Skull Session: All The Teams With First-Round Quarterbacks Since Ohio State's Last, Mike Mitchell Still Chasing His Dreams, and The Buckeyes' S&P+ Rankings

By Kevin Harrish on February 12, 2019 at 4:59 am
Branden Bowen is smiling in today's Skull Session.
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I implore you to attack this Tuesday with the same intensity this fellow has during this call.

ICYMI

Word of the Day: Platitudinous.

 FIFTY SEVEN. That's how many college teams have produced at least one first-round quarterback since the last Ohio State quarterback selected in the first round, Art Schlichter in 1982.

Dwayne Haskins is about to change that this year, but Alex Kirshner of SBNation compiled a list of all 57 teams and 86 quarterbacks, and it's honestly pretty hilarious.

Here's a small sample of some of the most hilarious schools to make the list:

  • UC Davis: Ken O’Brien
  • Alcorn State: Steve McNair
  • Delaware: Joe Flacco
  • North Dakota State: Carson Wentz
  • Colorado State: Kelly Stouffer
  • San Diego State: Dan McGwire
  • Miami (Ohio): Ben Roethlisberger
  • Utah: Alex Smith
  • Memphis: Paxton Lynch
  • Wyoming: Josh Allen
  • UCF: Daunte Culpepper, Blake Bortles
  • Marshall: Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich
  • Fresno State: Trent Dilfer, David Carr
  • Tulane: Patrick Ramsey, J.P. Losman

I've always been firmly in the camp that I'd rather Ohio State win in college than produce a quarterback that's successful at the next level, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm stoked to put the whole "Ohio State can't produce an NFL quarterback!!!!!" thing to bed forever.

Win us an MVP and some Super Bowls, Dwayne.

 MIKE MITCHELL'S DREAM STILL ALIVE. One of the more perplexing busts of my generation was Mike Mitchell. The dude seemed like an absolute can't-miss prospect who didn't play a snap at Ohio State and barely played at Texas Tech.

I figured it had something to do with injuries, because it usually does in those cases, but the full story is way more fascinating.

Basically, he was chronically injured after he left Ohio State and nobody could figure out what was wrong or how he should properly rehab, except one doctor who fixed everything.

From Tom Layberger of Forbes.com:

“At Texas Tech I did every type of rehab you could think of,” said Mitchell, whose brother, Mickey, played basketball at Ohio State in 2015-16 and is currently a junior forward at Arizona State. “I had massages and acupuncture. You name it and I probably did it for rehab. Nothing seemed to work and nobody really suggested surgery.”

...

“I went to a family doctor in Florida and he recommended surgery, which nobody else had,” said Mitchell. “The surgeon said it was one of the worst cases of plantar fasciitis that he ever saw. The ligament was so messed up they had to cut it to release the tension.”

The procedure resulted in Mitchell feeling like a new man.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said of how much better he felt. “I was honestly in shock. That surgery, it was a miracle.”

...

“I knew what I could do,” he said. “Coming out of high school I knew the caliber of player that I was and what I was capable of. It (stunk) to not be able to do anything because of an injury that I couldn’t do anything about. In 2018 I was finally able to go out and show what I could do.”

Mitchell balled out in the NAIA last season and plans to attend  pro days at Southeastern and possibly UCF to show NFL Scouts what he can do.

If that surgery really got him back to full speed, he could be an absolute steal for an NFL team.

 NO. 7? Folks, it's never too early to get up in arms about a ratings system that means nothing.

Bill Connelly's preseason S&P+ projections dropped yesterday and he has the Bucks at an underwhelming No. 7 in the country.

That seems extremely wrong in my brain, especially since Florida (!!!) is No. 6, but then I read the explanation for the system and I put my pitchfork down.

Bill Connelly of SBNation.com:

The preseason S&P+ projections are a simple mix of three factors: recent history, returning production, and recruiting. To come up with 130-team projections for all of FBS, I create projected ratings based on each factor. Here’s how the process works:

  • For recruiting, I create a rating based on these weighted four-year recruiting rankings. The weighting (67 percent this year’s class, 15 percent last year’s, 15 percent the year before that, three percent the year before that) is based on what makes the ratings most predictive.
  • For returning production, I take each team’s returning offensive and defensive production (which are on different scales) and apply projected changes to last year’s ratings. The ranking you see below is not where they rank in returning production but where they would rank after the projected changes are applied to last year’s S&P+ averages. This piece makes up a vast majority of the overall S&P+ projections.
  • For recent history, I’ve found that getting a little weird predicts pretty well. This number isn’t a strict five-year average — last year’s ratings already carry heavy weight from the returning production piece. Instead, what you see below is a projection based solely off of seasons two to five years ago. Recent history doesn’t carry much weight in the projections, but it serves as a reflection of overall program health. We overreact to one year’s performance sometimes.

That bolded bit is the key.

Ohio State lost its best quarterback in program history, three starting receivers, most of the offensive line and the two best players on the defense (even if one of them was already missing most of last season).

Yeah, that makes sense given the formula. Carry on.

 SILK MAKES NBA HISTORY. D'Angelo Russell is quietly one of the best young guards in the NBA. And by quietly, I mean he reached a pretty meaningful NBA landmark faster than anyone else in history, and nobody really seems to have noticed.

Of all the great shooters in NBA history, this record belongs to Silk.

He's set to be a free agent this offseason, which means he's about to get absolutely paid, and hopefully a contending team is smart enough to realize his potential.

 “THE FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK.” Kyler Murray is officially picking football, and he's taking some subtle shots at Dwayne Haskins in the process.

Don't think I didn't notice the article choice there. Not  "afranchise quarterback "the" franchise quarterback.

I wish the best for Murray and think he's an exciting player, but I can't even imagine passing on Dwayne Haskins to select him in the first round.

 LINK LOCKER. Paul Casey denied Phil Mickelson’s wild attempt to play Pebble Beach in the dark, so he won it on Monday instead... How fast you can travel before it kills you... The Mars colony startup was declared bankrupt by a Swiss court... Bob Costas says NBC removed him from the Super Bowl broadcast over his concussion comments...

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