Northwestern alum and Denver Broncos QB1 Trevor Siemian will be an honorary captain for the Wildcats’ Homecoming game against #4 Penn State. Siemian enters the NFL bye week tied for sixth in the league in TD passes, 20th in completion percentage and 19th in yards passing per game.
He’s also 20th in yards per attempt and 19th in total pass completions.
In other words, he’s extremely statistically consistent, and right in the middle of the pack or just below it among NFL signal callers.
Among the Northwestern football community though, Siemian is definitely not middle of the road. The young professional signal caller is about as superlative as it gets right now among campus heroes. In the eyes of the NU football social media community and the blogosphere, Trevor Siemian is currently a demigod, and the Evanston local legend will no doubt receive a huge reception at the game come Saturday.
He’s drawing rave reviews from NFL pundits and talking heads too.
Who could have seen his stellar development coming? Who knew Siemian would evolve so rapidly?
London Fletcher, a man this site has previously described as the best current NFL Sunday morning pundit out there.
Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald discussed the professional development of Trevor Siemian as well at his weekly Monday news conference.
“He came in undersized, and needed to get stronger,” Fitzgerald said of Siemian yesterday.
“The ball just came off his hands so easy, he had such a great release, and we just had to try to project on what he might be as he continued to grow and battle through a couple injuries, you know, later in his career for us here. I think otherwise he ends up being, not kinda top 5 in records, he ends up being probably at the top, and we probably would’ve done some things a little bit differently. Had just a wonderful career.”
“I remember vividly when we had our conversation after he got hurt senior year, and he’s like, ‘I’m not sure what I wanna do,’ and I’m like ‘Listen, I think your best football is still ahead of you. I would go for it, and if the worst thing is you get into a camp and you end up not making it, you’ll never have regret for just at least trying that.’
“To his credit, he worked his rear end off. I mean, it was so impressive to watch how he rehabbed to get ready for his pro day. He couldn’t roll out, and he couldn’t really move, but he could at least drop back, and that was one of the best pro day performances I’ve ever seen – from a guy who was probably 65, 70 percent.”
“Coach Knapp, who at the time was with the Broncos, was here for that workout.”
“And you couple that with what you saw from [Trevor] and his improvement, that was the thing – you just saw him getting better, he just kept getting better.”
“I think that’s why the Broncos really thought highly of him. There were a couple other organizations too, but I thought they did really good research on him, and I thought for sure towards the end of the draft that they may – especially with where they were at, if they didn’t trade all those last picks that they had, that bunch of picks there at the end of that draft, if they didn’t trade up for anybody, I thought that would be potentially the destination for him.”
“He’s been basically having to battle for his role every year, and I think that makes him better, I really do. I think that he’s stepped up to the challenge; I think he has played within the framework of what he can do. I don’t think he does too much, I don’t think he tries to force the ball from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen in a couple times I’ve seen him play.
“He just looks like the Trevor that I know. He just plays with ’em in the offense, gets the ball out of his hand pretty quickly, and is playing at a pretty high level.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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