Better Know A Buckeye: Terrelle Pryor
Where He Excels; Must Work On
Where He Excels: Terrelle Pryor is one of those lucky guys for whom athletics is almost second nature. Some people have a knack for creating music; some can pick up math like it’s secondary nature. For Terrelle Pryor, athletics is like a second language to him and he’s worked hard to cultivate his skill into an art form.
Terrelle has a wonderful combination of frame and speed. Combine the 6′4-61 height with the 4.4 40 and 230lb base and Pryor is a walking mismatch. He would be an unreal safety; he would be an unguardable wide receiver. He is a very good quarterback. In terms of actual quarterbacking, Pryor has a nice touch on both short passes and long heaves. Arm strength is definitely not an issue. He also knows when to get of Dodge and scramble for yardage. Given his frame, he probably looks forward to it. If Tressel is serious about him playing under center, a QB Trap might be an impossible thing to contain for opposing defenses. For anyone unfamiliar, Nebraska ran a QB Trap ad nauseum in 1995 when they had Tommie Frazier. They would (usually) spread 4 wide, which caused the linebackers to spread when the ball was snapped. However, a guard had pulled, met the middle linebacker, springing Tommie Frazier into the secondary. Before anyone knew it, Tommie Frazier had gained 8 yards and was looking for more. I think there’s just enough of the Nebraska trickery (along with those bootleg cross-field screens) to incorporate to keep opposing defenses guessing, all the while preparing Terrelle for the next level.
What most everyone first draws attention to is that Pryor almost looks like he operates at half speed and still blows by everyone on the field. As Jesse Palmer noted on ESPN, Terrelle Pryor runs like he was playing pick-up football, and he still creates separation from everyone. He obviously had to work a little harder during the Army All-American Bowl, but it still looked quite effortless for Pryor. The agility and ability to glide, I think, comes from the effort invested in basketball. There are two sports that, if mastered, can bode very well for football players. Wrestling is one and basketball is the other. Very exciting indeed.
I think I am impressed with Pryor’s attitude as much as I am with anything else. Pryor basically turned down an opportunity to be the guy at Michigan in order to help Todd Boeckman this year. In so doing, he also turned down a system that was built for his strengths in order to go to one that would make him work on his weaknesses. It suggests a focus and a drive that could only bode well down the road.
Must Work On: The consensus here appears to be the intermediate pass. In other words, Pryor excels with the short pass and the long bomb, but struggles a bit with his touch on the 15-20 yard pass.
This might be more speculation, since I don’t get to see full games involving Pryor. However, knowing how Vince Young played at Texas, and knowing that Pryor idolizes Vince Young’s style of play, I wonder if there’s a temptation from Pryor to be a one-read QB. That is, when Vince was at Texas, if the primary route wasn’t open and Vince felt the slightest bit of pressure, he was off and running. If Terrelle is going to get as good as he wants to be, he needs to show a little more patience than Vince Young did at Texas.
You’re also sure to hear that Terrelle Pryor has some technique issues to work on. There’s a temptation to side-arm a pass, and the temptation to resort to arm strength to fit a ball into space rather than use his whole body. The problem is, though, these are essentially minor things that every quarterback has to work on. The fun part about Pryor is that there’s not a lot of major issues to work on, only things to finetune.
- depending on who you believe… [↩]
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holy shiiiiittttttt
thanks for getting me fired at the illiteracy factory
Dude. This is 27 pages single-spaced at .7 inch margins, when taking out the images.
Dude.
You’re not expecting anyone to read this, are you? This must be the longest post in the history of college football blogging. When was the last time you went out anyways?
Wow. I now have plans for the evening.
I’d give you two thumbs up, if I weren’t wasting my time giving my computer screen hand gestures. Great work, man.
I love the SpaceBalls reference on page 18…….
Hmm, I don’t know when the last time I got out was, but 27 pages single-spaced? That’s a little exorbitant even for me.
Great article. I think you know more about Terrelle than he does. Thanks for all the hard work – this had to take a while to finish.
Wow. Amazing work. Now I’ll have something to do at my summer job tomorrow for a couple hours.
Vico, you can now open the sweet nectar of Gods, Pabst Blue Ribbon, in a jubilant celebration.
You have now reached “legend” status, my friend.
Speaking of pp 18, is Strawberry Mansion not the coolest school name ever?
Whew! I’m exhausted! I squandered an hour of my employer’s time, and still had to finish it at home. So many cool links to follow. Naturally, after getting my fix, I can only ask … nah, nevermind. Take a few days off, then we’ll all hit you up for the next, and last, BKAB.
I think I’ve read about this somewhere else (if not, I can’t believe I’m the only one with the idea), but on the subject of the signing day postponement that got everybody so freaked out/made Terrelle look like an attention whore: it seems reasonable to assume that TP knew where he was going but didn’t want to deal with hostile crowds at PSU during the state basketball tourney and simply waited till after it was over to announce.
That was a monster of a piece, nice work.
My cat’s name is Terrelle.
Fantastic piece. Incredibly researched and supported. I learned many new things. Kudos.
That was a great post and this has been a great series, now i can’t wait for the last one.
Oh, I forgot to include this: http://www.pittsburghsportsinsider.com/?p=1095
Take a look at what Joe Paterno (allegedly) told Terrelle Pryor early into his recruitment.
senior year stats: http://jeannettejayhawksfootball.blogspot.com/2008/08/rollover-stats-terrelle-pryor.html
and lastly: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07241/812755-365.stm
- pay careful attention to the stories of him stealing the ball of the tee, and hurdling a would-be tackler at the 5 yard line and landing 3 yards in the end zone.
Dude, you made it onto The Big Lead and SI’s Campus Clicks.
Dude.
Bandwidth gets chewed through, but no one’s contributed to the Give Us Money Campaign. That gets a dismayed “Dude”.