Originally Posted by rico
One thing that I think will get overlooked in this poll is Matt Ryan. Coming out of college, my God that dude had some question marks that were consistently giving birth to baby question marks, imo. My goodness he threw a lot of INTs his Senior season. If you were to evaluate and compare the two, by looking exclusively at stats, I don't know how Geno (and many other of these other guys) couldn't be regarded as a better prospect. And I know, I know...we aren't supposed to make our choices in this poll due to just stats. Just saying, statistically speaking, Matt was shaky as hell and Geno is not given near the credit he deserves considering the numbers he put up and some of the games in which he put up those numbers, including his historic comp/attempts statline vs. LSU's notoriously tough defense in '11, vs. Clemson in the Orange Bowl '11, Baylor's shitty defense, but amazing stats nevertheless in '12, etc.)
To be honest, I thought the Falcons were smart to take a chance and attempt to get their guy and were obviously smart in doing so, for things haven't worked out too badly for the Ryan-led Falcons so far, but at the time, I didn't think the chances of him succeeding were very high, let alone succeeding as early as he did.
I am always hearing from people that Geno never faced legit defenses, which I think is hog-wash. Whenever I hear this claim, I immediately wonder who they are comparing him to and why the defenses he faced are being critiqued so harshly... Geno, from the time he was a Sophomore, consistently put up stats that range from similar to superior than the stats of RG3 and Luck. Was the competition that RG3 and Luck faced THAT much tougher than the competition RG3 and Luck faced in their college careers? Honest question, I don't know.
I also frequently hear from people that Geno's success was the result of the WV system and his offensive supporting cast. But when compared to Luck and RG3, did he really have THAT much better of a supporting cast than them? Luck had Decastro on his line...many people thought (and may still think) prior to his injury last season that Decastro was a "sure thing" to be a productive OL for many seasons. And RG3 was throwing to Kendall Wright, who was a first round pick himself, who I happen to believe is the real deal. He saved RG3's ass on multiple occasions at Baylor with some of his acrobatic catches on balls that appeared to be over-thrown.
Call me crazy, but I honestly almost chose RG3 as one who Geno is superior to in terms of being a prospect entering the draft, for RG3's injury risks seemed to be glaring to me with him being injured in 2009 and 2010. And it appears that these injury concerns regarding him are actually pretty legit considering the serious injury he sustained this season. Yeah, yeah, I am aware of RG3's potential/talent when not injured, his popularity, his intelligence off the field, etc., but for the long haul, I think Geno is a guy who can make his team a perennial contender and RG3 can obviously accomplish some things himself, but I think he is much more inclined to have a shortened career when compared to Geno.
How can this guy NOT be considered a potential elite QB prospect? Fo' realzies, I don get da hate/lack of cred.
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