Halliday, as you’ll see, has all the measurables. Good size at 6-5, a strong, accurate arm, excellent feet, and a really, really quick release. So quick, in fact, that Jason Gesser, doing the color commentary on FSN for the state 4A championship game, said Skyline’s head coach told him that they wouldn’t even try to blitz Halliday. He simply gets rid of the ball too fast for a blitz to be effective. However, he was under some pressure for most of the night, but that was based on Skyline’s excellent surge by their defensive line.
And best of all, Halliday plays in your typical shotgun, spread-em-out offense with multiple WR sets, where he makes quick reads and gets it out fast. A lot of short throws into the flat, then taking shots down the field when the defense starts to cheat up.
A few things that caught my eye?
1) The arm strength. Those are some fastballs coming out of there, and a few with some real sizzle. There is even one incompletion in there where he steps up to avoid the rush and slings it nearly 70 yards. But you can see the velocity on some of those things.
2) The poise. Several times he stood in there and took some shots, not afraid to step up and keep his eyes down the field. He looks awfully comfortable in the pocket. And a lot of times, he doesn’t appear to just lock on to option #1. You can see him making the reads, going through his progressions, finding the open guy. He had three WR’s on his team this year with at least 80 catches, so you know he likes to spread the wealth.
3) The accuracy. Gesser mentioned this a few times, but he did a great job of putting it on the money on a couple of those deep slants, as well as the throw he makes rolling to his right and throwing a 30-yard strike right at the sideline on 4th and long. And not just accuracy, but the touch as well. We saw the sizzle on the fastball, but you can also see some decent touch in there, including the fade on the first TD lob in the corner as it goes “down the chimney”. He certainly doesn’t look like a one-trick, velocity-only type QB, does he?
Best of all, while they couldn’t hang with Skyline, Halliday had a fantastic playoff run. Ferris barely made the playoffs as it was, but Halliday threw for over 1,000 yards and had double-digit TD passes in the playoffs ALONE! Over 4,000 yards and 41 TD’s on the season, but almost a third of that came in the playoffs?? Really, really impressive.
We’ll see how it all works out. He sounds pretty firm in that WSU commitment, but we’ve already heard that ASU has been sniffing around a couple of other WSU commits. Schools are out there trying to poach as the fill their classes out, so you can bet Halliday is going to hear from more schools down the stretch. But it will be nice to see him in crimson-n-gray next year (as long as that redshirt stays on, of course!).
All for now. As always, GO COUGS!
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