Former Alabama quarterback and NFL hopeful AJ McCarron thinks he was disrespected in college. No, seriously. The three-time BCS championship quarterback with a Maxwell Award and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, one BCS Championship Game Offensive MVP honor and a Heisman Trophy runner-up result thinks he deserves more respect as he heads in to the NFL.
Seriously.
McCarron once blamed too much winning for the reason Alabama came out flat in a Sugar Bowl blowout loss to Oklahoma. Now McCarron says because all he has ever done is win is why he is not getting enough respect. The quarterback who once appeared on the cover ofSports Illustratedwith a caption that askedif it was time to consider McCarron among the best in the history of the game, thinks he is worthy of even more praise and respect as he prepares to show what he can do in the NFL Scouting Combine this weekend.
“I feel like I’ve been disrespected my whole college career because I won,” McCarron said during his media availability at the NFL Scouting Combine according to AL.com.
McCarron does have an interesting point in all of this. Although he has been under center for a dominant stretch for the Crimson Tide, he has routinely been sitting behind the star power of Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel and below Georgia’s Aaron Murray in the record books. Often McCarron was even the best player on the field on his own side of the field. McCarron has played with so much talent that it sometimes becomes easy to overlook what McCarron really does bring to the table. He seems to have embraced the idea he is a game manager -- and honestly when has that become a terrible thing for a quarterback -- and he has expectations and goals for himself as he goes to the NFL.
Maybe McCarron does not possess the physical tools that other quarterback options will in the NFL Draft, but if McCarron thinks he was disrespected in the college game then he was not paying attention to the same sport I have been for the past few years. But just because a player was so successful in the college level does not always mean they should be given automatic praise entering the NFL.
Respect is earned. McCarron has earned it at the college level, even if he struggles to see that. Now he has to earn it at the next level.