I don't really ever see Mertz being able to stretch the field very often with his arm anyway. Just hope those OT's can keep him clean while he's working mid range and underneath.
The Gators football podcast, forget the name but the dude with the crazy hair did a podcadt focused on Mertz last year. I forwarded it to Ox, so he probably posted it.
His review was actually surprisingly good. He blamed most of the problems on horrific playcalling. Now, unfortunately he also noted that our OC is similiar in many ways. However, if we actually CALL some decent downfield plays, Mertz can hit them.
He has no arm strength problems though he isnt AR out there flipping his wrist for 70 yard bullets. And he is reasonably accurate. But when you are down by three scores and it is 3rd and 12, maybe you take more chances.
We cant run double play fake (tailback and jet) the have WRs running screens or hitches and blame the QB for not pushing the ball down field. When we DO actually run something vertical, it is usually a simple go route by 2 receivers only with the slot faking a jet. 2 WRs on 5 DBs is dumb dumb dumb always.