Faster. Higher. Stronger.
It is the time-honored motto of the Olympics, and, now that the Games are over, it’s officially time to pass the torch to … the Toledo football team.
What else to make of a prominent new ranking of, well, the fastest, highest-flying, and strongest college football players in the country?
OK, maybe that’s a bit of a jump.
But we’ve seen bigger ones, including in the Rockets’ weight room, where, for instance, 5-9, 175-pound rubber burner Jacquez Stuart (40-inch vertical leap) and 6-4, 310-pound people eater Darius Alexander (30 inches) alike have more hops than a brewery.
That’s just one of the measurements that put the two standouts on the Athletic’s Freaks List, an annual catalog of college football’s 101 most gifted athletes, as compiled by national insider Bruce Feldman.
It is typically filled with blue chippers from the usual blue-blood suspects and features a few players from the Group of Five conferences or lower divisions here and there.
Then there is Toledo.
The outlier of guys with outlier traits.
The Rockets boast two of the top 60 athletes — one more than Georgia has on the entire list — and it’s not hard to see why.
Start with Stuart, the senior running back who was the MAC’s top return man last year — his 29.1 yards per return ranked third nationally — and should be among its top offensive threats this fall.
He is not just the fastest player on Toledo. (Is it close? “No, it is not,” Stuart said with a smile.) The former state champion sprinter from Miami is one of the fastest players in the nation, and … just maybe the fastest player in recent Toledo football memory?
“Well, I’ll let him and Q get into that argument about who’s faster,” UT coach Jason Candle said. “I’m not getting into the middle of that debate!”
Q, of course, is Quinyon Mitchell, the former Toledo cornerback who was just drafted 22nd overall by the Eagles. At the scouting combine, he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.33 seconds, faster than all but two of the 321 prospects in attendance.
Stuart might be faster than that?
I put the same question to strength coach Brad Bichey, who is in his ninth season at UT.
Technically …
“Yeah, Jacquez is the fastest guy we’ve had,” he said.
Mitchell, an alum of last year’s Freaks List, and Stuart would both be “speeding in a school zone,” as Bichey put it. But — at least according to the GPS chips that players wear — Stuart has the edge. Mitchell was clocked as high as 23.58 mph. Stuart registered at 23.62 mph this summer.
Translation: Jimmy John’s thinks Stuart is freaky fast.
Oh, and powerful. Don’t let his size fool you. He benched 225 pounds 17 times and squatted 550 pounds — the equivalent of about two refrigerators — this offseason.
Bichey said he’s the Rockets’ strongest pound-for-pound player.
As for Alexander, the senior defensive tackle might be the fastest pound-for-pound player.
The big man is as explosive as he is strong. His bar-bending feats (max bench: 400 pounds) are every bit as Bunyanesque as you might expect. But it’s his speed that makes Alexander — a preseason first-team all-MAC selection — truly freakish.
He’s hell on wheels, able to power through, run around (speed: 20 mph), or, heck, jump over just about anyone in his path. For context, the 310-pound Alexander’s 30-inch vertical leap would have ranked 12th at this year’s … NBA combine.
“A very impressive human,” Bichey said.
Together, Stuart and Alexander are a tribute to the twin pillars of Toledo’s continued success: recruiting and, more important, player development.
You don’t have guys like this without a culture that prioritizes the unseen work it takes to be great.
“There's a point in time for every athlete over the course of their career, between freshman and senior year, where they have to make a decision about how serious they want to be,” Candle said.
And, more often than not, history suggests Toledo’s players choose the hard road. (In Candle’s eight-plus seasons, Toledo’s had 10 players drafted — a total unsurpassed in the MAC during that span.)
“The weight room is the best place to be,” Alexander said. “You're in there with your guys and you're just grinding, and with a great coach like coach B, you only get motivated to go in there even more. The weight room is a special place to be. That's where it all starts.”
That’s music to Bichey’s ears, and, as much as the players credit him, he volleys the praise right back, citing the standard they set for each other.
I asked Stuart if his teammates tried to race him.
“Yes, and I love it,” he said, with the exception of the time this summer a fellow speedster pulled his hamstring in one such contest. “We push each other every day.”
That doesn’t mean anyone can catch him.
But when you have stars like Mitchell and now Stuart — and Alexander — setting the pace, sometimes the road to success is a little faster than others.
Coincidence or not, Alexander said, “I think this might be the most athletic team we’ve had.”
First Published August 14, 2024, 7:14 p.m.
