SI: Bulletin board material for Gophers quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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Per Harrison:

Gophers QB Athan Kaliakmanis has been ranked as one of the worst Power 5 quarterbacks in the nation heading into the 2023 season.

The redshirt sophmore was ranked No. 67 out of 69 Power 5 quarterbacks by 247Sports, and he comes in dead last among Big Ten quarterbacks.

Kaliakmanis enters 2023 having thrown just 111 passes, filling in for an injured Tanner Morgan throughout the 2022 season. The four-star recruit completed 54% of his attempts in 2022, throwing three touchdowns and four interceptions.

The rankings were created by Clint Brewster, who just so happens to be the son of former Gophers head coach Tim Brewster. Clint spent the 2009 season as a quarterback on the Gophers football team before transferring to Tennessee Tech.


Go Gophers!!
 


BleedGopher said:
Per Harrison:

The rankings were created by Clint Brewster, who just so happens to be the son of former Gophers head coach Tim Brewster. Clint spent the 2009 season as a quarterback on the Gophers football team before transferring to Tennessee Tech.


Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...
This is just too much. Doubtful anyone else would rank Athan this low. Sour grapes?
 




Athan only played against high level competition in 2022. He had no stat padding games whatsoever.

  • First start was a roadie against Penn State.
  • He did great in a half vs Nebraska.
  • He got to face the #12 and #6 pass defenses and handed off a lot
  • He dominated a high end defense at Wisconsin
  • Looked great against #14 pass D Syracuse before injury

Even with all that his passer rating was 127.4, which would have been #10 in the Big Ten if he had enough attempts to qualify for the end of year leaders. Many of the 9 above him are gone.

His yards per attempt was 8.5, which would have been good for 4th in the Big Ten behind Stroud, McCarthy, and Casey Thompson.

Can I take the bet that he's not the 67th rated P5 QB at end of year?
 


Oh Clint, I think you need to get a 9-5 job somewhere.
 




That chip on AK's shoulder is officially a crack now.
 


I am very optimistic that AK becomes an exceptional QB at Minnesota. Before I crown him the greatest thing since sliced bread I want to see it on the field for an extended time. He needs to stay healthy and he will need a running game that keeps defenses honest and off balance. AK has tremendous upside and I hope we get to witness just that.
 




Athan was second in the conference in QBR last season if you dig into the stats. He'll be an impact player if he can stay healthy.
 

I watched the MN/WI game again recently and K has a stronger arm than Morgan and is more mobile than Morgan.
I think he will be functional but not necessarily a game-changer by himself.
But let us ignore these ridiculous polls and opinions until the games actually are played.
My opinion from watching prior games this afternoon is that Maroney is the best MN RB in recent times,
 

He has the talent but the question is whether the offensive line can protect him. They have potential too but they are the least experienced o-line in the big ten based on starts
 

If there is one thing a Brewster can do it is oversell average players and undersell real talent. His dad's recruiting classes were filled with high star, low offer recruits that never panned out. Vs. Fleck who knows talent and how to coach it up. I see his son is equally bought into all the hype and lacks substance when it comes to judging talent on Minnesota's behalf.
 

Not going to pile on Clint, I could see how the combination of Athan's counting stats and Minnesota's history of anemic run/pass distribution (only ahead of the service acadamies for the past 2-3 years) could make him feel like a safe pick to put near the bottom (ex less likely to go off and make Clint look really dumb simply out of a lack of opportunity).

Having said that, Minnesota's actions have shown they believe in Athan. You can go all the way back to his time as a recruit where we didn't taked a QB in the class before him in large part to show how committed we'd be to him as our next guy. You can also look more recently to this offseason where we didn't even consider a transfer QB in the market despite being a farily attractive option on paper to potential transfers given the lack of experience on our depth chart.

I'd personally be pretty surprised if Athan was a downgrade from what we saw from Tanner post 2019.
 


EG#9 said:
Not going to pile on Clint, I could see how the combination of Athan's counting stats and Minnesota's history of anemic run/pass distribution (only ahead of the service acadamies for the past 2-3 years) could make him feel like a safe pick to put near the bottom (ex less likely to go off and make Clint look really dumb simply out of a lack of opportunity).

Having said that, Minnesota's actions have shown they believe in Athan. You can go all the way back to his time as a recruit where we didn't taked a QB in the class before him in large part to show how committed we'd be to him as our next guy. You can also look more recently to this offseason where we didn't even consider a transfer QB in the market despite being a farily attractive option on paper to potential transfers given the lack of experience on our depth chart.

I'd personally be pretty surprised if Athan was a downgrade from what we saw from Tanner post 2019.
Click to expand...

Good points. Freshman AK was also starting over a healthy senior QB who is now in an NFL camp.
 

Something called Rocco Becht is ranked ahead of him and former gopher commit Sam Jackson is ranked quite a bit ahead of him. Just two head scratchers I noticed.
 


He ranks several guys higher who have played far less than Athan and were less decorated out of high school, so not sure how he came up with some of these.
 

btowngopher said:
He ranks several guys higher who have played far less than Athan and were less decorated out of high school, so not sure how he came up with some of these.
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Looks to me like it’s a “he plays for Minnesota, so by default he’s not very good” opinion.
 

Absolutely meaningless article. Clint Brewster’s opinion isn’t important or coming from a career of expertise.

That goes for virtually every preview article, ever.
 


I agree the ranking is low, but in all fairness.

AK's raw stats last year:

54% completion - 3TD, 4 INT.

taken out of context, if you looked at those numbers without knowing anything else or doing any further research, you would say those numbers are not impressive.

Does anyone think that Clint Brewster spent hours researching every D1 QB before creating his list? Heck, no. He probably spent about this much time on it:

"OK, MN. let's see. Morgan graduated. backup only completed 54% with 3td and 4int. probably not very good. on to the next team."

I am not exaggerating when I say that Brewster probably spent 5 minutes or less evaluating AK.
not worth getting bent out of shape about.
 

Seems low and hope it's way off, but if he fails it will be interesting to see how Fleck treats future QB recruiting. Will he start to dive into the annual QB sweepstakes in the portal?
 

Is the article to be considered a joke, or a parody? Or is the author simply a moron?
 

Fives guys from the Big Ten have 0 or 1 career starts yet were ranked higher.

Most Big Ten rankings I've seen have him listed around 9-10 which I think is appropriate. Nearly dead last in all of college football seems ridiculous.
 

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