Wes Bunting said:

Witnessing a star

My final and most important note from this game is the development of Georgia Tech defensive end Derrick Morgan. I wrote about Morgan during the summer and came away impressed with his natural athletic ability, power and upside, but I felt that in order for him to take his game to the next level, he needed to improve his flexibility and overall footwork off the ball. And what I saw Thursday night was a guy who played with a much lower pad level than last year and was consistently able to take a positive first step off the snap. In turn, he was absolutely dominant in all areas of the game.

If Morgan is able to keep up this type of play, there’s no doubt he’ll be a first round pick. The question is: How high does he go? I had him ranked fifth on my junior defensive end list, which came out last Friday. But after seeing the improvements he made to his game in the offseason, there’s no reason he can’t and won’t be the top-rated defensive end in the county and a legitimate top-10 pick. Morgan’s performance was truly eye-opening.

@solon16 said:

Jerrard Tarrant, a 6'1", 202 pound redshirt sophomore. His return on the fake field goal/pooch punt was good stuff; you can see why Jon Dwyer compares him to Devin Hester.

As a corner, he started off strong, but got taken apart later in the game by Jacoby Ford, who made everyone else on the field look slow. Well, except for C.J. Spiller: those two guys are ridiculously fast.

@solon16 said:

Also Sapp #7 for clemson flashed pretty well.

He's coming off a partially torn ACL, which makes his explosiveness all the more impressive. Still think he's more of an athlete than a football player (lacks a variety of rush moves, not overly instinctive, etc.), but I'm hoping to see more from him. Obviously, the athleticism is there to make the switch to 3-4 OLB.