2016 Quarterback Prospects

So far I've covered the cornerbacks, wide receivers, defensive tackles, running backs, and edge rushers available in this years draft, but by now we all know that there is really only one position that matters. After the stunning trade by the Rams on Thursday, it now appears almost certain that the first player off the board will once again be a quarterback, with a decent chance that another goes immediately after. And since we’re on the topic, I’ll drop in two quick thoughts on the trade.

1)      Great deal by the Titans, terrible move by the Rams

2)      In the rough draft of this post, I referred to the Los Angeles Rams as “St Louis”. So yeah, apologies for when that happens again in the future.

Quarterback is a very difficult position to analyze because so much of it happens on a level we can’t see. It’s impossible to know what is going through a quarterback’s head on each play, what he is asked to do versus what he ends up doing. But we can still get some sense of how he reads the field by watching him play, and we can study all his physical tools as well. A quarterback needs to be able to endure pressure, to move to give himself lanes to throw, and to fit the ball into tight windows with touch and with power.

And yes, arm strength does matter. The best quarterbacks aren’t limited in any way by the field in front of them and can make throws from sideline to sideline. The real question with arm strength is not whether it matters but how exactly it does, whether there is some minimum threshold that needs to be met after which additional strength provides only marginal return. I don’t know the answer to this, but I think you’ll figure out what I believe by reading through the breakdowns of the six players below.

Jared Goff, Cal

The race for the top quarterback in the draft is a two man show this year, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have Jared Goff and Carson Wentz ranked number one and two. They are at the top, and then there is a big gap to get to number three. But from my perspective, I think there’s a decent sized gap between the top two as well, and I am firmly in the Goff camp in this draft.

A lanky, upright pocket quarterback, Goff is by far the most polished passer in this draft. He displays all the subtle nuances you want to see in a quarterback’s game. He’s light on his feet, and he moves well in the pocket, sensing pressure and shifting around to give himself a lane to throw the football. The ball comes out of his hand with good zip, slicing through tight windows across the middle of the field. His anticipation is spectacular, knowing exactly where and how the defenders are moving to get the ball to his receiver at the exact right time. Combine that with remarkable touch, and Goff is the sort of quarterback that will take your breath away with several throws in every game he plays.

This isn’t to say that Goff is a perfect quarterback. There are plenty of flaws to find with him, flaws that keep me from putting him in the same category as the top quarterbacks from last year’s class. He isn’t the most physically gifted quarterback ever, with only functional athleticism and some questionable arm strength. He doesn’t throw a great deep ball and, more concerning, his throws tend to dip as they approach the sideline. I’m reasonably confident he can make all the throws in the NFL, but he won’t be able to go above and beyond in the way some of the elite passers can.

The other major concern with Goff is the scheme that he came from. In college he ran a very simplified spread offense, usually getting the ball out of his hand almost as soon as it reached him. This system is one that has struggled to produce NFL quarterbacks in the past, and there are questions about how successfully Goff can transition to the next level.

These concerns raise some questions, but I think they’re a bit overblown in this case. Goff’s system asked him to make a lot of simple reads after the ball was snapped, but many of these simple reads were based on decisions made before the snap, an area Goff excelled in. When he was asked to go through multiple reads, he looked very comfortable doing so, possessing the ability to move defenses with his eyes to open up windows for his receivers.

The position of quarterback is at such a premium in the league, and it is difficult to properly pin down where a player like Goff should go. On talent alone I don’t think he’s one of the top ten players in this draft, but the scarcity at quarterback makes it very reasonable to push him into the top five. I worry that his ceiling might not be at a true superstar level, but I am comfortable with his floor as, worst case scenario, a league average quarterback.

Carson Wentz, North Dakota State

Carson Wentz looks like a quarterback. He is huge, and he has a cannon of an arm, capable of making any throw to any part of the field. The ball looks beautiful coming out of his hand, a perfect spiral that stays tight to wherever it finally ends up. His accuracy is excellent, lacking the splash of Goff’s but with more consistency. Add to this frame and this arm some quality athleticism, and he is in many ways built like a perfect quarterback prospect.

But, repeating what I said for Goff above, Wentz is not perfect. The tools are all there physically, and he is coming into the league out of a system that bears more resemblance to an NFL offense than any of the other passers I looked at. He spent a lot of time under center, he knows how to take a drop and how to run play action, and he should have an easier transition to an NFL scheme than most.

But there are problems with Wentz, issues that make me seriously concerned about whether or not he’ll be able to work out at all in the NFL. And most of it comes back to his level of competition. Playing at North Dakota State, Wentz likely has never faced a defense boasting anything near NFL talent, and the jump in competition will be a shock to his system. The easy path he’s had has allowed him to get away with a number of flaws that will be exposed at the next level.

