Who will win the competition for backup quarterback at Miami between Reese Poffenbarger, Jacurri Brown and Emory Williams?
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00:00 Very intrigued to see if any of what I'm going to view as three guys battling for quarterback two,
00:06 if anyone truly emerges and looks heads or tails better than the other guys.
00:11 Reese Poffenbarger, Jacari Brown, Emery Williams. I'll explain why Emery Williams
00:17 maybe should be in a tier by himself, but I'm going to put him in here in tier two for now.
00:22 Miami, again, I think they have potentially one of the deepest quarterback rooms in the ACC.
00:28 We'll start with Poffenbarger. New kid on the block, absolutely lit it up past couple years
00:34 at Albany. We've seen plenty of examples of it. It's not like FCS quarterbacks are never
00:39 successful in FBS. We've seen plenty of examples of FCS quarterbacks making a successful jump into
00:46 the Power Five, including Cam Ward. Poffenbarger last year threw for over 3,600 yards, 36 touchdown
00:53 passes, 13 interceptions. Poff is aggressive downfield. He's mobile. His game, if you look
01:00 at his film, it reminds me a lot of a young Baker Mayfield. That's just sort of the style of play
01:06 that Poffenbarger brings to the table. And I think he's going to be very prominent in this
01:10 competition for the backup job. Jacari Brown, he's a favorite of mine. He's a show favorite.
01:16 I love how he wanted to stick around and compete, despite at this point, he's not gotten a true
01:21 opportunity to be a starter, whether it be Tyler Van Dyke the past couple of years or now Cam Ward,
01:26 he still wants to stay and compete. Jacari is big. He's powerful. He runs exceptionally well,
01:33 and he's got a really strong arm. Jacari, he just needs, I think, more experience to develop more
01:38 consistency with his throwing accuracy because he obviously, compared to Poffenbarger, he's at
01:44 a disadvantage in just not having played in as many games. I know Poff was playing in FCS, but
01:49 he's just got so much more experience than Jacari Brown. We only saw Jacari one time this season.
01:55 It was in the bowl game, and I thought he did pretty well there. Then, okay, the last member
02:00 of tier two for me is Emery Williams. Now, Emery, he makes my cut for tier two, despite the fact
02:07 that I think he's going to red shirt this year. But I put him in tier two because he showed me
02:13 enough as a true freshman last year, especially in his two starts. He showed me that he can truly
02:19 compete for the backup quarterback job if needed. I think Miami would prefer to red shirt him the
02:24 way that they did Jacari last year, but if for whatever reason, Poffenbarger and Brown just
02:30 aren't stepping up, and if Emery just looks so good in practice, he's also coming off an injury.
02:35 That's kind of another asterisk for him. I don't know how active he's going to be in spring,
02:40 but Cristobal did say that he should be ready to play. So there's a couple of asterisks by Emery.
02:45 But going back to what he did on the field last season, he showed poise and maturity when starting
02:50 against the two toughest defenses on Miami's schedule. The two games that that kid started
02:54 last year against Clemson and against Florida State, Miami beat Clemson and he was a big part
03:00 of that. Conservative for most of the game, but made some big time throws in the fourth quarter.
03:05 He nearly helped Miami get somewhat close to an upset of Florida State. And if he hadn't
03:12 had to leave the game with the broken arm, who knows what might have happened there?
03:16 Tyler Van Dyke ended up throwing an interception, his signature move. He threw the interception
03:21 to kind of seal that win for Florida State last year. My prediction for the quarterback position,
03:26 not too surprising. I've got Cam Ward as my starting QB one and folks, this is going to
03:32 make some people angry. And I know I'm going to get some comments on this, but until proven
03:37 otherwise, I'm going to pencil in Reese Poffenbarger as the guy I handicap as slightly
03:44 more likely to win the backup job. And I say this primarily because of his experience.