Dak article in SI - good read…

[dawgstudent]

https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/08/19/d...s-suicide-broken-ankle-mental-health-recovery

 

[PineGroveBully]

Man, we’ve all followed Dak since he was a chunky freshman, but even stars can’t escape a year like he just had. In a 12 month period the world sank into a 100 year outbreak, had his employment discussed daily in the national media, loses an idle in Kobe, has as debilitating an injury as an athlete can have, and the hardest hit of all, his brother takes his own life. A good thing Dak was born with broad shoulders, in 2020 Dak had to have felt like a modern day, real world Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

 

[wsjmsu75]

Great article. Too bad our own local media is too incompetent and too lazy to produce such in depth journalism.

 

[ColoradoDawg]

I 17ing love Dak.

 

[PineGroveBully]

Bulldog fans are blessed that no one else wanted his arm, leaving him to forever be “ours.”

 

[NOATLDAWG]

buy/sell... we 'underachieved' with Dak... Maybe Dan got him to a good spot but his ceiling was FAR higher than what the results actually showed. I think Mullen is amazing at identifying talent in 2 stars and them actually being 4 stars. But, I think he really struggles taking a Dak or a Tebow and actually improving them to the level of greatness. He is amazing at taking a Relf or Fitz and turning them into something... but there is no excuse for Dak Prescott being an 8th place finish in Heisman as the high water point...

 

[Go Budaw]

buy/sell... we 'underachieved' with Dak... Maybe Dan got him to a good spot but his ceiling was FAR higher than what the results actually showed. I think Mullen is amazing at identifying talent in 2 stars and them actually being 4 stars. But, I think he really struggles taking a Dak or a Tebow and actually improving them to the level of greatness. He is amazing at taking a Relf or Fitz and turning them into something... but there is no excuse for Dak Prescott being an 8th place finish in Heisman as the high water point...

Are you asking if Dak underachieved or if the team did? We definitely underachieved in 2015, but not because of Dak. He had a historic season for a QB at MSU. Our lack of talent around him was the main problem, even in 2014.

 

[engie]

Sell. Anyone with eyes could see Dak improving in every snapshot of time that he was here, and that’s why no one with sense that watched closely wanted to define an NFL ceiling for him. He didn’t have the natural arm talent. Had to work extremely hard to get it.

 

[Dawgg]

buy/sell... we 'underachieved' with Dak... Maybe Dan got him to a good spot but his ceiling was FAR higher than what the results actually showed. I think Mullen is amazing at identifying talent in 2 stars and them actually being 4 stars. But, I think he really struggles taking a Dak or a Tebow and actually improving them to the level of greatness. He is amazing at taking a Relf or Fitz and turning them into something... but there is no excuse for Dak Prescott being an 8th place finish in Heisman as the high water point...

.... We... we... were... number one... in the country....

Tebow won the Heisman as a sophomore and left Florida with 2 National Championship rings, 2 SEC Championships, and another SEC East Championship.

What are you talking about underachieving?

 

[NOATLDAWG]

To a degree, I agree with you. But, I also think Dak was not utilized anything close to his potential. Dan could be really limited in a lot of those situations. I have yet to ever see Dan Mullen actually outcoach a top coach without something else going on (case in point, beating UGA last year during a UGA off year).

 

[NOATLDAWG]

Dak finished heisman voting tied with Scooby Wright in 2014... You missed the topic at hand. While we were great, did we underachieve when we had a top 7/8 QB in the NFL on our roster?

And don't get me started on you trying to tie Urban Meyer's success SOLELY to Dan Mullen... I think Meyer had some success post Mullen. And since returning to FL, he still has half as many SEC East champs as Jim MCElwain.


Edit to add: While I LOVED being #1 in the nation... I would have traded that in a NY minute for being in the playoffs in 2014... We lost the only 3 games that ended up mattering that season, Alabama, Ole Miss and GaTech. We all tried to argue against that whole 'dan mullen is 1-39 against ranked opponents' but at the end of the day, it was accurate...

 

[NOATLDAWG]

again, I do not disagree with you... however, if his true greatness is recognized quicker, why wouldn't his talent/hard work/etc have been available earlier before he left MSU? He didn't work harder after he left MSU than he would have with us that created his greatness. I'm asking if he was held back because we didn't identify his transcendence... What happened to Dak between 2015 and 2016? It wasn't that his roster got better. All of the rosters he played against ALSO got better. When he left MSU, he wasn't considered top 5 QB in the nation... yet, one year later, he pushing at top 10 QB in the NFL...

 

[PineGroveBully]

You don’t want to tie Tebow’s success to Dan but you want to pin his lack of success on Dan? (Underachieved? WTH??)

