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GoAUpher: Bumped because 1) fun topic with data and 2) because of the use of increasing x's in Maxx in the poll (genius).
You probably heard that good old #99 Ra'Shade Hageman was named to the 3rd team All-American Team by the AP (SBN had him on their 1st team) but did you know that he was the first Gopher to make the AP All-American team since Matt Spaeth was named a 1st team member in 2006? Matt of course was a tight end, a very good one, which got me thinking about Maxx Williams and how he might compare.How does he compare? Holy expletive deleted!
Per the good old Wikipedia, Matt had the following stats (who was drafted in the 3rd round):
| YEAR | TEAM | REC | YDS | AVG | LNG | TD's |
| 2002 | MIN | DNP - Redshirt | ||||
| 2003 | MIN | 12 | 98 | 8.2 | 12 | 0 |
| 2004 | MIN | 24 | 298 | 12.4 | 47 | 4 |
| 2005 | MIN | 26 | 333 | 12.8 | 36 | 4 |
| 2006 | MIN | 47 | 564 | 12.0 | 48 | 4 |
Per the good folks at ESPN, who had Maxx on their B1G All-Freshman Team, Maxx had the following stats this year.
| YEAR | TEAM | REC | YDS | AVG | LNG | TD's |
| 2012 | MIN | DNP - Redshirt | ||||
| 2013 | MIN | 20 | 341 | 17.1 | 50 | 4 |
Now I'm not a stat guy like Matt or several of you other guys out there...but damn. FYI, he also had 1 run (that fake punt) that got 7 yards and a first down. If I'm reading this right, and I like to think I am, if you translated this over to Matt stats you would get the following:
- Receptions: 3rd best year (but 60% increase of Matt's first year)
- Total Yards: 2nd best year
- Avg. Length: Best year
- Long: Best year
- TD's: Tied for Best (4-way tie)
Now there are a lot of things that make direct comparisons unfair or inaccurate, but HFS!
That's pretty darn good, but let now compare him to another recent Golden Gopher tight end who made it to the NFL, Ben Utecht (UDFA, stats from Pro-Football-Reference.com).
| YEAR | TEAM | REC | YDS | AVG | LNG | TD's |
| 1999 | MIN | DNP - Redshirt | ||||
| 2000 | MIN | 7 | 118 | 16.9 | n/a | 2 |
| 2001 | MIN | 20 | 314 | 15.7 | n/a | 5 |
| 2002 | MIN | 37 | 480 | 13.0 | n/a | 6 |
| 2003 | MIN | 18 | 289 | 16.1 | n/a | 2 |
If Maxx was Ben, this year would have been the following:
Lastly, lets compare Maxx to the most recent Gopher to play Tight End in the NFL, MarQueis Gray. Oops, that might be kinda hard has Gray of course didn't play TE for the Gophers (except maybe in the Texas Bowl game last year?), but we do know that he was, like Ben, an Undrafted Free Agent (UDFA).
So what can I say about Maxx. Keep this up Maxx, and you may very well be an All-American and an NFL player.