There are a lot of little things that hold Wentz back from being a truly polished passer. Throwing the ball at North Dakota State, he usually had wide open windows to fit the ball into. This gave him plenty of margin for error, and he took full advantage of it, consistently struggling with ball placement. And despite playing in a pro-style inspired system, he wasn’t asked to make too many complex reads, and he had a habit of locking in on receivers. My greatest concerns are with his footwork, which can get very sloppy when not executing a straightforward timing pass. His feet have a habit of coming to a stop after his initial drop, leading to inaccuracy when he attempted to reset and issues escaping pressure. As athletic as he is, Wentz can become somewhat of a statue in the pocket, and he doesn’t offer much in the way of improvisational skills.

These are mostly small things, and each of them can be corrected at the NFL. But together they create a much bigger problem, the sort of thing that could stifle a career. Goff versus Wentz is another classic case of security versus upside, and while I normally think the value of a top tier quarterback is enough to justify a sizeable risk, I just can’t see Wentz being worth a selection in the top ten.

Christian Hackenberg, Penn State

Let me start by saying this: Christian Hackenberg is not a good quarterback. Of the six on the list, he would be the sixth I’d pick if I had to win a game tomorrow. He hasn’t been a good quarterback in two years, and there is no reason to think that will suddenly change upon his arrival in the NFL. Whichever team drafts him should do so with the intention of him being a project, someone they might turn to if everything breaks right a couple years down the road.

As a quarterback he doesn’t offer much, but as a project it’s hard not to get excited by what he could be. The story on Hackenberg is well known by now, a five star recruit who came into Penn State and had a stellar freshman year. But after the 2013 season, head coach Bill O’Brien left for the NFL, and replacement James Franklin brought with him a system that did not fit Hackenberg’s skills. Added to an offensive line that was so bad they might as well not have existed at times, it’s no surprise that Hackenberg was wretched in 2014 and poor in 2015.

This is the popular narrative, and there is some truth it. Hackenberg was put into a situation in which few quarterbacks would succeed, and even though he didn’t make the most of it, it’s hard to hold it against him. And the talent is still there, a better pure thrower of the football than either of the players I have ranked above him. For each of the quarterbacks I studied I watched three games, and of the eighteen games I saw, the most impressive came from Hackenberg his freshman year against Nebraska. The talent is there, and he could become a high caliber NFL quarterback.

But that is the best case scenario, and there are plenty of reasons to think he won’t reach this level. The situation around Hackenberg definitely played a part in his struggles, but it was never the whole problem. Hackenberg deserves some criticism as well for showing no ability to adapt himself to the situation, holding the ball as the pocket collapsed around him and half-assing his way through the offense he found himself in. Based on what I saw on the field and the reports I’ve read of his interviews, I would worry about his overall attitude, and I would have to have several long conversations with him before I was willing to turn my team over to him.

There are more specific football reasons as well to be skeptical of Hackenberg. His greatest asset is his arm strength, but at times it appears that this is the only tool he is aware he possesses. He can fire balls into tight windows like a superstar NFL passer, but he completely lacks any finesse to his game, regularly trying to fire rockets when the situation calls for touch. His footwork got progressively worse during his time in college, leading to egregious errors in accuracy, and it will take some time just to unlearn the bad habits he picked up over the past couple of seasons.

Is Hackenberg salvageable? I think so, but there’s no way to be sure. He needs an environment where he can spend time on the bench, where he can be the backup for a couple years before taking over as a starter. He needs a coach who will work with him and a team that will show him patience. And as talented as he is, he won’t find any of these things if he is drafted in the first two rounds. Hackenberg could be a superstar someday, but the downside of taking him high is impossible to ignore.

Cardale Jones, Ohio State

The only bigger puzzle in this draft than Hackenberg is Jones, another big and gifted passer with a missile launcher for an arm and not a whole lot else. It definitely seems strange that a quarterback who was benched in the middle of his final season would have any shot at the NFL, but nothing about Jones’s path to this point makes sense. Was it not for a couple of fluke injuries and a stunning run of luck, he would still be a backup at Ohio State known mainly for an ill advised tweet from his freshman year.

Reading down this list, it seems like the quarterbacks are getting bigger and stronger with each entry. Fortunately this trend doesn’t continue past Jones, since it isn’t possible to get any bigger or any stronger than he is. There’s a very good chance that he will have the strongest arm in the NFL from the moment he steps onto the field, and that arm translates to every part of the game. He can fire bullets, and he can launch balls soaring seventy yards down the field. He throws a gorgeous deep ball, and he can zip the ball from sideline to sideline through any window.

