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Brady vs. Booty

I'm still sour about Saturday night's happenings, but I can't be angry at the effervescent Trojan glee all over the place.  They beat down Notre Dame and set up a Southern Cal/Ohio State clash in Glendale that should be a great game and serve as a mini-combine for NFL scouts.  If you want to make fun of Charlie for not winning a big game yet or point out that our secondary is 100% deplorable, that's fine, but I'm going to draw the line on saying John David Booty proved he was better than Brady Quinn on Saturday night.

From TrojanWire, who was kind enough to field our survey questions in an extremely helpful manner last week but who've riled up the limited amount of fire left inside me:

TrojanWire's taken its fair share of heat for hyping John David Booty ahead of Brady Quinn. Tonight, we finally got a head-to-head showdown:
John David Booty -- 17/28, 266 yards passing, 4 TD
Brady Quinn -- 21/44, 268 yards passing, 3 TD
Don't get us wrong -- Quinn gave the gutsiest performance of any of the Irish tonight; but in only his second matchup against a REAL defense, he looked far from Heisman-worthy.
 

We're just listing numbers to show who's better, completely out of context, and oh yeah, leaving Booty's interceptions off!?  Booty played a helluva game, but it's not like he was going against a great pass defense.  He got to sit back in his comfy pocket, survey the field as the exhausted Irish front four seldom got to him and then fling balls out to people like Dwayne Jarrett, who literally caught everything thrown his way.  Steve Smith dropped one in the endzone, but other than that, a fine night for the Trojan receivers.

Brady was on the run from the first snap as his porous offensive line again allowed anyone and everyone to get after him and false-started the Irish repeatedly farther back.  When he did have the time to find and get off a quality throw, Rhema McKnight's Traitorous Hands dropped a touchdown on the first drive and a fourth down conversion later in the second half, along with a few more tossed in for good measure.  His back-up tight end, Marcus Freeman, also let one hit the turf in the end zone.  

You can place blame in a lot of places for Saturday night's west coast debacle, but you cannot put it on Quinn.  He ran and threw and tried to will his team to victory, but there were too many mistakes and not enough stops to reach his expected destination.  You can also not state that Booty, surrounded by more talent and going against a defense significantly worse is somehow better than Quinn because of this game?  Maybe Booty does end up a better quarterback when it's all said and done, but this is thin-slicing to an absurd degree.

Enjoy your victory, Trojans, but let's not start making crazy declarations just yet.


It's not like Booty's receivers were having much trouble getting open...

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Let's see what the experts..
...say in the upcoming draft.  Quinn did nothing to hurt his chances of getting drafted very very high.

Hope Booty gets half as much looty as Quinn will get when his chance comes around.

by DickdaStick on Nov 27, 2006 2:30 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

Those numbers lie
Obviously, Brady had a better game than Booty because he had more completions.  What?  He threw more passes than Booty did?  Shit.  That kinda ruins our argument.  Let's just throw certain numbers out of the window.

I will concede that most of USC starters are better than Notre Dame's.  But you can't convince me Booty is better than Quinn, especially off of circumstances like Saturday brought.

by Rob on Nov 27, 2006 4:23 PM EST reply actions   0 recs

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