re: How do LSU fans view Matt Mauck?

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Had a thread about each schools top 5 qbs in the school's history on the rant and didn't see Matt Mauck listed in any LSU fan's list.

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Well you just can't legitimately put him in the Top 5 considering that LSU had Y.A. Tittle (NFL HOFer), Bert Jones (NFL MVP in 1976), & Tommy Hodson (the only 4-time 1st-Team All-SEC QB in conference history).

For the years 1986-2011, I think almost all of the most knowledgeable fans would put Hodson / Flynn / Russell in the top tier, and put Davey / Mauck / Tyler in the second tier, and then put QBs like Booty / Lee / Howard in a tier below that.

But how you judge QBs within those tiers is like a total Rorschach test. There's just no good totally objective way to judge them.

Hodson was obviously the best in the SEC for 4 years, but the SEC was at its lowest point then (it was the era when independents reigned). He was the most polished freshman QB in LSU history, and may have been the best ever at reading defenses and playing smart, but he had limited pro potential and did have a couple of horrible games.

Russell obviously had the most talented arm, but he did a shite ton of little things wrong (from not following through on fakes, to getting blindsided on sacks and fumbling too easily, to being terrible at audibles), and had a penchant for not producing points in big games--LSU's offensive performances in its 8 games from 2004-2006 against UF, AUB, & UGA were absolutely and inexcusably subpar relative to the talent those teams had. But then how you view this depends on how you view Jimbo Fisher as an OC.

Matt Flynn produced points consistently against great defenses in big games like no other QB in LSU history, but people always want to write him off because he threw too many INTs in a 41-34 win over Bama, or because his arm wasn't as strong as Russell's, or because he's supposedly to blame for KY or AR. I think he was mostly just a scapegoat used by fans still mad over a lack of recognition for Russell in 2006, but whatever.

Davey is somebody that everybody looks back upon extremely fondly, because the games with him at QB was like watching LSU play a video game against the other teams' hapless defenses. Against the best defenses at the time, like UT & UF in '01, he didn't do much, but his bubble screen hookups to Josh Reed (such as in the '01 Bama game) were the stuff of legend. His style just worked so perfectly with Reed because he had an unusual ability to throw hard without moving his lower body at all, so that he would always throw with a defender draped around him and it would look hilarious. As fun as he was though, he was not seriously a "great" college QB. People confuse fun and laughter with greatness I think, and forget just how much separation Reed was able to achieve as a WR.

Herb Tyler ran the most beautifully crisp option offense at LSU in 1997, but holy crap, the dude had trouble as a dropback passer. I think he was just too short to see over the heads of linemen, because he was fairly good at rollouts, but his inability to throw from the pocket killed LSU at times, as awesome of an option QB as he was.

Which finally brings us to Matt Mauck, who I would say was sort of a hybrid type of QB who was half-Tyler, half-Flynn. Like Flynn, he could usually generate points either with his legs or his arm. Like Tyler, he was really not comfortable from the pocket and had trouble trying to get a vision for the field, although he had better vision than Tyler did, and (usually) tended to make fewer mistakes.

Also, what sets Mauck apart from the others is how much of a leader he was in the off-season. He had a lot of pull with the team as an older guy with good grades in pre-dental that was coming back from pro baseball, and he would call people up all the time during the summer to make sure they got their workouts done and practiced their routes with him. To this day I think he deserves a lot of credit for how in shape and well-regulated that 2003 team was. (Compared to say, the 2008 team, which was in horrible shape.) That offense still put up a goose egg against UF though.