Josh Freeman, Then and Now

So, we all know what we're talking about with Josh now, the various issues and excuses..er, reasons. Something came up on the insider board that got me looking back at some of his scouting reports and I found this:
http://www.ninersnation.com/2009/2/16/760687/niners-nation-scouting-rep

While not one of the more "official" reports, it is frankly kind of eerie:

"Background
Josh Freeman came to K-State as a highly touted recruit out of Grandview, Mo., a suburb of Kansas City. In his first year, 2006, he was thrown into the fire in our first conference game, an embarrassing loss to Baylor. The Baylor Bears are kind of the Detroit Lions of the Big 12, in case you don't know. His stats from 2006, in which he started only about half the games, are woeful. Freeman threw for only 162 yards per game and had a brutal 6:15 touchdown-to-interception ratio. All that equated to a quarterback efficiency rating of 103.5. One bright spot was his performance in the game against No. 4 Texas, when he led K-State to a shocking 45-42 victory by throwing for 269 yards and three touchdowns. Of course, that was more than offset by his next two performances, where he combined for only 373 yards passing, five interceptions, zero touchdowns and four fumbles lost. Yeah, ouch.

I give you the previous info not to bore you with tales of K-State football ineptitude, but to illustrate Freeman's improvement over the next two years. In 2007, his sophomore season, Freeman started every game and his numbers improved dramatically. He threw for 279 yards per game and an 18:11 touchdown-to-interception ratio, with a quarterback efficiency rating of 127.3. Unfortunately, the team nose-dived as he improved personally, going from 7-6 and a bowl appearance the year before to 5-7 with an ugly four-game losing streak to end the year.

Freeman's junior season, 2008, started off rocking as he and the Wildcats feasted on cupcake teams the first few games of the year, but once conference play arrived, things once again fell apart. Still, his touchdown-to-interception ratio improved moderately to 20:8, although his yards-per-game deceased to 245, mostly a result of another late-season swoon. For the season, his quarterback efficiency rating was 136.5 Also in 2008, we saw a new dimension in Freeman's game, as his running abilities were put on display. ...."

His strengths are listed as Size, and Arm Strength. Nothing else, although I think the author made note of his(now vanished) mobility in the prior section.

"Weaknesses
Now that I've brought you reasons why he could be an NFL quarterback, we have to address his downside. Obviously he never led K-State to any great success -- the Wildcats were 17-20 in his three seasons in Manhattan -- and some have whispered that his leadership qualities may be lacking. Take that for what it's worth. He's not a rah-rah guy.

When Freeman has time to throw, he stands tall in the pocket and steps into his bullet-like throws. However, it doesn't take much pressure before he panics, possibly a result of his freshman season when he got killed repeatedly behind a makeshift offensive line. When he panics, his mechanics have a tendency to break down, which leads to the errant throws Dr. Saturday was talking about. Also, he tends to make bad decisions, trying to make a throw he has about a 10 percent chance of pulling off rather than a safer throw. Finally, although this aspect improved tremendously this season, Freeman isn't always particularly adept at making touch throws. He's prefer to show off his howitzer by zinging the ball at his receiver.

Overall, Freeman's NFL potential is an enigma to me. He received very poor coaching at K-State. We fired Ron Prince this season after less than three full seasons in Manhattan because it was becoming very clear that he didn't know what he was doing even though he was convinced he was the smartest person in the room. In three years, I believe Freeman had three different QB coaches, as Prince had a tendency to run off good coaches (see, e.g., Raheem Morris, now Tampa Bay's head coach, and James Franklin, the head-coach-in-waiting at Maryland). If Freeman's demons are only mechanics, good coaching may very well make him a star in the NFL. If it's a mental thing that can't really be fixed, he'll never be better than mediocre. I wish him the best because he always seemed like a nice kid and will be a good media representative of whatever organization he lands with."
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Two things really stood out to me amongst all the parallels -- first, but not foremost, was the questionable leadership thing, which I checked on and does appear in other places (like http://walterfootball.com/pro2009jfreeman.php which unflatteringly lists his comparison as Jamarcus Russell). People who have mentioned his leadership here have been met with the general "bah, there's a lot of things you can question about him, but not his leadership, this criticism is getting to be over the top".

But second, and more interestingly, was the multiple late season swoons. This is something that has obviously happened to us, and I don't think we've looked at it through the lens of anything other that the Bucs, All eyes were focused elsewhere (on Raheem and the quit last year, and the secondary this year), but this was happening even before he came here, and looking at it as a continuation of his college performances, is an interesting perspective.

Anyway, I just found it remarkably similar to the Josh we see here.

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