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what could have been [Eric Upchurch]
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Mailbag: Well, I Asked For Stupid Questions
Brian • March 18, 2021 • 3:52pm

The gap.

This is a fascinating question. I'm going to leave out guys who saw their careers derailed by injury (Antonio Bass, Tarik Black) and also guys who the recruiting industry airballed on (Kevin Grady, Derrick Green) and limit this folks who clearly had something to offer and did not get to display it for whatever reason:

  1. Devin Gardner. Gardner looked like a Heisman contender at certain points (ND UTL II, the two point conversion game against OSU) and was battered to pulp by the worst pass protection of all time at all other points. Not too hard to see him in the NFL if he hadn't ascended to nirvana in the middle of an MSU game.
  2. Ernest Shazor. Electric hitter, five star recruit, repeatedly ran the wrong way at incredible rates of speed. He must have had some personal issues because he went from a projected second-round pick to completely undraftable in a couple months in which no football was being played.
  3. Donovan Peoples-Jones. Five star wide receiver with massive athletic talent who saw his QB exit the pocket repeatedly and avoid downfield shots even when they were blitheringly wide open. Might as well file Nico "60 targets" Collins in here too.
  4. Denard Robinson. Had just established himself as the most electric player in college football when Brady Hoke came in and brought in a guy who wanted to put him under center. Nerve injury had a lot to do with his late-career fade, too, but seeing Denard run a waggle will remain a crime against man and panda forever.
  5. Evan Smotrycz. Smotrycz was coming off a 53/44 shooting year and was a career 41% three point shooter on ~200 attempts when he decided to transfer to Maryland. A major reason for this was the fact that he got drafted into playing a bunch of center, which he openly loathed. He ended up being redundant with Jake Layman at Maryland and faded into being a bench player as a senior. There's an alternate Smotrycz history where he gets to be a stretch four under Beilein for four years and has an absurdly efficient statline as an upperclassman.

Protests?

That's impossible to project but I do feel like that day is coming closer every year. Getting garbage meals while quarantined in a hotel so that everyone except you gets paid buckets of cash does seem like a potential tipping point. At some point a team is going to realize that they have a considerable

I've advocated for teams to adopt a mini-boycott where they don't play for 15 minutes—and if the network cuts to commercial the counter starts over. That would be a wake-up call that could escalate if necessary.

[After THE JUMP: ravoli rebels]

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