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And you blame Dan for Dak only finishing 8th in the Heisman? Where did Brady finish? Josh Allen? Russell Wilson? Aaron Rodgers? Roethlisberger? Most top end QB’s in the pro’s got there because they played in lesser football programs which taught them to deal with lack of great OL’s and pass catchers. It’s not an accident thaf it’s been forever since an Alabama or Ohio State had a good pro starting QB.

 

[engie]

That’s the thing — he wasn’t a top 7-8 nfl ab during his time here. Obviously. Because those guys go #1 overall in drafts. Not in 4th rounds.

 

[Dawgg]

Dak finished heisman voting tied with Scooby Wright in 2014... You missed the topic at hand. While we were great, did we underachieve when we had a top 7/8 QB in the NFL on our roster?

Only two quarterbacks have ever won the Heisman and a Super Bowl: Roger Staubach (1972) and Jim Plunkett (1981) and it's been over 40 years since that's happened. I'm not sure what your point is.

And don't get me started on you trying to tie Urban Meyer's success SOLELY to Dan Mullen... I think Meyer had some success post Mullen.

You brought up Tebow, not me. Meyer had success after Mullen, but did Tebow? Did Meyer produce a Heisman winner at Ohio State?

And since returning to FL, he still has half as many SEC East champs as Jim MCElwain.

I find myself in the unenviable position of defending Dan Mullen, but Mullen actually won more games in his first two seasons at Florida than McElwain did.

 

[NOATLDAWG]

that's the point.. WAS HE a top 7/8 QB here. Did he really become a top 7/8 QB during an OTAs and an NFL preseason? That seems like a short runway and a lot of growth there.

 

[NOATLDAWG]

Tebow had NFL success? I would say that he was the same QB in the NFL that he was in college. And I would also say that Tebow in the NFL cost Dak A LOT of money... Most viewed him as another project/system QB like Tebow was. Then, he showed up at camp and people said 'wait a minute... this guy is talented'... so again, the talent was there. it was about utilization of talent rather than 'Dak growing as a QB'.

 

[Maroonthirteen]

Fire Sell......Dak carried MSU football for a minimum of two years and willed us a 2013 Egg Bowl win.

 

[dawgstudent]

Sell. Dak elevated the people around him. He took us as far as the accompanying talent. The biggest crime was our running game in 2015.

 

[Go Budaw]

that's the point.. WAS HE a top 7/8 QB here. Did he really become a top 7/8 QB during an OTAs and an NFL preseason? That seems like a short runway and a lot of growth there.

No, he wasn’t. Not from a standpoint of athleticism and measurables, which is 90% of what NFL scouts are looking for. Average arm strength / accuracy, below average height / size, average speed / elusiveness as a runner (at the NFL level). Nothing that jumped off the page and said use an early round pick. He still might have put up Playstation stats and become a first rounder if he had AJ Brown / DK Metcalf / Calvin Ridley type guys to throw to, but he had a bunch of typical mediocre MSU wideout and TE talent the entire time.

 

[johnson86-1]

Dak finished heisman voting tied with Scooby Wright in 2014... You missed the topic at hand. While we were great, did we underachieve when we had a top 7/8 QB in the NFL on our roster?

And don't get me started on you trying to tie Urban Meyer's success SOLELY to Dan Mullen... I think Meyer had some success post Mullen. And since returning to FL, he still has half as many SEC East champs as Jim MCElwain.


Edit to add: While I LOVED being #1 in the nation... I would have traded that in a NY minute for being in the playoffs in 2014... We lost the only 3 games that ended up mattering that season, Alabama, Ole Miss and GaTech. We all tried to argue against that whole 'dan mullen is 1-39 against ranked opponents' but at the end of the day, it was accurate...

Dak choked against Bama in '14, and then RObinson deciding he wsa no longer running north/south and losing two free safeties by the second series of the egg bowl doomed us against Ole Miss. So that was prettty much Dak's '14 campaing, when he was a really good QB but not a great passing qb yet. Dak in '15 was a great college QB. Dan just screwed him by taking some time off in recruiting, so we had no RB and a mediocre line, although we did have pretty good receivers for the only time in Dan's tenure I think.

 

[PineGroveBully]

I was referring to his success at Florida. That is the only thing relevant in a conversation on whether Dan underachieved with Dak AT State.

 

[NOATLDAWG]

Maybe I miswrote what i meant. This was NEVER an affront to Dak. I was saying 100% that I do not think we did all we could WITH him. Just seeing him in that Arky game in 2015 and the Orange Bowl, you saw that he could flat out ball when we turned him loose.

My comment has always been "did we allow him to lead us as much as he could have?" He was a stud and I do not believe he became a top QB AFTER he left MSU... he was that while he was there, we just didn't take full advantage of him.

 

[PineGroveBully]

The collective group of pass catchers that we had then were the best in school history between Bear, the Freds, and the TE Johnson’s. Now were they the best because they were the best or because Dak made them the best? Obviously Dak made them the best but that was a pretty talented bunch.