Reem & Beam Unplugged with Athan Kaliakmanis
- Thread starter Knight Shift
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The previous one with Aaron Lewis is hilarious. The first segment on their views on the 2024 team is 🔥
Definitely worth the listen. Opportunity to get some background into what these kids are like and how they interact. Nicely produced, with a lot of video clips and photos . Looks like they also have an episode with Schiano as well as several other teammates. Will have to check these out as well !!
Checked the whole series out this am on the tv. Pain trying to do on the phone
So Athan says he can throw a baseball around 90mph. Interesting… that means he should be able to make “all the throws.” I don’t believe he is currently on any NFL radar due to his lack of a cannon, not being an elite runner, and his low-ish completion percentage to date. Realistically him being 6’4” is the only NFL box he’s checked so far. If the pass catchers help him out just a little, his completion percentage should jump up quite a bit as I don’t see the offense trying for tons of long passes since the running game can get positive yards and he really does appear to throw an accurate ball.
The main part was when AK said he didn't really know how to study film in D1 and has been learning. QB is much more mental than people know. When a ball is snapped and WRs head out, they have a route to run but will run it according to what the DBs do.
A strong corner can take a WR who seeks to cut to the sideline (like RU way too often) and he will force WR inside against his plan. QB has a second to see that and figure out where to throw. If he has studied film he can know to anticipate defensive leverage and where to follow-up.
DBs have their idiosyncrasies, defenses have their dead spots and seams. Other WRs might know how to mislead his guy or screen him out. Pass game is very dynamic. Pass defenses can change every 5-10 yards as WR runs. It took me watching HS games with a pro QB to see the light. People often think of passing as "count five steps and pivot right to the blue car." Dull QBs cant do well with just an arm.
13:30 in
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Good points. Wonder how much Gleeson taught GW about reading film and if Kirk C is better at that aspect of coaching, or if GW simply could not put it all together after 3 years. Maybe we will have a better idea on that as Athan was coached by Kirk C as a freshman at Minnesota. Regardless, nobody on the staff is going to come out and say something negative against the former QB. The guys were very high on Miller's speed, as well as Dremel's. We shall see if it all comes together this year. A lot of "ifs."
BTW, they did a whole segment on being Greek. I think you may have been referring to him as Greek or the Greek and some posters did not like that. Athan seems proud of his ancestry and probably would be good with it. The Greek segment is here (cued up):
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And his parents are originally from Old Bridge NJ.... had never read that ( or I missed it) in any of the articles or discussion threads. So that is the link to NJ I never knew about! I thought he was just a kid from Illinois and assumed family from there as well. The Schiano podcast was great. very insightful, and pretty interesting to see how the players interacted with coach.
Its been my take that Schiano, Kirk, Gleeson, Fleck et al were/are just miserable offensive schemers and QB coaches. Schiano is stuck on 90s Miami. Certain articles just reinforced that. One article from Minny press complained Fleck's offense is dull as dishwater and too often relies on defense heroics to win. Even in 2006 RU was like that.
I've read Schiano admitted that taking Wimsatt out of high school early was a mistake and Gleeson's sytem was a nightmare
"Sean Gleeson, the coach who sold him on the program, called just 130 plays for Wimsatt during their year-and-a-half together. The quarterback made just seven appearances under Gleeson (one start) before Gleeson was fired midway through Wimsatt’s redshirt freshman season.
Their time together was impacted by poor decisions and bad injury luck. Wimsatt skipped his senior season of high school to enroll early at Rutgers, which Schiano retroactively described as “probably the worst way to learn... It didn’t help that Gleeson used a needlessly complicated quarterback carousel, often flipping between Wimsatt and Evan Simon.
Kirk Ciarrocca was hired following the 2022 season because of his reputation as an elite teacher and quarterback whisperer. Wimsatt was forced to learn a new offense.
“(The offenses are) like polar opposites,” Teel said. “People have no idea. Like, one is Spanish and one is Chinese. It’s not like there’s some carryover. Everything is different. All of that plays into your ability to go out and produce and be focused and be able to execute.
“It’s hard for a player to develop and take those steps in the right direction that everyone’s looking for when you have different people coaching different things.”
“I think you always have to judge a quarterback based upon what the record is and how the team does,” Teel said. “At the end of the day, the kid did win seven games this past year, and he did lead the team to a bowl win. Overall, I think he did a great job.”
How Rutgers’ Gavin Wimsatt went from trumpeted recruit to another QB failure
Gavin Wimsatt was once seen as Rutgers football's quarterback of the future. That hope officially died when he entered the transfer portal late last month.
So there we are, ham-handed "development" from coaches not good at offense and especially QB. Mike Teel is vey sympathetic to GW and I can understand why. A top QB would have to be crazy to play for Air Schiano.
I'm pretty flat on the Greek stuff. I'm a mutt and taking "pride" in inherited genes, cultures etc doesn't occur to me - seems tribal. I used "Greek" because some names just torture my acquired dyslexia and I use short cuts (hence "Mongo"). Good and bad people are found in all groups so better to sort them that way than broad, tribal categories. Look at this place - there are great people and lunatics lol. I cant say RU fans are "like this or that."
You are probably correct.. but even then.. what did playing Vedral even cost Wimsatt or the offense. I was one of the very happy people here when we announced we got the OK State OC... having been a fan of their offense.
But shame on me.. I had realized that when we hired Ash that we did not actually get the DC responsible for Ohio State D success. And when he hire a young offensive disciple of Herman at Houston as our OC... wow.. what an exciting offense.. right? I saw and recognized both those mistakes soon after-the-fact and yet, I did not think twice about Gleeson. Shame on me.. not that it would have made any difference.
Fingers crossed for this Greek QB
Yassou, Athan. All you have to do is have 50% pre-snap read success and go to where you should, on time and with accuracy. Hopefully, our guys will catch the ball. You do that and D will have to honor the pass.. for the first time in forever.. and the running game will chew em up and spit them out and you can then hit some big pass plays.
We are soo close... I hope. Just tiny improvements in the passing game will pay HUGE dividends.
Good luck!
