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QB1 Julian Sayin (All B1G, B1G Frosh of Year, All American, National Frosh of Year, National Champion)

Shoulder injuries suck.. They linger.. even worse than damn hammies..

When he's 50 he'll have ramifications.. as all us oldsters understand all too well
As an orthopedic dude told me decades ago.. All those injuries you had as a late teen & young adult will raise their head in your mid to late years
 
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Shoulder injuries suck.. They linger.. even worse than damn hammies..

When he's 50 he'll have ramifications.. as all us oldsters understand all too well
As an orthopedic dude told me decades ago.. All those injuries you had as a late teen & young adult will raise their head in your mid to late years
Co-sign….My shoulder damage showed up suddenly at 44….
 
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Two different things.

I didn't say JJ was *always* his first read. Is he 70% / 80% of the time? Probably. But not 100%.

I was saying that when teams jam up Sayin's first read, he get shaky and unsure. That's the point I was trying to make. I only brought JJ in to say there was probably something different about how the "Hard Set" did in the secondary. They were mayb trying to force Sayin to show his purported ability to process things very quickly.

There are plenty of times, and we saw it during the Maryland and Indiana games, when JJ isn't Sayin's first read and his first read is a no-go, Sayin forces it to JJ. Sometimes the jump ball to JJ works. We all like those THTGDB odds. In triple coverage, it doesn't work not as well, especially when Sayin is rushed and stuck in the pocket and JJ is not getting PI calls.

EDIT: And re the "airmailing"... I'm convinced that there was something going on with his shoulder before the hit that actually took him out of the game. Totally uncharacteristic throws for him. Might also explain the plays where he chose to take a sack rather than the easy available option to throw the ball away. I think his shoulder was REALLY hurting him.
The way I think of it is the hard teams can bracket Smith AND still get heat on Sayin. Consistently.

No QB is as good under pressure as he is with time and a clean pocket but we have a big enough body of work now. Sayin’s numbers are pedestrian against those teams but you could maybe survive it but for the turnovers. They are untenable.
 
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Shoulder injuries suck.. They linger.. even worse than damn hammies..

When he's 50 he'll have ramifications.. as all us oldsters understand all too well
As an orthopedic dude told me decades ago.. All those injuries you had as a late teen & young adult will raise their head in your mid to late years
Boy do they ever. I did something 4 years ago shoveling snow at my parents and I thought it was just a sore back. Lingered for about a year when I tried to do anything before I got it seen. Didn't find much did 2-3 months of pt till it was fixed. Lifted a ladder and messed it up again. Throught it was my shoulder turns out it might have been my neck this whole time. Pain shooting down into arms inability to sleep some nights cause burning in the shoulder blad it's great. And I'm only just about to touch 40
 
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The way I think of it is the hard teams can bracket Smith AND still get heat on Sayin. Consistently.

No QB is as good under pressure as he is with time and a clean pocket but we have a big enough body of work now. Sayin’s numbers are pedestrian against those teams but you could maybe survive it but for the turnovers. They are untenable.
Seems like there's a compounding effect. The hard teams can bracket Smith, and while Sayin is trying to figure who else to throw to (in case JJ was his first read), he sputters. That's how teams with good DL get pressure on him without putting extra bodies on the line or blitzing. If Sayin doesn't have the processing speed we were led to believe he does, the pocket eventually just collapses and he's not mobile enough to get out of there.

How many "cave in" sacks have we seen this year? Seems like quite few... I'm not sure if that's even a thing. But it's a different thing that getting sacked in pursuit after getting flushed out because your QB doesn't have legs or the ability to elude or doesn't like to throw on the run.

In either case, Sayin gets sacked in both scenarios - when the pocket collapses and when he leaves the pocket.

I'm gonna go see if the stats back up my conjecture...
 
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This is what I got from Claude...

1792349934144.png

Makes sense... Sayin has the worst sack ratio among the top 10.

I also looked at the top 25, curious to see if a larger population might swings things. He comes in 6th among the top 25 after Brandon at Tennessee (12.9%), Russel at Alabama (9.5%), Manning (9.3%), Fifita at Arizona (7.7%) and Michey at Kentucky (7.2%).

I also asked to see yds/att because maybe Sayin is the worst among the top ten because he's holding the ball longer because he makes longer passes. Here's what I got:

1792350466621.png

The yds/att numbers are relatively "bunched" for the top 6. What stands out is that among the top 10 there's only about a 25% difference between the top and the bottom. Whereas for the sack ratio, the worst performer is something like 3x worse than the 10th worst. Pretty big spread... what I get from that is that Sayin's high sack rate is not entirely / fully driven by his high yds/att figure.

I don't have access to PFF so I can see pressure rates and what-not that might explain things more.
 
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For reference...

Sayin's 2025 sack rate was about 3.9%. He took 16 sacks on 391 dropbacks. Much lower than 2026. And, remember that 10 of those came in the last two games against Indiana and Miami. During the regular season his sack rate was about 2% (6 sacks on 327 dropbacks). His 2026 rate is 3.4x higher.

These numbers are also from Claude... I haven't double checked them. I did check to make sure what it's calling an attempt vs a dropback.

And, out of curiosity, I also asked about all QBs through the Ryan Day era. Interesting results. Sayin's sack rate this season is the worst since the Fields years.

1792351767740.png

EDIT: The 2026 number is different because Claude is including "team sacks" in that set of data. The 2025 rate is also for the team. Sayin's own sack rate in 2025 was 3.9%.
 
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@shetuck i agree with compounding.

You put a fragile QB behind a weak OL, mix in his mental state compounding the processing errors (audibles, blocking schemes, route progression) you get what we have seen.

Good defenses make Sayin a very average QB with turn over tendencies.
Yep... well said.

And the stats show that the difference between Sayin and his performance and Fields was essentially Fields' legs and elusiveness even though he had a slightly higher sack rate. The getting hurt part from getting sacked a bunch of times, not so much.
 
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What stands out for me, after chugging through all these stats is this: Sayin should've been sacked a bunch by Texas in 2025, but he wasn't.

What was it about the offense that got called for him in that game, his first start as a freshman, that helped him survive?
 
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I think Julian should come back next year. In the big games he’s really struggled.

I don’t think either back up is ready but I also don’t think what we’ve seen from Julian this year would have been good enough to win it all anyhow.

Provided the coaches actually call plays that Luke can execute it’ll be good to see what he’s got. I think we can run the QB more, move Luke since he’s not very tall, and get back to play calls where the ball is sort of predetermined like last year.

Hopefully Julian can heal up for this year

This is going to be a really unpopular opinion but I’m not sure I want him to. All offseason we talked about improvement in this area and nothing’s changed has changed.

I’m not referencing you here, but I can’t just blindly assume he will take this massive leap just because he’s going to hit a 3rd year as a starter.

And I say this while being cognizant of the ambiguity post-separation. But just to be clear, I am literally just saying I am not sure I do. It’s not the same as saying “hell no, good riddance.” I can’t avoid the thought at this point.

This is one of the more unique situations we have faced in a while. Against any defense worth its salt, late in a game — with a need to sustain a drive -/ I have absolutely no confidence in him at this point.

For the most part I love what he’s done for this program, for the most part it’s been amazing to watch him play.

I am remiss, I expect to get dragged over coals - but I’ll own my thoughts.
 
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