USC Football: Assessment of JT Daniels’ first college game
The USC Football season started in the right direction with a victory in true freshman, JT Daniels, first start at quarterback for the Trojans.
True freshman quarterback JT Daniels made his first start for the USC Football Trojans on Saturday. He led the Trojans to a 43-21 win over UNLV at the Coliseum. I took the time to observe how well he did his first start.
USC started the game calling a lot of quick slant routes to get Daniels in some sort of a rhythm and to be conservative. His slant passes were quick and on the money. As the first half went on, Daniels struggled with his accuracy, often missing high.
But you could see he had good mechanics and was comfortable in the pocket. The high misses could have been due to nervousness since he was starting his first college game. Daniels finished the first half 13 for 23 for 115 yards.
In the second half, Daniels looked much better. USC opened the playbook and let him throw down the field more often. Daniels often looked to Amon-Ra St.Brown — the two of them were high school teammates at Mater Dei High School.
Daniels hit St.Brown on a 43-yard touchdown pass to start the fourth quarter. It was a perfectly thrown ball on a post route in the middle of the hash marks. St.Brown and Daniels connected seven times for 98 yards and a touchdown.
Daniels displayed nice arm strength and perfect touch on his deep passes, often dropping passes right in the receivers hands. He also displayed good pocket presence, Daniels has the ability to feel out the rush and step up in the pocket and deliver a strike.
Along with the pocket presence, he showcased the ability to roll out the pocket and throw an accurate pass on the run.
Overall, it was a successful first game for Daniels — he showed a lot of positives. He will need to work on going through his progressions faster still. There were a couple times where he was late on throws. But that will come in time as he gets used to the speed of the college game.
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Up next for Daniels is a big test in a big road game against the Stanford Cardinals next Saturday. We will see what he has against a tough team on the road, he will need to play better. Either way, I think Daniels has a lot of potential, he could be something special.