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Ryan Burns article - Bruce Wang - 07-31-2012

Nice piece in the Washington Post on Ryan Burns, his coach, and their team.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/stone-bridge-football-looks-to-accentuate-senior-qb-ryan-burns/2012/07/29/gJQAdOvuIX_story.html

This might not bode well to end Burns' controversy - Redrum - 07-31-2012

Ryan Burns' school runs the single wing.  Last year Burns was 90 of 206 in a now-aborted attempt to bring in a spread offense.  If Stanford recruiting mavens--who want to feel better about the Burns offer--are looking for a bigger season this year from Burns,  then they might be disappointed.  They might have to be satisfied with a higher completion percentage and fewer interceptions.  Maybe his coach really can adapt the single wing to a killer passing offense,  but his first job is to win games,  not showcase Burns in his senior season. 

Re: Ryan Burns article - washingtonismoney - 07-31-2012

I agree with you. It seems like he's taking a hodgepodge approach. Some single wing, some spread, some Stanford stuff? You have to make up your mind as a coach.

Re: Ryan Burns article - FarmBoy - 07-31-2012

It looks like he was able to install/execute a more prolific passing attack when his own son was under center, so it's not out of the realm of possibility

Quote:Thompson is hoping Burns’s performance will allow the Bulldogs to sling the ball around like they did in 2007, when Patrick Thompson completed 61 percent of his passes for 2,369 yards and 31 touchdowns in leading Stone Bridge to the Virginia AAA Division 5 title.

I find it odd that you can rate a player so highly when they haven't had a lot of opportunity to demonstrate their ability. Far be it from me to question the recruiting experts, but basing a kid's ranking entirely on "potential" seems odd.

Re: Ryan Burns article - washingtonismoney - 07-31-2012

(07-31-2012, 08:28 AM)FarmBoy link Wrote:I find it odd that you can rate a player so highly when they haven't had a lot of opportunity to demonstrate their ability. Far be it from me to question the recruiting experts, but basing a kid's ranking entirely on "potential" seems odd.

I don't think it's terribly odd. It's what evaluators do in basically every sport.* How good you are at it is another question. In the case of high school quarterbacks, I took kind of a quick glance at various quarterbacks--and quite a few highly-rated quarterbacks have had surprisingly modest high school numbers. And most people who have looked at the numbers find that highly-rated players perform better on average than more modestly-rated ones, and teams with collections of highly-rated players perform better on average than teams with collections of more modestly-rated players.

*(NBA teams routinely take big men who have only played basketball for, like, three years or something, to take one example. NFL teams have been known to try out basketball players with barely any football experience, sometimes with wonderful results at TE--e.g. Antonio Gates and that Saints TE whose name escapes me. And so on. If production were what mattered, Kellen Moore would've been the second pick in the NFL draft.)

Re: Ryan Burns article - BigEasyCard - 07-31-2012

and that Saints TE whose name escapes me.

That would be fan favorite Jimmy Graham, a true feel good story.

Here's his player bio: http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/_/id/13232/jimmy-graham



Re: Ryan Burns article - FarmBoy - 07-31-2012

If you need an OT, TE, or many of the other position players, it's a very specific set of characteristics you're looking for. I read "The Blind Side", which chronicles Michael Oher's raise from homelessness to being a top OT prospect, and it recounts how the scout only needed a few minutes of grainy high school game film to take an unknown quantity and put him in his top prospects lists. He could just tell be looking at MO's body that he would make a good OT. But intuitively I'd think that being a good QB prospect would be harder to predict, especially if you didn't see the prospect play in the type of offense they would be asked to run in college. I wouldn't think the QB position is one where you can look at the body type, athletic measurables and even the throwing motion on tape and say, "that's our man." Accuracy, timing, making reads, etc seem so inherent to the quality of the QB, that I would think not having a large sample of plays to draw from would make prediction more difficult. I'm not arguing that it can't be done, just that I'm surprised it is.

I was also struck in the article by the fact that this guy is a top QB prospect and he's choosing to stay in a system that doesn't show off his skills. I've read other stories of QB's and players leaving schools when there's turnover at the HC position. That kid who "committed" to the T.rojans when he was 13, changed schools recently because the school decided to "deemphasize" football's role in the school. It speaks well of Burns' character that he sticks with his team despite the fact that it may limit his exposure. It doesn't seem to have hurt him, as he's still considered a top prospect, but in this day and age, it shows some character that he's not just trying to maximize his situation.

Re: Ryan Burns article - FarmBoy - 07-31-2012

For top athletes, there's usually a way.


Re: Ryan Burns article - Hank 91 - 08-02-2012

I think game performance and film are pretty low on the list when scouts are evaluating quarterbacks. (As WIM says, this is true in most sports. Volleyball is the biggest female scholarship sport right now, and college scouts rarely bother attending high school matches at all; instead they lurk at camps and club tournaments.)

Identifying a top quarterback on a Friday night would almost be like sitting in an AP English class and picking out which one of the students would one day become a top-notch lawyer. I saw Matt Barkley play a couple times in high school, and at no point did he look like the top prospect that he was.

Quarterbacks nowadays start going to quarterback camps as early as middle school, and that's where they gain notoriety -- and coaching. Everything is specialized in youth sports, especially the coaching. There are certainly a few big time high school programs out there that can provide quality quarterback coaching, but that isn't always the case.

Ryan Burns has impressed a lot of people who know a lot more than I do, so I'm not bothered by his bad stats. I'm just happy that he'll be coming to Stanford, I look forward to watching him as the starting quarterback in 2015.