Let’s all collectively pour one out for Trace. He is no longer the FBS leader in consecutive games with a touchdown pass. You could just tell that he wanted to throw the ball in one of the two red zone trips where he ended up practically jogging it into the end zone. We all wanted him to throw it too, but the gaps were too wide open and the game too close to care about some meaningless streak. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter, and Trace didn’t really care.
That’s why we love him: he has a win at all costs attitude.
It also showed earlier in the game when he gave up another passing touchdown opportunity to Tommy Stevens, who – in his first attempt of the season – slipped one into the corner like he’d been the starting quarterback all season. Our backup QB’s are now a combined 6/6 with 3 TD’s – talk about depth. Unfortunately for Sean Clifford, you usually need a larger body of work to warrant votes from actual Heisman voters. But hey, he still has mine.
Trace, on the other hand, does have a large body of work, and that body just hit the gym and worked on its glamour muscles in the win against Indiana. Trace put in work, despite not having a passing TD, and he saw a big jump in our QB rankings for Week 8. Up into the top 10 for Power 5 QB’s, and up 9 spots to 18 in the FBS rankings. It wasn’t pretty at times, and McSorley came away with another lackluster completion rate, partly due to the drops that continue to plague the PSU wide receivers. McSorley walked away with a 52.8% completion rate, but if we factor out the drops (which I painstakingly counted by hand, and then debated over who was at fault with my dad), he comes out to 68.1% on the day – a much more respectable number. If the Penn State receivers can somehow get out of their own heads and use their super-sticky gloves to catch the ball (which, as anyone who has used them will tell you, make it nearly impossible to drop a ball), then Trace could see a second half comeback and at least be in those stupid ESPN Heisman voting tweets.
That would be a worthy accomplishment after this season, because I don’t see any of the top quarterbacks regressing so much that McSorley has a chance to win the Heisman. Kyler Murray is playing out of his mind against stupid-bad defenses, at 3 standard deviations above the average QB level. That’s insane. Now I didn’t do research on this, but it may be the first time we see back-to-back Heisman-winners from the same school and position ever (I know, I know, this is a stats website, but we don’t do stupid shit like that historical records crap).
After some brief half-assed research, I can confirm that this is an accurate statement by me. You heard it hear first on Staturdays blog. Tell your friends.
Will Grier is also playing ridiculously well, and he’s responsible for almost 90% of West Virginia’s TDs, while Trace is only responsible for half. Kinda hard to argue with that. But hey, Trace still had a good week!
Staturdays 