2010 Spartan Nation Football Profile: Andrew Maxwell QB #10

 Expectation: All Big Ten QB  Height:  6’3”  Weight: 200#  2010 Eligibility: red shirt freshman  EXP: red shirt season Â

 

We certainly want to enjoy the present, but Spartan fans can rejoice that Maxwell is the future. Photo courtesy of Starr Portice

Expectation:Â All Big Ten QB

 

Height:  6’3”

 

Weight:Â 200#

 

2010 Eligibility: red shirt freshman

 

EXP:Â red shirt season

 

Status:Â backup QB

 

Strengths: Maxwell has an arm like a cannon, with the accuracy of the pentagon’s best weapons. He has tremendous technique, and most of all for a QB, he is as smart as anyone. He is a complete package. He is a pro style QB, but can run. He was brilliant on the scout team last year and can do it all.

 

The biggest and only knock on Maxwell is that he needs real live reps. That is it. This young man has the abilities and the talents that others only beg God for and the character to understand that he has been given a gift.

 

He is a student of the game and watches film and works on his own so that he as earned the respect of teammates not as a QB, but as a football player. I have yet to hear one player, and I have asked many, who can say one thing about him they don’t like other than one WR who said, “He needs to learn not to throw as hard on short passes. They hurt.”

 

Maxwell will be the future when Kirk Cousins is done and he will have a learning curve, but it won’t be a step back. He has shown everyone since he stepped foot on campus that good guys can finish first, and I will be shocked if under his leadership the Spartans don’t put a Big Ten championship trophy in the Skandalaris Center. He is the real deal.

 

Weakness: Let’s look to the spring game on one play that best explains my saying he needs live reps. When Brian Hoyer played at MSU I said he was the best QB I had ever seen at the play action fake. Talents that Bill Belichick later made me look very smart on when he commented on Hoyer’s talent. Hoyer understood those little talents and so will Maxwell, with reps. When he faced a first and ten with 3:01 on the clock the Spartans executed a play action pass. Maxwell faked the hand off, but no one was sold. He then threw the pass and it should have been intercepted.

 

In high school he was a man among boys. It was embarrassing to watch for his opponents at time. Maxwell isn’t arrogant, but he is used to not having to do certain things at a level he will at MSU.

 

Hoyer’s play faking talents allowed him to freeze backers and DBs and then make the completion. Had Maxwell done a better sales job that play would have gone a long way.

 

I want to reiterate. Maxwell is the real deal. That isn’t arrogance or lack of talent that I just described, he has to learn how to play at this level. He will. One thing I have learned about this burgeoning star is this, he will do his part. Maxwell will get a mulligan with the learning curve. Some of the fans, just like with all QBs before, will moan, but ignore them. Once he gets the little nuances down he will eliminate these little mistakes.

 

Final Analysis: When you see little mistakes from Maxwell, you can understand if you are objective. What you want to look for are the forty-yard out patterns or the fades that look more like a precision bomb in a video game than a pass from a QB.

 

I am telling you Spartan fans that there is a future and this youngster from Midland is it.

 

Next up: Johnny Adams