Haynes King Update: How Do We Feel About Him?

Root4GT

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Verbiage is Unclear on grad transfers. The odds of King transferring again are very low. He won the starting job in a very competitive challenge.
 
Techster

Techster

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Some perspective on the early performances of King:

www.espn.com

2023 College Football Season Leaders Total QBR | ESPN

Visit ESPN to view College Football Total QBR for the current and previous seasons
www.espn.com www.espn.com

1. UGA's Carson Beck is ranked 59. Tennessee's Joe Milton is ranked 85.

I saw King's numbers were down played a bit because we played SC State. Carson Beck has played against UT Martin and Ball State, and has been at UGA for 3 years. Milton has played against UVA and Austin Peay. Milton, who is considered one of the best QBs in the SEC, has been at UT since 2021. King is at 24, and has only played 2 games for GT in a new offense for the whole team. If you look at the QBs below King in QBR, most of them have been with their teams and in the same system for multiple years.

2. King is ahead of former 5 star rated QBs Spencer Rattler, JT Daniels. He's one behind 5 star UT's Quin Ewers. King is 5 QBR points away from being a top 11 QB.

3. In terms of other NCAA rankings, King is #17 is total passing yards, #19 in passer rating, #6 in TD passes.

It's VERY early, and the schedule is about to get tough. Lots of runway left for King to go in either direction (hopefully, the good direction), but you have to consider that QBs in their first year in systems improve over time. What you have to like as a GT fan is King is still learning the system, but he's already one of the better QBs in college right now. Not only is King learning, but everyone around him is also learning. We've seen glimpses of explosiveness from this offense. Once EVERYONE is on the same page, this could be a very fun offense. There's a LOT of talent on this offense, and we're seeing future stars in the making.

Enjoy the process GT fans. It's going to be a fun season.
 

yeti92

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bobongo said:
This hustle is not a dime a dozen. Once again:

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I think Eli's point was that it's a relatively easy position to fill, there are a ton of shorter fast WRs out there. Remember, everyone that Ahmarean Brown was a stud and was going to be a big loss, then Kyric McGowan came in and filled the role no problem. When Kyric was gone, it was the same thing, "tough shoes to fill", but Nate stepped right into them no problem. Now Nate's left and the same responses come out, but Malik Rutherford played in place of Nate last year when he was injured and did just fine, and he's done the same this year. Doesn't mean Nate's not good or didn't have some really big plays for us, but in general finding someone in the same mold that can provide similar levels of production for a given offense is not hard, especially compared to trying to find a stud QB or OL for example.
 
roadkill

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bobongo said:
This hustle is not a dime a dozen. Once again:

Click to expand...

Agreed. Very similar to an awesome effort play in 2014 by DJ White to knock the ball out of James Connor’s hand at the goal line. Saved what would have been a 75-yard run for a TD. At that time I thought it was the best effort play I'd ever seen, but not sure if Nate's wasn't better since he had to run across the field horizontally.
 

Eli

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UgaBlows said:
Man, you would think that UNC would have realized that and not wasted their NIL $$$ on him
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Bo Nix has the 3rd largest NIL deal in the sport. Quinn Ewers signed a million dollar deal with Ohio State before transferring and Arch Manning currently has the largest NIL deal in college sports and hasn’t played a down
 

danny daniel

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roadkill said:
Agreed. Very similar to an awesome effort play in 2014 by DJ White to knock the ball out of James Connor’s hand at the goal line. Saved what would have been a 75-yard run for a TD. At that time I thought it was the best effort play I'd ever seen, but not sure if Nate's wasn't better since he had to run across the field horizontally.
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And Milton made a similar play in the UGA game
 
bobongo

bobongo

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roadkill said:
Agreed. Very similar to an awesome effort play in 2014 by DJ White to knock the ball out of James Connor’s hand at the goal line. Saved what would have been a 75-yard run for a TD. At that time I thought it was the best effort play I'd ever seen, but not sure if Nate's wasn't better since he had to run across the field horizontally.
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Saw Matt Uremovich make a play like that against Maryland, too about 25 years ago. That kind of exceptional hustle sticks in the memory banks.
 

Heisman's Ghost

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Eli said:
Nate is another slot receiver that are a dime a dozen.
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I understand the sentiments as capable, small, fast receivers and running backs for that matter are indeed a dime a dozen but players like this who lay it out on the line play after play are million dollar nuggets, rare and not easily forgotten. Linemen who are big, strong, athletic and can run well, those are rare as hen's teeth. Big, fat, slow as molasses space eaters are apparently fairly plentiful.
 
ibeattetris

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cpf2001 said:
“that’s what you’re supposed to do against SCST” ignores how long it’s been since GT had a QB who did that through the air even in those “supposed to do it” games.

Yeah, we gotta see it in more of the real games too, but seeing it AT ALL is definitely a change.
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This exactly. We have had four years of QB's not performing well in the majority of their games. Haynes King has played well enough for our team to win two games this year. Two data points isn't enough to anoint him the next Joe Ham, but I will gladly take what we have seen so far.

Just for comparison's sake

2022 Week 2 against WCU
Jeff Sims
QBR (weighted): 28.5
QBR (raw): 57.7

2023 Week 2 against SCST
Haynes King QBR: 84.0
QBR (raw): 94.8

King's week 1 QBR of 77.3 against Louisville also tops Jeff Sims overall best QBR performance of any game last year (vs Pitt at 56.7).

Jeff Sims highs in previous seasons were definitely high, but they were never consistent. He had the 98.9 game against UNC and 91.1 against Lousiville in 2020. Despite these highs, he ended 2020 and 2021 with qbrs of 43.7 and 52.2 respectively.
 
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