The question with Jones is whether or not he has anything beyond his arm, and there isn’t much of an answer to that. Like Hackenberg he struggles with trying to overthrow the ball, and when he misses, he misses by zipping the ball over his receiver’s head. He shows a little better touch than Hackenberg does, but it’s still not a strength of his game, and his footwork can get a little messy at the back of his drop, causing sporadic lapses in accuracy.

Jones has to be looked at as a blank slate of a quarterback. He’s coming out of college with only 269 career pass attempts, less than half a season by modern NFL standards. He’s shown flashes of having what it takes to be an NFL quarterback, and that might be enough to sneak him into the latter portion of the third round. But we just don’t know what he might be, and the last time we saw him, he was coming off the field in favor of JT Barrett.

Connor Cook, Michigan State

After two raw but talented specimens, we finally reach another quarterback who isn’t defined by his physical ability. In terms of simply throwing the football, Cook doesn’t measure up to any of the players listed above, but he did a lot of things well in college to get himself into the conversation in the second tier of quarterbacks in the draft. His physical tools aren’t amazing, but they aren’t necessarily a weakness either, and he can make any throw needed of him in the NFL. Coupled with years of experience in a system that played to his comfort zone, he could at times look as impressive on film as any quarterback in the draft, even if this conceals flaws that will prevent him from being a capable starter at the next level.

Many of the smaller things that hold back Hackenberg and Jones are what make Cook worth watching as a prospect. He is at his best working within the system, on timing routes that demand he release the ball as soon as his back foot hits the top of his drop. He gets the ball out when it’s supposed to get out, and he doesn’t hurt his team by trying to do too much and producing negative plays. He shows good instincts for when to fire the ball in and when to toss it with touch, and he does a very good job fitting the ball into windows over the top of one defender and underneath another.

I’m sure that somewhere among my slim readership, there are people shaking their heads at the thought of me ranking Hackenberg and Jones above Cook simply on arm strength. And while I understand this complaint, I think we need to take a step back and consider what Cook really is. Because for a quarterback whose entire upside is based on being a polished passer, he really isn’t that polished.

Cook’s accuracy isn’t as volatile as the two above him, but it is still a problem. He doesn’t suffer egregious misses, but he struggles with small accuracy. The ball will hit his target, but it won’t always hit the right part of his target, either coming in at the wrong shoulder or at the wrong level and forcing his receiver to make a difficult catch. He also isn’t very good at reading defenses. He tends to lock in on one receiver, and even if that receiver isn’t open, he’ll still fire the ball into tight coverage. This seemed to work for him at Michigan State, where his receivers bailed him out time and time again, and he deserves some credit for putting the ball in a position where they could make a play. But after watching three games, I saw little evidence that he knows how to identify openings in the defense of the sort he will need to succeed at the next level.

There is a fundamental lack of upside that comes with drafting Cook. At best he will be a spot starter, someone like Josh McCown or Ryan Fitzpatrick who can hold down a team for a year or two before something better comes along. A team looking for a long term backup might be willing to spend a fourth round pick on him, but even that seems like too much to give up to me.

Paxton Lynch, Memphis

Anyone with even slight awareness of the draft class this year has probably read through this list wondering where the hell Paxton Lynch is. Well, the answer is here, at the bottom. Lynch is another quarterback who boasts tremendous physical tools, a very intriguing combination of arm strength and athleticism. But he is somehow even less polished than Hackenberg and Jones, and I think his upside is probably lower than both of them as well.

First, let’s take a brief moment to discuss what Lynch does well. As I mentioned he has above average arm strength and athleticism, and though he will likely never be a major threat as a ball carrier, he can make some plays scrambling around behind the line of scrimmage. He shows the ability to throw the ball with a soft touch, and at his best he is capable of some excellent throws both in the pocket and on the run.

Now for the bad. Lynch has absolutely no idea how to play quarterback in the NFL, and if he’s forced into a situation where he has to play in his rookie season, it will be a disaster. He struggles with small area accuracy in the same way Cook does, and he has an elongated delivery that will give defensive backs an extra fraction of a second to jump underneath a route. When he gets in trouble in the pocket, he tends to retreat up the field, getting himself into even worse trouble as he goes. And when he moves, he has a terrible habit of throwing back across the middle of the field, including multiple instances in which I saw him jump while moving to his left, spin in the air, and throw back to his right. He has the arm strength to make this look cool against college defenses, but NFL defenders will simply laugh at him as they take the ball back to the endzone.

I’m in the minority on this opinion. Most people have Lynch ranked as the third best quarterback, and there’s a decent chance he goes in the first round. He could even leap all the way into the top ten if someone like San Francisco or Philadelphia gets desperate after Los Angeles’s jump up to the first pick. I don’t see Lynch as anywhere close to the sort of player worth that selection. He could turn out to be a quality starter someday, but that day is still several years down the road, and it will require an incredible investment of time and coaching to make something out of him.