The countdown to the 2016 college football season continued with a handful of spring games this past Saturday. While the games didn’t mean much in terms of the bigger picture, it did give us our first real look at some of this year’s rosters as the evaluation process continues. While the performance of some players really stood out in a positive way, there were also some players that struggled over the weekend and not everything went as planned overall. Here is a look at the biggest losers from the early spring games.
Deondre Francois
Florida State Seminoles
Projected starting quarterback Sean Maguire was absent from Florida State spring practice as he continues to recover from an ankle injury, but his potential replacements didn’t look good in his place including Francois. That almost helped boost his stock even though he wasn’t there. Francois, a freshman quarterback, completed 20-of-33 passes for 246 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions. Those numbers aren’t absolutely terrible, but they aren’t very impressive either – especially when you consider that the spring game was meant as an opportunity for these players to get their confidence up. The Seminoles are expected to roll with Maguire at the start of the year, but Francois is considered the future and Florida State would still be one injury away from turning to the freshman this season.
Jeremy Johnson
Auburn Tigers
The Auburn quarterback situation was an absolute mess last season and they didn’t exactly inspire any confidence in our first look at them this year. Johnson, Sean White and junior college transfer John Franklin III combined to complete 21-of-38 passes for 221 yards and two touchdowns, but it was the mistakes that they made that really seemed to stand out. Marcus Davis made two long catches for a combined 90 yards and if you take them away, the three quarterbacks combined for just 131 passing yards on 19 completions, good for an average of just 3.64 yards per attempt. White was the best of the group as he completed 8-of-14 passes for 125 yards but none of the three passers really stood out. Johnson was just 6-of-13 for 35 yards so he was clearly the biggest loser in a group that looked less than ordinary on Saturday. As you might recall, there was so much excitement for the Auburn program going into last season because of Johnson but it’s becoming more and more clear that he’s simply not the guy they thought he would be. He’s lost the starting job for now and he’ll have to do a lot of work between now and the start of the football season to win the job back. In some ways, it’s a big blow to the Auburn program that he never panned out. At the same time, they are in a good position to have other quarterbacks that can step in and lead the way as Johnson is clearly not the guy they thought he was.
Northwestern Fans
The Northwestern football fans didn’t get a good look at their final spring practice over last weekend because the weather in the area forced the session to be moved indoors and thus closed to the public. The Wildcats are coming off a relatively good season, so there was ample excitement around the program for fans to get an early look at the 2016 team. Northwestern football fans weren’t the only losers either as a snowstorm forced Toledo to cancel its first spring game while Ohio and Eastern Michigan still played despite the inclement weather in the area.
Spring Scoring Systems
The spring scoring systems are unique but since some of them award points for things such as strong defensive plays and other scenarios it is hard for fans to keep track of what is happening if they aren’t actually watching the games. For example, Ohio’s defense won its spring game 62-18. The score was posted as 52-17 entering the fourth quarter so somehow the Ohio offense scored a single point in the final frame. The scoring systems seem to work individual to the games but for the casual fan wanting to know what happened at the games it is hard to understand based on the spring systems.
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