Heisman Film Room: Georgia's Jake Fromm ready for big encore

What Georgia's Jake Fromm did as a true freshman was extraordinary.

The young pup instantly mastered a slimmed-down version of Jim Chaney's multi-faceted offense, guiding the Bulldogs to within a blown coverage of a national championship.

Fromm got his fair dose of credit last year. But I'm still not sure he got quite enough. Georgia's defense was dominant and smothering; he had two running backs taken in the top 35 picks of the NFL draft; his offensive line was among the best in the country. Fromm's 24 touchdowns to seven interceptions looked quaint in comparison. Some even hammered him with the scarlet letter for a quarterback: game manager.

Nope. Fromm is so much more than that.

He's miles ahead of his peers. Sure, having one of the best defenses in the country and a backfield littered with future pros was a big help. But it's not as if Fromm sat back and let them take him to the promised land.

Chaney sheltered the true freshman a little early in the campaign, using half-field reads and three-tiered concepts to make decisions easier for the youngster. From the start, Fromm played well beyond his years.

The training wheels quickly came off. Fromm vaulted an extra couple of levels, making professional decisions, reads and throws. He was never a see-it-throw-it guy; he always showed more nuance than that. But he began to understand how his eyes and feet could impact the leverage and angles of defenders, and how he could respond.

He processes things so quickly post-snap, and has such a snappy release that he's able to bait safeties and linebackers into halting. They don't need to bite on fakes, zooming out of shot like Wile E. Coyote going off the cliff. They simply have to stop and think for a millisecond.

Watch that play again from the end-zone view. Track Fromm's eyes:

He's looking for the answer to one question: open or closed field? Open means there are two-deep split safeties, with an open gap between them. Closed is the opposite: one deep defender lurking in the middle of the field. The field was closed. Fromm's initial read - the post pattern from the slot - was cut off. Oklahoma's cornerback was in an excellent position.

Next, Fromm moved to his running back, who was leaking out of the backfield toward the pylon. His back, Sony Michel, had a mismatch; he was open. But Fromm wasn't content to just flip it to Michel. No, sir. He had to make extra sure no defender could scurry across before Michel waltzed into the end zone.

He flashed his eyes toward the post pattern and cocked his arm, forcing Oklahoma's off-ball linebacker to shuffle to his left. Once the defender bit, Fromm flipped the ball out to his back.

Everything about him screams professional.

It's rare for a true freshman to run a true audible system. Every team in the country runs some kind of box RPO (run-pass option) in which the quarterback reads the box count pre-snap and picks between a run or pass depending on where the advantage is. That's old hat.

A bunch of quarterbacks - particularly freshman - don't even get to make those decisions. Those are the plays in which you see the whole offense pirouette toward the sideline as someone flashes a billboard with Steven A. Smith's face on it (spoiler: those typically have no meaning).

Look up and down the country and you'll find a handful of quarterbacks running actual audible systems: switching up plays, formations, alignments, and protections. Getting from a bad play to a good one, as coaches say. In 2017, there was precisely one freshman: Fromm.

A bunch of those plays don't show up in the box score, at least not for Fromm. But they were vital to an offense that was as well-balanced as any in the country.

A ton of Georgia's explosive plays (they finished 11th in the nation in offensive explosiveness, per FootballStudyHall) came on plays in which Fromm identified a hole in the opposing defense or a mismatch, switching the play or manipulating the design to take advantage.

It doesn't get much better than this:

Did you catch that?

Fromm quickly identified the void in Oklahoma's defensive front. The Sooners lined up with their Mike linebacker in a stacked look - directly behind the defensive lineman. It was third down, the Sooners were bluffing a blitz, but really using that back as a "rat" defender: a freelance-type role who opts whether to drop into coverage or blitz depending on the movements of the offensive line and quarterback.

Oklahoma was expecting a pass all day. Georgia had one called (Fromm had to tell each lineman individually, which is a tell-tale sign when switching from run to pass or vice versa). He switched the play. He moved Michel from his right to his left so the explosive back could attack the free space as quickly as possible. Georgia ran inside zone (the most common play in football) on third-and-7, scoring a 32-yard touchdown.

It might look easy, but switching your coordinator's play call, as a true freshman, down seven, on third down, in a College Football Playoff semifinal, takes guts.

There are similar nuances to his game post-snap. Fromm has grown as a player who understands how leverage impacts the kind of ball he needs to throw - the velocity, the speed, the placement. Sometimes, a ball may look a touch inaccurate, but it's intended to force a receiver to a specific spot away from a defender. Other times, a throw hits a receiver in stride. A good ball, right? Not if it's directly into the path of a safety thundering downhill.

