That’s a parody of a movie title, for any of you younger than 45.
NOTE: This post references QWOBA, WROBA, SiYAA, and other stats I developed. QWOBA and WROBA are pure efficiency stats, while SiYAA is a hybrid volume/efficiency stat that rewards receivers who may catch more balls, in more difficult circumstances. For more on these, read here and here.
Let’s have a quick conversation about Texas and their offensive skill position players because, honestly, I’m not sure that I trust them. I mean, some I definitely don’t trust, like Quinn Ewers, whose name seems specifically designed to describe what I think while watching tape of him throwing downfield. But receivers Matthew Golden and Isaiah Bond have quite a lot of hype, and I get it, I do. But…let’s back up for a second, and talk about what some of my colleagues refer to as bullsh…wait, I can’t say that word, probably. Let’s go with “fake offenses.”
This is something I have quite a lot of trouble with when scouting college kids, as not all college offenses are built the same for NFL development, but which ones are worse, which are better, and why? Remember a few years ago when Hendon Hooker and Jalin Hyatt lit the college football world on fire with the Josh Heupel Air Raid at Tennessee and how it hasn’t exactly translated to NFL success for Hooker or Hyatt (note: I still think Hyatt could be something if he wasn’t on the Giants, but so far he really he’s OK at best) or Cedric Tillman or Velus Jones Jr.? The Air Raid stuff doesn’t require receivers to make as many reads or use pro-style separation skills, it basically exploits the college hashes to create space for fast guys to run to. It works great in college! It’s just not the best developmental environment for skill position guys.
This year, wide receiver Tre Harris has done well in my WROBA and SiYAA numbers, and when that happens, I always ask for second opinions from my colleagues just to check for obvious weaknesses that my numbers miss. With Harris, my colleagues relayed that Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin basically run a “fake offense,” and that is why Harris is frequently mocked as more of a late second or early third rounder, versus where his numbers and RAS (9.23) would typically land a receiver. The same “fake offense” concerns at Ole Miss also apply to Jaxson Dart, Jordan Watkins, and Antwane Wells. It is worth noting that the “fake offense” in question is distinct from the previously mentioned Air Raid fake offense, in that Ole Miss uses a simple no-huddle, spread RPO system with limited passing concepts. To explain: No wait, there is too much. To sum up:
Air Raid: Fake because it exploits the wider college hash marks. Will not translate to the NFL.
Ole Miss Simple Spread RPO: Fake because it drags defenders away from the formation (the wide hashes still play a part here) to create simple RPO reads for DART and/or create massive space for Harris.
Now, players from “fake offenses” can succeed at the next level, and so the Ole Miss crew is hardly doomed, but it makes assessing their talents more difficult, it can create a steeper developmental curve, and because it’s easier to generate offense in college from certain skillsets that will not work in the pros, it throws some noise into the whole equation. The field, the scheme, the huge diversity in talent levels from team to team, all work to accentuate the value of pure speed over softer skills, and often allow smaller players to work outside while they would be stuck in the slot as professionals.
Which brings us to the Longhorns. The Longhorns do not run a fake offense in the same sense that Tennessee or Ole Miss do, because head coach Steve Sarkisian does make use of plenty of pro-friendly concepts, condensed formations, and the like, and so there’s less of a learning curve coming from Texas than from Tennessee. But that said, Sarkisian’s receivers aren’t getting wide open because they’re burners in space in the Air Raid, they are instead frequently getting open because they’re getting schemed open by great play-calling. Sarkisian is using some pro-style, advanced Shanahan-type stuff (along with RPOs and other college staples), in very creative ways, and while they don’t confer an advantage in the same way that the Ole Miss or Air Raid offenses do, they still confer a significant built in advantage.
Separating scheme value from player value is always difficult, and it’s not necessarily fair to hold a coach against a player, but I think it’s important to at least give it some thought because in the NFL, where the talent level is so high across the board, some of those advantages are going to disappear or at least be mitigated, and not every NFL team is run by an amazing offensive guru to put people in the best possible position.
Isaiah Bond
And on that front, I would urge every team, and especially the Packers, to steer clear of Isaiah Bond. Recent sexual assault allegations have pushed Bond down the consensus board, from a peak of 31st overall to somewhere between 79 and 90, but even a third-round pick is too much to spend on Bond (Note: Bond has filed a federal lawsuit against his accuser.)
