Georgia Tech Recruiting: Recapping Jeff Sims’ UA All-America Game Performance

Jeff Sims helped lead Team Pressure to a 30-24 victory over Team Savage. While his final stat line may not have been the most impressive, I saw a lot of things to like about Sims. He led Team Pressure to their first touchdown of the game, which he scored on the ground. He finished 5-for-11 for 29 yards through the air and also had seven carries for 63 yards and a touchdown (these are the numbers I came up with during my re-watch, so there may be a couple discrepancies in the numbers, but I couldn’t find a full box score).

Passing the Ball

A lot of Sims’ passes in the game were short quick passes, which he did pretty well with. Something that really impressed me with Sims was his ball placement on some of his passes. He also did a good job of escaping pressure from Team Savage.

Ball placement

Sims drops back and drops an absolute dime right here into the end zone. Unfortunately, the coverage on his receiver is just as good as the spot he put it.

It’s always nice to have a big 6-5 receiver to pass to, and Sims gets that here with UF signee Jaquavion Fraziars. Sims does a good job to throw this one a little short, so Fraziars can catch it well in front of the defensive back that is trying to knock it out.

Sims’ placement wasn’t great on every pass he threw. Here, he throws the ball just slightly behind his receiver on the slant route, so the receiver has to turn a little awkwardly to catch the ball. The defensive back was right there to make the tackle, so I don’t know that placing the ball a little better would have changed things much.

The spot on Sims’ pass is just about perfect, but it goes right through the receiver’s hands. You can even see the receiver show that he should have pulled that in at the end of the gif.

Pocket Presence

The pocket gets messy pretty quickly here with the two defensive ends coming wide, but Sims does a good job with a little stutter step to avoid the pressure and find a hole for an 8-yard gain.

Sims tries to step up to avoid the pressure, but gets swallowed up with nowhere to go. He tries to keep his eyes downfield to get the ball out and can’t find any hole.

Sims rolls right to avoid the pass rush from the right defensive end and does a good job of getting rid of the ball before the delayed rusher gets to him. Unfortunately, the pass is a little low, so his receiver can’t come up with it.

Rushing the Ball

While some of his passing was pretty impressive, I was much more impressed with Sims’ rushing abilities. Throughout the game, he did a great job of running the ball in space, but was also able to shake off would-be tacklers. My biggest concern here was how he holds the ball. There were a few carries where he’s holding the ball with just one hand, which makes it pretty easy for the defense to knock out.

In this first play, we see Sims’ toughness as a runner, as it takes four players from Team Savage to get him down while also beating one defender to the edge. He slips away from one tackle and just runs over the other three to move the pile forward.

We get to see Sims’ speed here has he beats all three of those defenders on the edge and gets into the endzone completely untouched for his lone touchdown of the game.

Sims shows off his speed in the open field here as he runs effortlessly for nearly 30 yards in his longest play of the game. He is able to wait until the defensive back covering the inside receiver to the left has over run the play before he starts the run to boost him to the next level.

Final Thoughts

I’m really excited for Jeff Sims to arrive on the Flats. Just watching him play, it’s easy to see why. Between his arm and rushing abilities, he’s got a bright future. It’s important to remember that this was an exhibition game, so when he’s in a real game, he’ll have to worry about more blitzers than just the front four. With what we were able to see, I think Sims did a good job with ball placement, but he still does need to work on securing the ball while running and fine tuning his accuracy. There were a couple passes I didn’t include here that were a bit erratic.

But one thing that I absolutely loved about watching Sims is how the ball flies out of his hands. Kieffer described his release as Philip Rivers-esque, which I’ll take. Whatever happens, it will be a fun competition to watch with him and Plant, FL-native Tucker Gleason both enrolling early to compete with James Graham, Jordan Yates and Lucas Johnson during the Spring.

What did you think of Sims’ performance in the Under Armour All-America Game?