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Smith Looking Rusty

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Smith Looking Rusty

QB Rusty Smith has only seven games left in his college football career to prove to NFL scouts, he is worthy of being drafted by a pro team.

Prior to the start of the 2009 season, Rusty was projected to get picked up in the second half of the 3rd round. Currently, he Smith is projected as a late 6th round pick. Rusty is now ranked 9th among expected QB's to be drafted. Rusty Smith | Florida Atlantic, QB : 2010 NFL Draft Scout Player Profile

Last year, the NFL drafted 12 out of 30 QB's.

*** So what will Rusty Smith have to do in his final seven (8 games, if we make a bowl appearance) to make sure he not only stays in the top-10 QB range, but moves up from the 9th spot?

Rusty Smith's current stats:
CMP ATT YDS CMP% YPA LNG TD INT SACK RAT
104 180 1252 57.8   6.96 51   8   3   6     127.54

"FAU is on a collision course with the national championship. The only variable is time."
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Re: Smith Looking Rusty

Owlando said

QB Rusty Smith has only seven games left in his college football career to prove to NFL scouts, he is worthy of being drafted by a pro team.

Prior to the start of the 2009 season, Rusty was projected to get picked up in the second half of the 3rd round. Currently, he Smith is projected as a late 6th round pick. Rusty is now ranked 9th among expected QB's to be drafted. Rusty Smith | Florida Atlantic, QB : 2010 NFL Draft Scout Player Profile

Last year, the NFL drafted 12 out of 30 QB's.

*** So what will Rusty Smith have to do in his final seven (8 games, if we make a bowl appearance) to make sure he not only stays in the top-10 QB range, but moves up from the 9th spot?

Rusty Smith's current stats:
CMP ATT YDS CMP% YPA LNG TD INT SACK RAT
104 180 1252 57.8   6.96 51   8   3   6     127.54

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but Rusty isn't getting drafted. I think possibly Harmon as a WR and maybe Gent in the 7th round but nothing is for sure and wouldn't be surprised if we had no one again

My two favorite teams are FAU, and who ever is beating FIU!
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Re: Smith Looking Rusty

Owlando said

QB Rusty Smith has only seven games left in his college football career to prove to NFL scouts, he is worthy of being drafted by a pro team.

Prior to the start of the 2009 season, Rusty was projected to get picked up in the second half of the 3rd round. Currently, he Smith is projected as a late 6th round pick. Rusty is now ranked 9th among expected QB's to be drafted. Rusty Smith | Florida Atlantic, QB : 2010 NFL Draft Scout Player Profile

Last year, the NFL drafted 12 out of 30 QB's.

*** So what will Rusty Smith have to do in his final seven (8 games, if we make a bowl appearance) to make sure he not only stays in the top-10 QB range, but moves up from the 9th spot?

Rusty Smith's current stats:
CMP ATT YDS CMP% YPA LNG TD INT SACK RAT
104 180 1252 57.8  6.96 51  8  3  6    127.54

Great post. He needs to do two things in my opinion. He needs to up the completion percentage. He should be arond 65%. He also needs to show that he can take over a game and be a dominant player. If he does those two things he will help himself. Lets not forget that a lot of guys make their money based on workouts and interviews. He might be able to improve his stock after the season ends.


GO OWLS!!!

2017 and 2019 Conference USA Champions
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Re: Smith Looking Rusty

Jab979 said

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but Rusty isn't getting drafted. I think possibly Harmon as a WR and maybe Gent in the 7th round but nothing is for sure and wouldn't be surprised if we had no one again

Bingo. He's been called a streaky quarterback, mostly immobile, his throws are still not directly on target (he doesn't throw bullets…), he hasn't lead us to a win over a good BCS team and nobody mentioned his Pro Day stats last year as being noteworthy. Don't get me wrong… he has plenty of upside and I hope he gets a shot in the combine to show what he has. Engineering a second half-season turnaround this year would probably get him into one. If we don't hit bowl eligibility, I think he'll go as a FA.
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Re: Smith Looking Rusty

This is an interesting stat below–I think we are missing the bigger picture for Rusty and I believe he will be drafted in April!

Notes:
Rusty Smith among National Career Leaders
Rusty Smith is listed No. 13 among the 2009 FBS Lowest Career Interception Percentage. Smith's interception percentage is 2.64. He has attempted 1,288 passes and has had 34 intercepted. Florida's Tim Tebow leads the list at 1.64. He has thrown 791 passes (minimum is 750) and has been intercepted 13 times.

