Florida football: Ricky Pearsall left off of Biletnikoff Award finalists
By Will Thomas
Florida football may not be stacking up the wins this season, but a couple of Gators are still putting up great numbers as we head into the final game of the year.
One of those guys is Ricky Pearsall, UF’s senior wide receiver, who has quietly put together one of the best WR seasons in the SEC.
But not everybody is giving Ricky the credit he deserves for the numbers that he’s been putting up this season.
The ten finalists for the Biletnikoff Award, honoring the nation’s best WR, came out yesterday, and Pearsall was left off of the list.
Florida football: Just look at the numbers
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Ricky should win this award straight up. There are a couple of wideouts across the country putting up stupid numbers that seem impossible to actually achieve.
But Pearsall was absolutely deserving of a spot on the top ten list. He has better numbers than two of the guys on it, who conveniently play for Florida’s biggest rivals. Keon Coleman of FSU and Brock Bowers of UGA made the cut.
Here are the stats of those three guys side by side:
Pearsall: 64 catches, 948 yards, four touchdowns
Coleman: 45 catches, 615 yards, 11 touchdowns
Bowers: 51 catches, 661 yards, six touchdowns
Sure, the touchdowns aren’t on par with the other two. But Ricky’s production is on another level than those two.
Oh yeah, he also did this earlier in the year:
Again, this isn’t some biased campaign that Pearsall is the best-performing receiver in the country. He isn’t.
But he deserves credit for the season he’s putting together during a season where the team is struggling. He should have been named as one of the final ten for the Belitnekoff Award.
Maybe if he outperforms Keon Coleman this weekend, they’ll realize they made a mistake.