Miller talked up hoops, recruiting, and life in general with 11W's Alex in January.
91 days. 3 months. When you guys figure out how to hit the fast forward button on reality and get to Thursday, September 2nd, please share your secrets. Until then, we'll have to except that while we're 5 days til the second holiest day of the year, STEELEMAS, and a little more than a month from NCAA Football '11, we're still far enough away for the wait to feel like Chinese water torture.
Fortunately the Dayton-area's Braxton Miller, by all accounts, has the sort of news that could merit a celebratory liquid lunch (or at the very least give us all a perfectly valid reason to fire up the Rose Bowl on our DVRs/DVD players after work). The electric quarterback prospect, essentially everyone's #2 or #1 QB in the country, is all set to at long last reveal his college choice in a noon EST press conference Thursday afternoon. Our Alex will be on hand (along with 11W intern Jared who'll be doing the driving, navigating, and chewing of all of Alex' meals) to be there for the moment, so certainly get in the habit of pressing F5(!) early and often and/or shift your lunch break accordingly.
In what feels an awful, awful lot like March of 2008, yet another elite high school quarterback phenom from the midwest is all set to make a decision that could impact the 3-4 seasons of football after this one. On the plus, according to just about any pundit you can ask, should Miller reveal his choice to be anything but The Ohio State University, we'd essentially be looking at one of the most shocking, unprecedented plot twists in modern recruiting history. Rivals.com's Jeremy Crabtree told the Plain Dealer's venerable Doug Lesmerises as much Wednesday evening:
"It would probably be one of the bigger recruiting upsets if he ended up anywhere other than Ohio State." I think with what we've seen with Ohio State's offense, a dual-threat quarterback can be successful if you have the right guy to run it, and there's no better dual-threat quarterback in the country than Braxton."Another reason to suspect this press conference may be somewhat a formality is the total radio silence on all fronts from the other mega-programs' observers in the mix for the 17 year old' services. Where as 2 years ago with TP, at least there were Michigan and Penn State outfits chiming in that they weren't optimistic about their chances. The complete absence of chatter is arguably even more telling this go around.
Much like the elder Pryor before him, Miller enters the fray as a dynamic, dual threat quarterback who likely still has much refinement to be done on his passing prowess. The senior-to-be completed 88 of 166 attempts, good for a 53% completion percentage this past season while amassing 1091 yards and 9 TDs. The areas of concern begin to arise when you look back upon some of the lower points in Miller's junior year. Against Ted Ginn Sr.'s perennial power state runner up Cleveland Glenville, Miller completed just 9/21 passes for 130 yards while throwing just one touchdown to 3 ints amidst a 28-57 blowout loss to the Tarblooders. Miller also struggled to find his rhythm on another Friday night when he only completed 4 of 9 passes on the evening prompting some Buckeye fans at the time to wonder whether Miller was an even bigger project to undertake than the evolutionary process the staff has undergone with Pryor.
Some of these worries relent when actually letting Miller pass the eye test. While the throwing motion appears a bit shot put'ish in nature, it also doesn't doesn't come across as raw and unrefined the way a young Pryor or Vince Young often did on tape. And while perhaps tellingly obvious, the matter of fact that programs along the lines of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Miami, and USC have all extended offers to Miller speaks volumes. With but a select few noteworthy exceptions to the rule, seemingly all of those high brand awareness programs have made their recent reputations on quarterbacks capable of passing the ball. If every single one of them put Braxton Miller through an extensive evaluation process and deemed him a risk worth taking, the investment for the Buckeyes' staff would appear to be worth it.
Is Miller donning a scarlet & gray lid a done deal? Or will the south rise again from the ashes at the zero hour and steal another prominent Ohio prospect right out from underneath the Bucks' sphere of influence?
