Freshman Tracker: How First-Year Players Fared in 2020

Before the football season began, the NCAA handed out a blanket waiver to athletes, including football players, Thus, the 2020 season technically will not affect any future eligibility. (It’s why we nixed our redshirt tracker from year’s past.)

In a normal year, though — at least as of 2018 — the NCAA’s redshirt rules allowed for players to participate in up to four games while still qualifying for a redshirt season. So under those circumstances, I decided to take a look at how many games the incoming freshmen participated in to get a scope of their total impact. That information is found below.

Transfers were excluded from this list to make it a freshmen-only eval. What I found was that a number of players who in normal seasons wouldn’t play in more than four games played in far more. Most notably, quarterback Shane Illingworth played in five games, which is one over the normal threshold (and would normally be a no-no). Several others exceeded the four games as well, including Brennan Presley and Korie Black, who lead the freshmen class with 10 games. Running back Dominic Richardson is runner-up in that department with nine.

Then there are the seldom-used special-teamers who got extended experience. Cornerback Jabbar Muhammad played in seven regular season games and made one tackle, and safety Nicolas Session had an identical stat line playing in just five games. Safety Mason Cobb and receiver Rashod Owens also got extended run as rookies.

Here is the full list and their regular-season production: