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Yes, Danny Kanell actually made a fair point about Georgia quarterback Jamie Newman

Jamie Newman transferred to Georgia from Wake Forest.
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Connor Riley
Connor Riley

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Danny Kanell made a fair and accurate point about Georgia football quarterback Jamie Newman

The average SEC football fan does not much care for Danny Kanell. The former ESPN analyst, now at CBSSports, has long been known to troll SEC fan bases by touting out anti-SEC viewpoints.

But just because those viewpoints are more often than not slanted in a certain direction, it doesn’t mean he is always wrong.

For example, take what he said this week. No not, about Florida winning the SEC East. Until the Gators beat Georgia, they shouldn’t be anointed favorites given Kirby Smart’s track record against Dan Mullen along with the talent advantage Georgia has from a recruiting standpoint.

Related: College analyst: ‘The Florida Gators are the team to beat in the SEC East’

It’s what Kanell said about Georgia’s probable starting quarterback, Jamie Newman, that is pretty spot on.

“I think too many people are plugging in Jamie Newman, the transfer from Wake Forest to Georgia, and just assuming it’s going to work,” Kanell said. “I need to see it. Georgia has a bunch of issues across the offensive line they need to fix.

“I don’t know if Jamie Newman is going to be the next coming of Joe Burrow. I would bet against it, considering that standard that Burrow set.”

This like the worst guy you know actually making a good point. You hate to see it.

Newman has yet to officially win the starting job, though it was widely assumed he will do so. You don’t pass on schools like Oregon and Miami to come and play back-up at Georgia for your final season of eligibility.

No one is realistically expecting him to pull a Burrow, but high expectations still exist for the transfer quarterback. He’s one of the favorites to win the Heisman Trophy from a betting standpoint and many draft analysts have him pegged as a first-rounder. Factor in his deep-passing ability as well as mobility and it’s easy to see that the traits are there for a dynamic option at the quarterback position.

But Burrow had a full year of playing experience before taking off at LSU this past season. Yes, the Tigers did bring in Joe Brady this past offseason, but Burrow got an entire spring and fall camp to take reps in that system before unleashing it on college football.

To this point, Newman hasn’t even taken a snap in a single padded practice for the Georgia football team. And at this point, it’s hard to say when that first practice snap will come.

Newman’s head coach, Kirby Smart, has also publicly stated that the quarterback position is the one most affected by the loss of spring practices.

“It’s going to affect that quarterback more than anything in my opinion,” Smart told reporters in March. “There’s no substitute for reps, I feel, and you can’t argue that we’re not going to lose reps. We’re losing reps.”

Even if COVID-19 hadn’t put the whole world on pause, Newman would still be working into a new offense. But in this case, he’s also not the only one doing so as the entire offense will be turned over to new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Todd Monken.

While Monken has had a lot of success at the college level in the past, it’s no sure thing either that he comes in and fixes the Georgia offense. You only have to go back to last year to look at what kind of struggles can arise when bringing in a new play-caller. Even with an offense that brought back Jake Fromm, D’Andre Swift and one of the best offensive lines in college football, the group still struggled, most notably during the November stretch.

It’s also interesting to point that Newman had his own share of struggles in November. Yes, he was banged up and missing his top wide receiver, but his numbers from last November do not paint a very rosy picture. In the final six games of the season, he completed just 52 percent of his passes while tossing 9 touchdowns to 6 interceptions, while averaging 7.2 yards per attempt.

As Kanell points out, Georgia does have to replace multiple NFL draft picks along the offensive line. There’s no D’Andre Swift. The Bulldogs’ second-best returning receiver, Dominick Blaylock, is coming off a knee injury. Newman can’t possibly answer all those questions on his own.

Related: Dominick Blaylock: A history lesson and a prediction regarding his ACL recovery

Burrow was fantastic last season, and yes the past three Heisman Trophy winners were in fact transfer quarterbacks. But they each had a full year with their program prior to those magical seasons. Newman won’t have that.

This isn’t all to say Newman is going to flounder either. He very well could continue the trend of excellent transfer quarterbacks at the Power Five level. He could help elevate the Georgia offense back to an elite level.

But one only has to look at the Georgia offense a season ago, when most everyone assumed going into the season that it would be able to withstand the turnover at wide receiver as well as a new play-caller to see that you can’t put blind faith into things getting better. A lot of people did that with the change from Jim Chaney to James Coley.

And Kanell is right to point out that we shouldn’t do that with Newman at this point in time.

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