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Aidan Chiles disrespected by preseason watchlist

By Trevor Michael

Michigan State's Aidan Chiles throws a pass during camp on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, at the indoor practice facility in East Lansing.
Michigan State's Aidan Chiles throws a pass during camp on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, at the indoor practice facility in East Lansing. / Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK
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Now that the season is a couple weeks away it’s time to see which Michigan State football players are on preseason watchlists for major college football awards. Nate Carter was recently put on the Doak Walker Award watchlist, which if you remember Kenneth Walker won in 2021 as the nation's best running back.

While the preseason award watchlists bring excitement when Spartans are included, it also brings disrespect at times when deserving Spartans are excluded. And that was the case with Aidan Chiles and the Davey O’Brien Award watchlist.

The Davey O’Brien Award goes to the best quarterback in the country at the end of the season, and as the season approaches the award listed 36 quarterbacks on their watchlist for the award.

And Chiles is nowhere to be found.

As I mentioned, 36 quarterbacks made the watchlist, so this tells us that Chiles is at best the No. 37 quarterback in the country in this award’s eyes. Laughable. There is no chance that Chiles isn’t at least in the top 36 quarterbacks in the country.

Four Big Ten quarterbacks made the cut on the watchlist, and each quarterback definitely deserves to be above Chiles. But the other 32? Now that’s just disrespectful.

Thankfully for Chiles and Michigan State, you don’t need to be on the watchlist to win this award at the end of the season. The award will also release a midseason watchlist as well, so if Chiles plays well he’ll get his flowers then.

But for the time being, Chiles is not on this award’s radar, but maybe that isn’t a bad thing.

This hopefully will give Chiles that much more motivation and help him get going to start the season. The beginning of Michigan State’s schedule is favorable for Chiles as they won’t face an elite defense until Week 5, so this will help him potentially get started fast and become more known on the national scale.

I don’t expect Chiles to win this award this year, and none of you should either, but I would be shocked to see him not included in the midseason watchlist later this year.

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