My issue with Sanchez was that he was never really tested under pressure. Sanchez never had to win it for the team. The one opportunity he did have to shine ended up being the Trojans only loss of the year. Sanchez was a quarterback who just didn’t screw it up for what was one of the best college defenses of the last decade. How would the AP faithful rate my assessment of Sanchez now that we’ve seen him in the pros? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I was dead on in my prediction of what kind of pro he would be.
I watched USC play Stanford last week with a critical eye on both Luck and Barkley. I’ll concede that neither played their best, but Barkley played at least as well as Luck. I just finished watching USC and Colorado for the second time today and I had a bit of an epiphany. I’m not a stat guy, I’m not going to regurgitate a bunch of numbers to prove my point, I’m just going to describe Barkley in this way; Barkley has everything Sanchez does, but more importantly, he also has everything Sanchez does not.
Lane Kiffin let Barkley air it out against Colorado and the result was a new single-game passing touchdown record at USC. I’ll let you look the number up on your own (remember; no stats from SoCalChief) because they are not what was impressive. What blew me away was how precisely, perfectly, beautifully, accurate every one of them was. Including the fifty yard bomb Marques Lee dropped because it bounced of his chest.
I think it’s optimistic, but if by some miracle Barkley is available, or better yet, if we can find a way to trade up, Matt Barkley is absolutely a franchise caliber NFL quarterback. In 2013 I’ll post chapter three of SoCalChief’s state-of-the-USC-quarterback’s address, and in the case of Matt Barkley I’ll be right again.