Fromm gets this. He grew from accurate to precise during the course of his freshman year. Watch how he angles this throw down and away so the linebacker can't jump on it, and so his receiver can gather it and create yards after the catch:

Then there's this:

The action of the Tennessee defense required a totally different throw. Georgia ran a slot fade, hoping to get its slot receiver matched up one-on-one against a defensive back vertically. They got that, but Tennessee's rotating safety was all over the route. To compound matters, the Vols had a single deep safety marauding the middle of the field. The typical throw - a teardrop out in front of the receiver - was off the table.

Fromm adjusted. The ball had to go high and wide, far enough away from the safety and high enough to allow his receiver to turn around, spot the adjustment, and adjust himself.

Other quarterbacks would've come off that primary read and moved on. Fromm anticipated and adjusted. Perfection.

An additional skill he's mastered: the art of the play-action pass. He has an innate feel for turning his back, resetting his feet, scanning the field, and getting the ball out before the defense comes calling - an art lost in this pace-and-space, spread-option era.

There are some nitpicks, of course. Fromm takes too many sacks. He was dropped 20 times in 2017, with Georgia finishing 63rd in the country in adjusted sack rate.

He's a decent athlete; not a dynamic, twitched-up scrambler (Chaney has some nice read RPOs built into the Bulldogs' system that take advantage of Fromm's straight-line speed). He relies on winning with his feet inside the pocket to avoid pressure. He started out more as a pocket shuffler, tippy-tapping his feet away from pressure:

It's a valuable skill, but more valuable is the stick-slide-climb throw. You can get more velocity on the ball and throws are more accurate. At season's end, Fromm started to get that one down as well:

Wow.

Continuing that kind of growth will help limit sacks.

He also needs to speed up his internal clock. Part of the downside of being surrounded by great players is you get used to having all the time in the world to sit back and launch the thing. Someone is bound to get open eventually.

Fromm has to get better at recognizing when his third and fourth options aren't there. He has to eat a play or two - the Peyton Manning approach. It's best to chuck the ball away rather than gift the defense free yards.

A fair few sacks weren't on the freshman, though. Sometimes there's no one to blame - the defense just wins. Fromm faced a gauntlet of opponents, including some outstanding pass-rushers, brilliant defensive minds, and lockdown corners who took away his first couple of reads.

In the national title game, Alabama did a great job of "formation-ing" its blitzes, meaning they called specific blitzes against certain offensive formations. Instead of a blitz being called in the huddle or based on the personnel grouping or down and distance (as is typical), the defense waits until the offense has tipped its hand.

Power is given to the players. Whoever's the on-field general for the defense (usually a linebacker) checks to the blitz, regardless of what the defensive coordinator originally called. Every variation is decided in the team's pregame plan. "We're going to get after this look."

Alabama got after Fromm whenever Georgia showed a bunch look to the field side - the side opposite the spot of the ball. There, the blitzing cornerback is well hidden. Fromm didn't see it coming until it was too late.

All the quarterback could do was hope he didn't fumble.

Sacks are one thing. Turnovers are another. Fromm threw seven interceptions in 2017. There was a worrying trend: dropping and buzzing linebackers. When Fromm moved from his primary read to his second, third, fourth, and fifth options, he neglected to track the movements of buzzing linebackers, or linebackers moving from the middle of the field toward the sideline.

He got away with some risky throws. Other times, he wasn't so lucky. Linebackers dropping to underneath flat zones were another blind spot:

This is where I have to stop and remind you that Fromm was a true freshman. When we're getting this far into the weeds to find issues - many of which are correctable - I'd say he did OK.

His sophomore year will be fascinating. First, he has to retain his job. It sounds crazy, I know, but Georgia landed Justin Fields, the No. 2 overall prospect in the nation, in the latest recruiting cycle. Fields is a true dual threat, and head coach Kirby Smart will want to find ways to get him on the field, if only to stop whispers of a future transfer.

Surrounding Fromm is a supporting cast stocked with create-a-player types. Demetris Robertson, a transfer from Cal, is a former five-star recruit. He was the No. 1 receiver in the nation coming out of high school. Then there's running back D'Andre Swift, who averaged 7.5 yards per carry as the team's third-stringer in 2017. Swift is ready to announce himself as a super-duper-star to the national audience.

Georgia's defense is as solid as ever. Big-name players have left, but the defense as a collective won't miss a beat. New stars will rise.

That's good and bad news for Fromm's Heisman chances. The good: He'll put up great numbers on a team that has a shot at winning the whole damn thing. The bad: The team's other stars may cannibalize his vote. But that's a nice problem to have.

It would be a shock if he fails to reach New York. Such a situation would likely mean voters plumped for one of his teammates, or they knocked Fromm down their ballot because he came off the field too frequently for Fields. If that's the case, he can console himself with the knowledge that he'll be a high first-round NFL draft pick in a couple of years.