Sometime during the middle of Troy Smith heating up last season, I told a group of friends that Smith would have a Charlie Ward-type season as a senior on his march to the Heisman trophy. Although Smith was able to do something that Ward wasn't able to do in guiding his team to an undefeated regular season, they had similar senior seasons. How well did he stack up? The similarities - especially a look at their junior and senior season statistics combined - are startling:
| Passing | Rushing | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMP | ATT | PCT | YDS | AVG | TD | INT | RAT | ATT | YDS | AVG | TD | |
| Ward (SR) | 264 | 380 | .695 | 3032 | 7.98 | 27 | 4 | 157.84 | 65 | 339 | 5.2 | 4 |
| Smith (SR) | 199 | 297 | .670 | 2507 | 8.4 | 30 | 5 | 167.9 | 62 | 233 | 3.8 | 1 |
| Ward (JR) | 204 | 365 | .559 | 2647 | 7.25 | 22 | 17 | 127.38 | 100 | 504 | 5.0 | 6 |
| Smith (JR) | 149 | 237 | .629 | 2282 | 9.6 | 16 | 4 | 162.7 | 136 | 611 | 4.5 | 11 |
| Ward (2YR) | 468 | 745 | .628 | 5679 | 7.62 | 49 | 21 | 142.9 | 165 | 843 | 5.1 | 10 |
| Smith (2YR) | 348 | 534 | .652 | 4789 | 8.97 | 46 | 9 | 165.6 | 198 | 844 | 4.3 | 12 |
At this point in time, Smith is 25-2 as a starter while Ward finished 23-2. Smith should go on to join Ward in leading his team to a national championship and next Saturday, he'll join Ward and Andre Ware to become only the 3rd African-American quarterback to win the award. Ward also picked up the Johnny Unitas, Walter Camp, Maxwell and Davey O'Brien awards. Smith should repeat that haul as well.
Note: Smith could have slightly better numbers this season if it weren't for the clock tinkering that reduced the amount of snaps per team this year. ESPN's Pat Forde says help is on the way and the NCAA will be tweaking that rule in the offseason.
