There was some uncertainty at quarterback for Georgia State when the season began. Quad Brown had taken limited snaps, and he was being asked to replace Dan Ellington, one of the school’s more successful players at that position.
That was so three months ago.
Brown, a redshirt freshman, allayed those fears with a strong start and has continued to grow into the position. He threw for a career-high 372 yards in Saturday’s 30-24 win over Georgia Southern, and this week was chosen as one of eight quarterbacks named Manning Award Stars of the Week and one of the “Fresh Four” selected by the Football Writers Association of America.
Now that Brown has played nine games, his numbers compare favorably with Ellington’s senior season.
Brown has thrown for 2,046 yards (227.3 per game) and 14 touchdowns and rushed for 261 yards and seven touchdowns. Ellington played the final five games of the 2019 season with a blown-out ACL and still wound up throwing for 2,447 yards (188.2 per game) and 22 touchdowns and running for 668 and six touchdowns in 13 games.
Brown leads the Sun Belt Conference in passing yards and ranks second in total offense (256.3 yard). His seven rushing touchdowns (third in the conference) are the most by a Georgia State quarterback.
Coach Shawn Elliott has seen Brown grow under the tutelage of offensive coordinator Brad Glenn, who is earning a reputation as a quarterback whisperer. Elliott also likes Brown’s ability to forget a bad play and move on.
“At times he’ll make a boneheaded play and then he comes right back and delivers a great drive,” Elliott said.
It happened most recently against Georgia Southern. After throwing a bad interception, Brown led the team to score 17 consecutive points and engineered two fourth-quarter touchdown drives.
Brown wasn’t the only player to earn accolades after Saturday’s win. Sam Pinckney was added to the watch list for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the nation’s top receiver, and kicker Noel Ruiz was selected as the Sun Belt’s specialist of the week.
Pinckney leads the team with 44 catches for 753 yards (17.1 yards per catch) and six touchdowns. He had a career-high 10 receptions for 126 yards and went high in the end zone to wrestle away an important two-point conversion. A week earlier he had 176 yards against South Alabama.
Ruiz, a graduate transfer from North Carolina A&T, kicked three field goals against Georgia Southern. He ranks sixth among active kickers with 313 points, fourth with 169 extra points and 13th with 48 career field goals.
Bowl speculation: Georgia State is awaiting word of a bowl game. The Panthers are 5-4 and could receive an invitation to one of the five games with a Sun Belt Conference tie-in. No. 14 Coastal Carolina (9-0) will host No. 20 Louisiana-Lafayette (8-1) for the conference championship Dec. 19. Other Sun Belt teams likely to get bowl bids are Appalachian State (7-2) and Georgia Southern (6-4).
The New Orleans Bowl on Dec. 23 typically takes the conference champion, with the runner-up likely headed for the Lending Tree Bowl in Mobile, Ala., on Dec. 26. But the late date of the conference championship game could change the lineup for the bowl games.
That leaves the most likely destinations for Georgia State as the Myrtle Beach Bowl on Dec. 21, the Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, Ala., on Dec. 25 or the Cure Bowl in Orlando on Dec. 26.
The Panthers have gone to a bowl game in two of Elliott’s first three seasons – beating Western Kentucky in the 2017 Cure Bowl and losing to Wyoming in the 2019 Arizona Bowl.
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