Connor Shaw’s 20 straight completions not Precise enough for ESPN’s Mark Schlabach
September 22, 2012; Columbia, SC, USA; South Carolina Gamecocks quarterback Connor Shaw (14) rushes for a big gain as Missouri Tigers defensivie back E.J. Gaines and Missouri Tigers defensive back Randy Ponder pursue in the first quarter at Williams-Brice Stadium. The run was called back due to penalty. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Blake-US PRESSWIRE
I’ve already trashed Mark Schlabach (@Mark_Schlabach on Twitter if you’d like to voice your displeasure with him personally), and two of his ESPN co-workers for picking Missouri to upset South Carolina at Williams-Brice Stadium in what was the Tigers first ever road SEC game.
Now, it seems, I have to do it again.
In Schlabach’s “On the Mark” column for week five over at ESPN.com, he ran a sidebar on the left side of the page featuring five players each at three positions: (from bottom to top) “Big Play Wide Receivers”, “Ground Gaining Running Backs”, and “Precision Passers”.
Now, I can understand leaving off Ace Sanders from the WR list, because he did most of his damage on special teams, and I can even understand not putting Marcus Lattimore in his list of running backs, because, although he did gain 140+ total yards, less than 90 of them came on the ground.
But there is literally no way to justify leaving Connor Shaw off his list of “PRECISION” passers. Again, the words he used to describe his top quarterbacks of the week were “PRECISION” and “passers”.
Shaw threw one incomplete pass the entire game.
He threw 20 straight completions.
He threw for 249 yards and 2 Tds.
His quarterback rating was 226.3.
So, Mark Schlabach, what gives?
Were you just too embarrassed of your upset pick this weekend that you couldn’t man up and look at the box score before writing your column? Or, do you just have too much misplaced pride to recognize when you are wrong and when a team you picked to lose was quarterbacked by a guy who threw 20 straight complete passes.
In case you didn’t click the link to read his article (I don’t blame you, he seems to be getting everything wrong the past 10 days or so), his top 5 precision passers from the same week that Connor Shaw broke a school record for complete passes in a row are as follows:
Taylor Heinicke, EJ Manuel, Gary Nova, Tyler Bray and Geno Smith.
FanSided does not condone its writers trashing other sports writers, especially ones as prominent as a supposed expert from ESPN, and neither do I, for that matter.
But when you’re as wrong as Mark Schlabach has been about the team that I cover for the past week and a half, someone has to point it out.