Off-field issues aside, there is no earthly reason that Bond should have ever been seen as a first-round talent in the first place. He’s never exceeded 48 catches in a season, and he’s the kind of boom-or-bust receiver that can see his overall value fluctuate wildly in college based on hauling in, or dropping, a few additional bombs. The problem for Bond is that my numbers account for the difficulty of catching deep shots versus safe, short passes, and even for a deep threat, Bond failed to haul in too many catchable balls. While I’m certainly not above blaming Ewers (who again, was terrible) the story was much the same in 2023, prior to Bond’s transfer to Texas, with Jalen Milroe targeting him at Alabama. Milroe is an imperfect passer in his own way, but he’s sort of the polar opposite of Ewers, and if you specialize as a deep threat, you couldn’t really ask for a better QB than Milroe, who only throws the deep ball.
Bond ranked 91st in SiYAA this season with an extremely pedestrian total of 136, while teammate Matthew Golden was 12th (393). Last season at Alabama, Bond finished with just 55 SiYAA while teammate Jermaine Burton put up 436. Bond has always been opposite a better receiver, but regardless of whether you like efficiency stats or big plays, he hasn’t capitalized on facing the inferior corner. And it may be because he’s just not that great an athlete.
Bond ran an excellent 4.39 40, but his splits were poor, his agilities were poor, and he’s very small. It all adds up to subpar 4.23 RAS.
It’s not exactly the profile of a “draft and develop” offensive phenom, and so I’m really not sure what the case for Bond is at this point. He didn’t draw the volume of his peers and teammates. He wasn’t as efficient as his draft peers despite playing in an offense that excels in creating easy, efficient opportunities for receivers, and he wasn’t any better with Milroe’s perfectly thrown 9-balls. He’s fast, but his overall athletic profile isn’t that impressive, especially for his size. And not he was off-the-field baggage to boot. Bond did make a visit to the Packers, and so they have some interest. If they call his number at any time, I’ll be quite disappointed.
Matthew Golden
Matthew Golden, on the other hand, is a different story. He’s not perfect either, but he was at least second on the team in targets (to ultimate safety blanket, and enormous, boring tight end Gunnar Helm), his targets were extremely efficient as he finished with an impressive 393 SiYAA and a 141 WROBA, and while he doesn’t qualify for a RAS, he ran a blistering 4.29 40, with excellent splits.
More than anything, Golden and Bond are athletically fairly similar in size and raw speed. One was among the most efficient receivers in all of college football, and the other was among the least. I would have liked to see more out of Golden over a larger sample size, but, well, let’s get to the last piece of the equation.
Quinn Ewers
I think it’s quite possible that the Longhorns cost themselves a national title by playing Quinn Ewers over Arch Manning, and at this point, I think Steve Sarkisian’s biggest issue may just be talent identification, as he seems to defer quite a bit to experience at the expense of talent. I’m not even that confident that Arch is all that was promised by his famous last name, but I do know exactly what Ewers is, as I’ve seen this show hundreds of times.
Ewers can be perfectly accurate checking down, throwing short, doing game manager stuff, etc. Unfortunately, his arm is just terrible, and most of the Texas receivers (even going back last year to Xavier Worthy and Adonai Mitchell, to say nothing of Golden and Bond) are complete straight-line burners. It’s a comical mismatch of quarterback and receiving talent, and it is Ewers’ arm (or lack thereof) that is the primary cause of Gunnar Henderson leading the team in targets, and Matthew Golden having to come on late to even get into the conversation.
Ewers also has a standard poor-armed quarterback issue of not understanding his own limits, which is why he was one of the league leaders in picks with 12. He often knows where the ball should go, but just cannot make it happen. In fact, the single-most impressive trait of Matthew Golden may be his uncanny ability to downshift on deep routes in order to prevent overrunning the Ewers deep ball. Ewers finished the season just 6% better than the average quarterback per QWOBA before you even factor in his insane interception percentage. (For context, Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke was about 25% better than average.)
Which brings us back to the main issue with Texas. Sarkisian throws a TON of noise into any projection simply because his offense will make its players look pretty good, especially in raw totals, but Ewers lack of deep ball prowess limits what we can tell about their short, speedy receivers, and the low target% by everyone on the team makes using something like Dominator an impossibility. I’m comfortable saying the Golden is a good player, at least on par with Xavier Worthy, who came on strong for the Chiefs late last season as a rookie. But I’m not as sure as I would like to be given the lofty draft projections for both Golden and Bond.