Former Georgia All-American tries to back up his praise for Vols QB Nico Iamaleava with a very strange comparison
It's becoming all love for former Georgia Bulldogs standout football players towards the Tennessee Vols' brightest young star. Former Georgia starting QB Aaron Murray recently broke down some tape and marveled at the throws that Nico Iamaleava was able to make in the Vols' 69-3 season-opening romp over Chattanooga last Saturday. Now, another marquee name […]
It's becoming all love for former Georgia Bulldogs standout football players towards the Tennessee Vols' brightest young star.
Former Georgia starting QB Aaron Murray recently broke down some tape and marveled at the throws that Nico Iamaleava was able to make in the Vols' 69-3 season-opening romp over Chattanooga last Saturday.
Now, another marquee name for Georgia is clamoring over what Iamaleava has done in his young career – albeit in a head-scratching manner.
2002 first-team All-American defensive end and former ESPN college football analyst David Pollack took to YouTube to break down some film of Nico, whom he predicts will become a superstar. In doing so, he compared Nico's first 2024 start to those of some other quarterbacks' memorable debuts (ignoring the fact Nico started the Citrus Bowl) and whether they met the hype.
The list of quarterbacks was, uh, interesting.
"Obviously it was game one, it's Chattanooga, but when you think about debuts and meeting the hype, very few times do you do that. And so, it got me thinking about, who are the best guys that I've ever seen in their debut that have been hyped up and pubbed up? So I'm going to take you back several years ago. And I think this was like 2013. It was Jameis Winston, it was me, Rece Davis, and Jessie Palmer, and we were on the call. I remember meeting with Jimbo Fisher the night before, and like Jameis Winston is that guy. Like he is an absolute superstar. He's going to be a stud. He reads defenses so well. He throws the football. He's got some good energy. He goes out against Pitt in the first game, and he did ok. Jameis Winston's numbers for that game, 25 of 27, 4 touchdown passes, one touchdown running. So, it was literally as advertised. He went on to win the Heisman Trophy that season. Worked out unbelievable."
Now, Jameis Winston is not a bad comparison at all. The opposite, actually. Winston won the Heisman Trophy and led Florida State to the 2013 national championship in the final year of the BCS. He led the Noles to the College Football Playoff (their only one to date) the following season before getting drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with the first overall pick of the 2015 NFL Draft. He was quite the college QB, and he lived up to his hype his whole college career.
Pollack continued with another comparison, one that was a bit iffy, but one that wasn't downright out of left field: former UCLA QB Josh Rosen.
"I remember doing a tape on this guy, Josh Rosen. He was so hyped out and out of UCLA, they play Virginia. He goes 28 of 35 for 351 (yards), 3 touchdowns, no interceptions, and it was Josh Rosen hype all over again."
Rosen's first and third years (2015 and 2017) were respectable – he appeared in only 6 games in 2016. In 2015, he completed 60% of his throws for 3670 yards and 23 touchdowns to 11 interceptions. In 2017, he 62.6% for 3576 yards with 26 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Not bad, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Rosen would be drafted in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft, and would never pan out as a starting QB in the NFL after failing to do anything with Arizona and Miami, among other stops.
Again, not an insulting comparison, but not one that's on par with a superstar as Pollack himself puts it. Simply another pretty good college player who had a great start to his career.
However, the last comparison he made is flat-out bizarre: former Wisconsin and current Florida QB Graham Mertz.
"And then the last one, Graham Mertz. Do y'all remember him at Wisconsin? 2020? That dude went like 20 of 21. And the one pass that was dropped by [Garrett Groshek] that could have been caught, like, it was a near phenomenal day. And I just remember thinking Russell Wilson and Paul Chryst and this Wisconsin offense running the football, and a guy at quarterback that can do that.
"So, like, Nico, I put him in this category, man, because he was so hyped up and a guy that came in and lived up to it."
Woof. What a weird comparison to make before immediately following up with "Nico is going to be a superstar."
Mertz, despite a half of good football in the Gators' 29-16 win over Tennessee last year, has been nothing more than a replacement level college quarterback for most of his college career, with the exception of an efficient 2023 season with Florida where he threw for 2903 yards on 72.3% completion rate with 20 touchdowns to 3 interceptions. Take out that season, and Mertz has 5496 passing yards with 38 touchdowns to 27 interceptions for the rest of his career that dates back to 2019. He also struggled mightily in the Gators' 41-17 season-opening loss to Miami this year.
That's far from the resume of someone who is an upper echelon player in the league. As such, that's a baffling player to be comparing a supposed rising superstar like Nico to, even if the point of emphasis was just an early standout game. If you're going to say a player is going to be a superstar, you should use examples of early successful starts from players who ended up going onto superstar careers.
Or, as former Alabama head coach Nick Saban used to say, perhaps this is just "rat poison" put out by some former Georgia players against the UT star.
Regardless, Iamaleava and the Vols will look to make it 3-0 during the young QB's tenure as a starter when UT and NC State square off on Saturday night in Charlotte.
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