Most important player on every College Football Playoff top 10 team
By Josh Yourish
The Washington Huskies might have the best trio of wide receivers in the entire country with Rome Odunze, Ja’Lynn Polk, and Jalen McMillan, but only a quarterback with a rocket launcher for an arm could run Kalen DeBoer’s offense this successfully.
Penix Jr. is a pocket-passer with so much horse-power on his throws to the intermediate and deep parts of the field that 43.6% of his passes travel 10 yards in the air. Yet, he’s extremely accurate on his throws with an adjusted completion percentage of 75.5%. That ranks 30th (of QBs with over 100 dropbacks) in the country, but among quarterbacks with an average depth of target over 10 yards it ranks fifth, only behind J.J. McCarthy, Jayden Daniels, Conner Weigman, and Drake Maye.
That’s a list of the most elite quarterbacks in college football who are actually asked to make difficult throws downfield. Penix isn’t a beneficiary of a system like Bo Nix, he makes a system possible.