Good article by Iseman on Kaliakmanis's play and improvement
- By PSAL_Hoops
- Rutgers Football
- 47 Replies
AK is more consistently accurate than GW was, but obviously not nearly as good a runner. AK's accuracy appears to become much more GW-like when under heavy pressure or, with a couple notable exceptions, when throwing on the run.
Our overall passing game this season is benefiting greatly from better OL pass blocking and much better WRs, especially in the past couple games. And MD's secondary was really very bad.
AK is also likely benefiting statistically from not having to play teams overflowing with elite DBs and LBs like the 3 teams GW faced last season (OSU, UM, PSU).
While I think that GW, with this year's OL and WRs, would have significantly better stats at RU than he did in 2023, I still think AK is probably the slightly better QB overall. But I don't think it's nearly the huge difference so many of our fans make it out to be.
I didn’t find the OL to be a problem last year. Not on run nor pass protection. The issue wasn’t that Gavin didn’t have time. He often had tons of time but just wasn’t accurate. He didnt avoid sacks by scrambling with his legs, rather he wasn’t even allowed to try to scramble. He was programmed to throw the ball away immediately if option one wasn’t there.
And again - AK has been playing with a knee brace for at least half of the season. I don’t know why folks are dismissing this as nothing. Take a look at Gavin’s rush stats when he came back from injury in Nov 2022 and was nursing a lower body injury. What do those numbers look like?