Another Face in the Crowd: Brantley Eyes Life After Florida
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 | Football, Chris Harry
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The football stadium at Shorecrest Prep seats maybe a couple thousand fans, but only a few dozen dotted the bleachers under gorgeous, sun-splashed skies Monday. Several hundred, however, stood on the sidelines and most had NFL logos on their shirts, not various versions of Albert the Alligator.
For John Brantley, this was an altogether different kind of pressure, and it had nothing to do with being the University of Florida quarterback in Years 1 and 2 AT.
After Tebow.
After all the melodrama -- and let's face it, more frustration than exhilaration and celebration -- Brantley is no longer at the center of the orange and blue universe. He's moved on. Now, the former Gator is just another face mask in a crowd of NFL wannabes out to prove he's worthy of a chance to play at the next level.
Guess what? He kind of likes it this way.
“You're not on the radar. You don't have a bulls-eye on your back,” Brantley said after the opening practice of East-West Shrine Game workouts, as the team prepped for Saturday's game (on the NFL Network at 4 p.m.) at Tropicana Field. “You're just out here with all these guys, having fun and trying to impress the NFL.”
That's not to say Brantley no longer is under a microscope. NFL scouts will run the former Gator through a brutal pre-draft evaluation gauntlet that will pick up steam at the league's scouting combine in Indianapolis next month then feed into a bevy of individual workouts and interviews with teams.
The first practice was his initiation to the scrutiny.
“You have to handle the pressure. That's what teams want to see,” said Southern Miss quarterback Austin Davis, who is rooming with Brantley this week. “For John, though, he's got to be used to it.”
Davis shook his head.
“Tim Tebow? C'mon, man! That's a tough deal.”
No question, but this is the NFL. It only gets tougher from here. And truth be told, right now, Brantley is a long shot.
“Does he have a chance to be drafted? Probably not,” said one NFL player personnel executive. “Does he have a chance to get signed and be in a camp? Sure he does. That's what these all-star games are for.”
For Brantley, this next phase of football will be more about the game he's spent a lifetime loving and virtually nothing about the issues that surfaced while Florida went 7-6, its worst record in 24 years.
A partial list:
- Replacing a legend
- Unrealistic expectations.
- The Brantley family legacy.
- Young and thin offensive line.
- A brutal schedule.
Those things no longer matter. Brantley, for a few months, won't even have to worry about taking the kinds of hits that forced him from two games and cost him two starts. From now through April, it's all about looking good. That's something Brantley can control.
A free and focused mind can only help his development process now.
“Sure it will,” said Bobby Ross, the former Georgia Tech, San Diego Chargers and Detroit Lions coach who is heading the East squad. “I think it will help him if he applies himself and learns. Right now, no one [on the coaching staff] is paying any particular attention to any one certain person. Now, over on the sideline [the scouts] are, but we're looking at how [the players] are picking up things and how they're doing technique-wise.”
Backpeddling. Ball position. Head position. Footwork. Release. Follow-through.
Brantley has always looked the part of a quarterback. He did again during the first day of East team workouts, appearing much sharper than his competition, Davis and Tennessee-Chattanooga's B.J. Coleman, especially in 7-on-7 drills. During 11-on-11 pass scales, Brantley fired a dart to Thomas Mayo, hitting the Cal-Pennsylvania wideout 25 yards downfield, dead-solid-perfect between the corner and safety drawing some oohs from crowd.
It may have been the best play of the practice.
“He did some good things,” Ross said. “We're going to be constantly evaluating the throwing and I thought those things were good. He picked up the system very well. He appears very smart. ... The dividing line is how he's going to throw the ball.”
Brantley believes he got a head start on that facet of the game with his year under former UF offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, who bolted last month for Kansas. But in a quarterback pool headed by Stanford's Andrew Luck, Baylor's Robert Griffin III and Texas A&M Ryan Tannehill that analysts are calling relatively deep with mid-round prospects, Brantley has some work to do to get into the conversation. NFLDraftScout.com lists Brantley as the No. 21 quarterback in the draft, behind both Coleman (14th) and Davis (18th), and the 368th overall prospect.
“Some of the things we're doing here, we did with Coach Weis,” said Brantley, who completed 60 percent of his passes for 2,044 yards, 11 touchdowns and seven interceptions his senior season. “It's helping me transition to the next phase.”
It was less than a year ago, the 6-foot-3, 219-pound Brantley was transitioning from Urban Meyer's spread offense to the more pro-style system Weis brought to Gainesville from the Kansas City Chiefs. The Gators, with personnel that did not fit what Coach Will Muschamp and Weis wanted to do, mostly flailed away when they had the ball, finishing 105th in the country in total offense and 89th passing.
As such, there is not a lot of great Brantley tape out there -- and he can't hide from the really bad stuff, like the three interceptions against Florida State -- but it only takes one club to fall for a player this time of year; only one to see beyond the struggles of a unit and lock in on a prospect who might just project into a system.
There are 32 teams out there watching and taking notes.
“He's definitely got to fight a certain perception, but this is his chance to do that,” Tennessee Titans Vice President-Player Personnel Ruston Webster said. “This is his chance to come out and show up in this forum and to make us say, 'OK, you've overcome some of that stuff.' Maybe someone will look at him with a more open mind than they did before. These workouts are his opportunity.”
Without the gimmicks, too. No wildcat. No Trey Burton package. No pistol, either. General managers, personnel directors and scouts come to college all-star games to see quarterbacks take snaps under center.
“We're trying to show a pro offense,” Ross said. “That's they way they're being evaluated. The NFL asked us to do that. 'Put 'em in a pro offense and make 'em get under center.' That's what they do. We'll get back in a shotgun some of the time, but it won't be running the spread.”
Brantley's fine with that. Probably great with it, actually.
“It's just like any other new offense. You have to learn it, the verbiage and all, and come out here and execute it,” Brantley said. “You can tell we're all still a little confused, but everybody is picking it up. ... You've learned so much in the past, but there's always more to learn. You're never perfect. You never know it all. So the more I get to work on and pick up, the better.”
He smiled.
“It's a week-long job interview.”
For Brantley, who graduated in December, it's actually the beginning of a grueling four-month-long interview. Right now, he's just another candidate with a resume` in a crowded, competitive market.
Welcome to the real world. A real hard one.
