#5 Teddy Bridgewater

Class: Sophomore Ht/Wt: 6-3/218 Position: Quarterback Hometown: Miami, Fla

Louisville’s Take: One of the most decorated freshman quarterbacks in the country ... displayed big-time potential and talent... will be the leader of the offense going forward... has a calm and steadying influence in the huddle... can make all the throws from the quarterback position... sparked the offense mid-way through the season after taking over as the starter... showed a toughness to stay in the pocket and take a hit... has the ability to keep broken plays alive with his feet ... made better decisions down the stretch.

Thoughts: I honestly have no idea where to even start. I typed the first sentence to this summary seven different times before I came up with that. Do I start with a true freshman taking over the season when we needed him the most? Do I start with Teddy coming in to save the game against the Cats? Do I start with Teddy’s three touchdown performance against South Florida in a must win game to break the freshman passing record? Do I start with his BIG EAST Rookie of the year honors? Do I start with his Freshman All-American honors from CBS Sports, Sporting News and Fox Sports? Where do you start…? To put it simply…dude is a beast.

To try and be fair, when possible, I want to tone down expectations of Teddy this season. Sure, he jumped into the deep end of the pool last year and emerged on the other end with what appeared to be 6 or 7 gold medals but let’s give him a chance to really succeed. Everything I hear has him being twice as good as last year, throwing Brohm type numbers, rushing with Vick type numbers, hell he may even be kicking field goals if fans had their way. With expectations as high as they have been in about 6 years I really want to let Teddy be a Sophomore quarterback. He will still make mistakes, he will throw interceptions, he will have fumbles, he will make poor throws…but at the end of the day he will be one of the best in the land. Let’s recap last season real quick. 2,129 yards off 191 completions, 64.5 completion percentage, sixty-six rushing yards, 4 rushing touchdowns and 14 passing touchdowns.

To come back to reality a little bit, he also had 12 picks and a fumble. He has room to grow, and I honestly think he will become a much better player than he was last season, and that gets me extremely amped up. While the Cinderalla story of two local kids (Brohm and Bush) coming to the local university to bring it back to prominence was great, I like where this story leads as well. Miami star picks Cards over local school, brings his buddies, continues an amazing recruiting streak from Strong and Company, wins the Big East and eventually takes the Cards to the National Championship. Wait…I was supposed to be lowering expectation on the kid. Screw it, show’em what you got Teddy!

via foxsports.com

Potential Nicknames: "Touchdown Teddy", "Teddy Heisman"