Appaholic wrote:
Clenz, those are all valid reasons...and who cares? When Armanti, Williams, Ham & Dickenson got their teams to the title game, they weren't satisfied and willed their team into championship status. I'm not saying Sanders isn't a good QB, just that he doesn't belong in the same breath with QB's who had great stats AND led their teams to championships....sometimes multiple championships. Sanders in the top 10 all time? Got no problem with that. Sanders in top 5 all time? You're fokking crazy.....over who? I submit to you that if coaching and playcalling cost UNI the title, then coaching and playcalling were the primary reason Sanders completed 75% of his passes as well...
Sanders accuracy is all him. Did the play calls give him a good shot to complete the pass? Yep. However, he still had to execute those throws. I know you didn't get to see him play outside of the 05 title game and possible the 07 UD game. The plays he made, the throws he made, and his pocket presence were right there with the best of any QB I have ever watched. He would make plays that should have been dead for a sack into a 20 yard completion.
He led the Panthers to 12 fourth-quarter/overtime victories in his career, posted a 35-9 mark as a starter, set the FCS career record for completion percentage (69.59 percent), and threw one interception in his final 139 pass attempts. It wasn't just that he wasn't throwing incompletions...he wasn't throwing picks.
There is only "so much" Sanders could do in the 07 game against UD when the coaches moved from a game plan that was working into something that wasn't that put UNI in a 2 score hole and forced him to make throws that he shouldn't have had too. He tallied his 12th career fourth quarter/overtime victory in a 38-35 win over New Hampshirein the first round against UNH when hooked up with Montari Leonard on a 24-yard touchdown pass with only seven seconds left to defeat New Hampshire, that was after UNI got the ball with 1:12 left on the clock and no timeouts (maybe had one) and about 70 yards to go.
In 2005 UNI would have been a fist round exit without Sanders. He totaled an FCS-best 1,113 passing yards in the 2005 NCAA FCS playoffs on 87-of-127 passing, which included seven touchdowns. That included ROAD WINS at NUMBER 1 UNH and AT #4 Texas State. That Texas State game consisted of a 10 play 72 yard final 4 minute drive, capped off by a 2 pt conversion to tie the game.
To say Sanders didn't "will his team to victory" because UNI hasn't won a title is...well...asinine.