Comparing JJ McCarthy To Rival QB Commits Kyle McCord, Tyler Buchner

Based on his junior film and performances, were you surprised that Elite 11 continued to rank him outside the Top 5?

Garcia: I was. Obviously, the metrics were different. What we were ranking, we found out, was different. We respect what those guys do, but yeah…. his tape is pretty darn good. He’s rated as a Top 3 or 4-type quarterback if you only look at the junior tape. If that was such a strong factor, then I’m absolutely surprised that he was ranked that low. For us, there was only one quarterback that had a better week. The guys ranked ahead of him, JJ individually outperformed them in those three days. There was a moment just before (Trent) Dilfer started speaking where I thought JJ was going to get the MVP. I thought the only other guy that had a shot going into Day 3 was Ty Thompson, but he had a rough Day 3. I really thought this was a Caleb and JJ conversation. The rankings going into it definitely had him a lot lower than I did.

Holland: The way Elite 11 did the rankings for the event was ludicrous. Film should only be used as a prerequisite for the event and obviously not the determining factor in the final rankings. I get that the rankings don’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. But they meant a lot to these kids that put in the work and attended the event in the middle of a pandemic. It was simply unfair. In regards to JJ, it’s surprising to me how low he was ranked after the first two days considering that, as John said, his tape is pretty darn good. Trent Dilfer and co. just didn’t seem that high on it. However, on tape, JJ shows all the elite traits we talked about in the first part of this series. When you couple that with what he did over the course of three days, it makes no sense to rank him behind a guy like Tyler Buchner, who didn’t exactly receive positive reviews regardless of outlet. The rankings system was a disservice to JJ and other that shined at the actual event.