine star Nash Grier, and success in high school. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe that McElwain really thought this, and still can’t today after he went out of his way to praise Harris.
It seems to me that UF has found its starting quarterback. There are other issues that still need attention (offensive line, receivers) and I believe that banging the gavel on one offseason question when it appears to have been answered a fair amount of time ago will hasten the process of answering the others.
