Month: August 2024

After leading his Washington Huskies to an undefeated season, quarterback Michael Penix Jr. has been named the 2023 Premier Player of College Football Award winner.

It has been a long, long road for Penix. The fact that he is a sixth-year senior should give some clues about his college career and the adversity he has faced in reaching this level of play. Penix committed to Indiana after a successful two-year starting gig as quarterback of Tampa Bay Technical High School He threw for over 4,200 yards and had 61 touchdowns with the Titans, and he was advanced enough as a passer that he earned playing time as a true freshman with the Hoosiers in 2018.

Penix played in just three games before a torn ACL ended his true freshman season. He would also sustain a torn ACL in 2020 while additionally suffering AC and SC injuries in Bloomington. Penix played in just 20 games in four seasons with Indiana before transferring to Washington in a move that could not have worked out better for either party.

Penix had to move west to Blossom, and the first step was to remove the label of ‘injury prone’ that had been affixed to the quarterback during his time in the Big Ten. At 6-foot-3 and 213 pounds, Penix has the frame to absorb contact. This led to him being somewhat miscast at Indiana, taking too many hits behind an offensive line that wasn’t close to the standard of the wall he stands behind in Seattle.

Thanks to this incredible line play – and a changed mindset of treating every play like it could be his last and striving to succeed – Penix has played at a level not even the Washington coaching staff could have imagined when he walked into Husky Stadium.  In 2023, he led the Huskies to an undefeated regular season and a win over the Oregon Ducks in the (likely) final Pac-12 Championship Game.

That 13-0 record is the best in school history, with Penix making the offensive tick thanks to his cannon of an arm. He has a trio of outstanding wide receivers in Rome Odunze, Ja’Lynn Polk, and Jalen McMillan, players he has combined to throw for 4,218 yards and 33 touchdowns on the season. Penix also has an adjusted completion percentage of 74.7 percent, which shows how accurate he is when given time to pick apart a defense.

The West Coast is typically overlooked for major college football awards. Michael Penix Jr. has been so dominant that he was the clear choice as the 2023 Premier Player of College Football award winner.

The 2023 Premier Coach of College Football Award Winner is Steve Sarkisian of the University of Texas Longhorns.

In college football, there are easy jobs, there are hard jobs, and then there is the job in Austin coaching the Longhorns. On the surface, the Texas job has everything going for it. Austin is a cool, youthful city, with plenty of money available through boosters and a fanbase/recruiting network that stretches from coast to coast. Add in the standard of high school football in Texas and the recruiting opportunities on the university’s doorstep, and you have what seems like an ideal job.

Those benefits, however, come with additional pressures that you just don’t get in other jobs. The boosters and fans demand success at Texas, and success to them is competing for a national championship year after year. That has not been the case, with Texas last having played for the national title 14 years ago. The university had become a meme.

Steve Sarkisian changed all that.

Sark cut his teeth with USC and the Oakland Raiders before his first head coaching gig when he took over (ironically) at CFP opponents Washinton before the 2009 season. He went 34-29 with the Huskies before taking the head coaching gig at USC in a role that didn’t work out. After spending time refining his coaching philosophy – most notably at Alabama – Sarkisian took the Texas job before the 2021 season with the program in disarray.

His first year was tough, and the jokes continued. The Longhorns finished 5-7 and 3-6 in Big 12 play. Improvement was stary in 2022, with Texas finishing 8-5 and flipping their Big 12 record to 6-3. Even so, the jump between Year 2 and Year 3 was shocking.

This season, the Longhorns won the Big 2 with an 8-1 record in conference and a 12-1 record overall. This included a shocking 34-24 win over eventual SEC champions Alabama in the Longhorns second game of the season. The win – in Tuscaloosa, no less – was the proof that Texas had arrived and that Sarkisian was doing great things with the Longhorns program.

A move to the SEC awaits, but Steve Sarkisian is the obvious choice as the 2023 Premier Coach of College Football Award Winner because took a dying program and turned it into a national title contender.

After leading the Baltimore Ravens to a 13-4 record (the best in the NFL), the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs, quarterback Lamar Jackson has been named the 2023 Premier Player of Pro Football Award winner.

This fan nod makes Jackson the first-ever two-time Premier Player of Pro Football Award winner. The Ravens quarterback won the first-ever edition of the award in 2019 when Premier Players began to acknowledge pro players for their performance alongside its longer-standing college award. Jackson – still just 27 years old – will be a contender for this award for years to come if he can put together more seasons like he did in 2023.

Jackson is the ultimate version of the modern-day NFL quarterback. Jackson isn’t your typical pocket passer – though he has certainly worked to improve that part of his game. Instead, he is an ultra-athletic, ultra-mobile passer who is a threat to score with his arm – or his feet – from anywhere on the field.

Jackson’s biggest strength is his versatility. It is almost impossible to game plan for Jackson at his best, as the 6-foot-2, 215-pounder can glide through defenses with his legs when he pulls down the ball. Defenses try to spy on Jackson, but he is too fast. They try to take away his receivers, but he is too accurate. The dimension his skillset adds to an attack is unlike any other player in the league.

Jackson set several career-high marks in 2023. That took some doing because he already has a league MVP trophy to his name. His 67.2 perfect completion percentage shows the time and study Jackson has put into reading NFL defenses and working through his reads. His 3,678 passing yards (also a career-high) show his want and ability to push the ball down the field. Add in Jackson’s rushing numbers, and the Ravens quarterback accounted for just under 4,500 yards of total offense and 29 touchdowns.

Naming Lamar Jackson as the 2023 Premier Player of Pro Football Award winner was the clear choice for his level of play and on-field leadership this season. His performance in Week 17 against the electric Maim Dolphins was the one that locked up this award. Jackson threw for five touchdowns and had a perfect 158.3 passer rating in a game that the Ravens had to have to lock up the AFC North and No. 1 seed. With his future locked up in the Charm City, Jackson will only go from strength to strength over the rest of this decade as he pushes for his first Lombardi Trophy.