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Re: Smith Looking Rusty

An interesting read from August 30, 2009 defending why Rusty should have another breakout year like 2007:

Florida Atlantic Owls' Rusty Smith ready for redemption

By TOM D'ANGELO

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 30, 2009

BOCA RATON — Everything is in place for quarterback Rusty Smith and the Florida Atlantic offense to have another breakout season in 2009.

Smith enters as the poised, fifth-year senior with NFL size and a half season of adversity in '08 to go along with a record-breaking 2007.

His receivers are just as seasoned, many entering their fifth year of tossing around footballs and hanging out with their leader.

And Smith will play behind a veteran line that takes pride in protecting the best player ever to wear an FAU uniform.

All of which makes this offense the focus of what the Owls expect to be a bounce-back season.

Smith's presence on the Walter Camp, Davey O'Brien and Johnny Unitas watch lists, and his selection as the Sun Belt Conference's pre-season co-offensive player of the year, are byproducts of his success and the team's rise on the college football landscape.

"As any good five-year quarterback who has started three years, Rusty is fundamentally sound in everything he does," FAU coach Howard Schnellenberger said.

Smith's numbers this season could surpass his record-breaking sophomore year in which he set school and conference marks for passing yards (3,688) and touchdown passes (32) in a season, helping the Owls win the Sun Belt title.

Consider this: Even in a 2008 season that started so poorly, Smith threw for enough yards (3,224) and touchdown passes (24) to rank second in school and league history.

Smith has tremendous faith in his skill players, six of whom arrived with him in 2005, with two others coming in a year later.

"The fact that we've worked together so long, it's second nature," Smith said. "If something goes wrong and the coverage is not what we expected, I know they're going to make the proper adjustment. If I audible, most of the time they know what I'm going to audible to before I do it."

Cortez Gent has been the most productive receiver the past two years with 124 catches for 2,017 yards. Gent, fellow receivers Chris Bonner and Conshario Johnson, along with tight ends Jason Harmon and Jamari Grant and fullback Willie Rose, are part of the same fifth-year class.

"We pretty much got the same brains," Gent said of Smith. "I can almost feel what route he's going to check to."

Smith, though, knows experience alone does not guarantee success. Last season he dropped off the radar after throwing nine interceptions and just five touchdowns in the first six games.

He recovered nicely but when post-season awards were announced, Smith - the 2007 Sun Belt player of the year - was shut out. In an eight-team conference, he was not even one of five quarterbacks listed as first team, second team or honorable mention.

"Last season, I threw more interceptions and that's something I really, really need to cut down because turnovers are so detrimental to an offense," he said of his 14 picks.

"And most of my interceptions came when I was trying to force the ball downfield with somebody open closer."

A simple 7-yard completion was not good enough, not when the quarterback has a rocket arm and a big play was out there waiting to be made. That tendency to try too hard was part of the reason the Owls had to scramble from a 1-5 start to qualify for a bowl game with no room to spare.

"I think it kind of rattled him a little bit," Harmon said of the slow start. "We just stuck by him. We had to tell him it's a dry patch, he'll get through it and once he gets through it he'll be back to normal."

Quarterbacks coach Jeff Brohm, who is in his first season at FAU, identified the problem immediately after watching video of Smith's past two seasons.

"The thing you noticed his sophomore year, he was taking what they gave him," Brohm said. "He was getting the ball out of his hand. He was not being greedy, and he was just running the offense very effectively and efficiently.

"Last year I think he got confident in his abilities and started to get a little greedy and tried to make the big play a little bit too much instead of just let it happen throughout the course of the offense."

Suddenly, those grandiose predictions of Smith being a first-round draft pick and those comparisons to Bernie Kosar were forgotten. But Smith, who has prototypical quarterback size (6-feet-5, 230 pounds), does not need to be selected in the first round, or even the first day, to have an NFL career, which many believe is in his future.

One Web site, www.nfldraftscout.com, has Smith rated eighth of 135 quarterbacks in the nation this season and projects him to be drafted in the fifth round.

His biggest challenge will be overcoming the stigma of playing in the Sun Belt.

"That's always going to be used against him," said Brohm, who spent seven seasons in the NFL after playing for Schnellenberger at Louisville.

"But when the season is over and the scouts start to look at you, they can normally weed that out and have a pretty good idea if somebody can play or not."
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