2018 Draft Prospects: Quarterbacks

I’ve spent the past three weeks working my way through the best prospects in this draft class, and now we finally get to the group that actually matters. 2018 isn’t a great class, but the quarterback position has the potential to salvage it. This group is strong at the top, and it is deep as well, offering five potential future starters for teams to add in the first round.

Josh Rosen, UCLA

In a year with a very strong and very deep quarterback class, Rosen is clearly the best of the bunch, and he should be the runaway choice as the top player taken in the draft. He might be the best pure thrower of the football to enter the league since I started scouting players five years ago. The ball comes out of his hand with more than enough zip, able to beat closing cornerbacks on out routes deep along the sidelines. He combines this strength with pinpoint precision, consistently nailing tight windows across the field and putting the ball in the perfect place for his receiver to catch it.

When everything is operating smoothly around him, Rosen looks just about unstoppable. He is a natural in a clean pocket, working across the field on his reads with his feet constantly moving beneath him. He is always in position to deliver the ball, and he can get it out of his hand in a hurry to hit timing routes the moment they come open. He made NFL reads and throws on a regular basis in college, and he’s ready to start day one, only improving from that point on as his chemistry and timing develops with his wide receivers.

There are things to nitpick about Rosen. He can be a bit too aggressive down the field at times, especially when he gets into the red zone. He needs more experience recognizing and reading blitzes before the snap, and complex defenses in college were able to fluster him. He’s up and down as a deep passer, capable of some beautiful balls but also making mistakes on what should be routine throws.

These are all correctible issues that he should buff out over his first few years in the NFL. The much bigger concern I have, and the one that keeps me from putting him among the truly elite quarterbacks I’ve scouted, is how he handles situations when the play breaks down. Rosen is a below average athlete, and he struggles when he has to move off his spot. He doesn’t make plays outside the pocket, and he doesn’t have a good sense for where to slide up to buy himself more time and space. He is willing to stand in against pressure and take a hit, but more often than not the ball doesn’t go anywhere near where he intends it. His arm is good, but it isn’t enough to make spectacular throws from shaky platforms, and if you can generate pressure on him he will likely be unable to complete the play down the field.

Rosen will be a very good starting quarterback for whichever team drafts him, and in the right circumstances he can perform like one of the best in the league. But I don’t see a player good enough to elevate a mediocre supporting cast, and I think it’s unlikely he’ll ever be a consistent All Pro player. In a stronger draft class I might be able to argue a non-quarterback over him, but this year I think teams should be happy to grab a solid, if limited upside, starting quarterback.

Lamar Jackson, Louisville

I’ll get this out of the way to start. There’s been a lot of discussion around Jackson this year, much of it surrounding the position he will play at the next level. Some people have said he would be better at wide receiver, and part of me can see where they’re coming from. Jackson is a one of a kind athlete, and it would be almost tragic if we were robbed of the ability to watch him with the ball in his hands just because he couldn’t cut it as a quarterback. But in the end I do think quarterback will be the position for him in the NFL, and I think he has what it takes to stick there long term.

There’s no denying what Jackson can do as a runner, and I think people are making too muchout of the questions raised about him as a passer. He played in a system in college that required him to make a lot of NFL style dropbacks and reads, going through multiple progressions across the entire field. He usually makes the right decision with his reads, even if he does need to pick up the pace and throw with anticipation rather than waiting to see the receivers come out of their breaks. He’s capable of fitting the ball into tight windows over the middle, and while his arm strength isn’t extraordinary, it’s more than enough to succeed in the NFL.

But there’s also no denying that there are a lot of issues Jackson has to clean up to become an effective passer. His accuracy is all over the place, largely due to erratic footwork in the pocket. He is usually on target when delivering the ball to his first read, but his accuracy drops drastically off as he’s forced to move deeper through his progressions. Unlike Rosen he doesn’t reset his feet as he bounces in the pocket, and he’s left in awkward positions that lead to passes sailing nowhere near his target.

Footwork isn’t the only thing Jackson has to clean up to succeed as a quarterback in the NFL. He doesn’t have great instincts for varying the velocity of his ball, and he will often leave it floating when he should fire it through a tight lane or give it no arc when it requires more touch. He’s a tremendous athlete, but he doesn’t handle pressure well, often bailing out of the pocket too early or even running into sacks. Jackson needs to do a lot of work to reach the bare minimum of NFL quarterbacks, and even if he can fix 90 percent of his flaws he will still top out well below the best NFL passers.

I see this, and it doesn’t really bother me one bit. Because as many plays as Jackson may leave on the field with his erratic accuracy and poor instincts, he will create just as many running with the football. The moment he steps on a field he will become the best rushing quarterback in the league, and there’s a reasonable argument to be made that he will be the most dynamic ball carrier at any position period. His agility seems to break everything I think I know about the game of football, turning sure tackles into whiffs that don’t make sense. He may have higher variance than most NFL quarterbacks, but the value he brings is just as real, and even with all his flaws I would absolutely draft him in the top ten.

Josh Allen, Wyoming

A prospect somehow even more contentious than Jackson, Allen is the most love-him-or-hate-him prospect I think I have ever scouted. The first thing about him that jumps out is obviously his arm strength. He can make any throw, and he can make it from any platform, and a couple times each game he will pull off a play that very few quarterbacks at any level would even consider. And when I talk about arm strength I’m not just talking about deep passes. I’m talking about fitting balls into tight windows over the middle and reaching deep out routes on the far sideline. Allen can do it all in a way that very few quarterbacks can.

A lot of people have made a big deal about his stats, particularly his sub-60% completion percentage. But stats are just about the last thing I take into consideration when scouting. In fact, if others hadn’t mentioned it I doubt I would even know what his completion percentage last year was. I didn’t look up any stats from any of these players this year, and I don’t think I would have gained much if I had.

I know what the numbers say, but when I watch Allen on the field I don’t see an inaccurate passer. He isn’t at Rosen’s level of precision, and he makes some catches more difficult than they have to be for his receivers. And he has some of the same issues as Jackson when he gets deep in his progressions, if not as extreme. But when the ball comes out on time, it usually goes where he intends it.

There’s no denying that he’s raw as a passer. He will misread some coverages at times, and he relies a bit too much on his arm strength to make up for shaky anticipation. His biggest issues appear when he is under pressure. He can make some nice subtle moves through the pocket, though they often seem more like accidents than anything else, as he doesn’t do a great job sensing pressure before it closes in. He will bail out of clean pockets at times, running into trouble and forcing him to attempt a difficult throw with his feet not set. Put him behind a bad offensive line and things could get ugly quickly.

I’m usually not a fan of the philosophy that a quarterback has to sit to learn, and I don’t think Allen is an exception. He might benefit from a year building up muscle memory in a controlled practice environment, but I also think he can (and will) pick that up on the fly. I think he is capable of starting right away, and while I think he has enough inherent flaws to keep him from becoming one of the top quarterbacks in the league, I think he has enough upside to warrant a top ten selection.

Sam Darnold, USC

Unlike the passers I listed above him, Darnold is at his best when things get messy. He has some work to do on his feel for the pocket (especially when it comes to protecting the ball from being swatted out of his hands), but he is a very good athlete who can make difficult throws from unusual platforms. His physical gifts are what make him special, and he takes full advantage of them as an improviser, scrambling around behind the line and then lasering a difficult throw into a tight window down the field.

Darnold isn’t nearly as reliable when he stays in the pocket. His biggest problem is footwork, as his feet come to a dead stop at the top of his drop. He doesn’t shift his hips to follow his eyes as he goes through his reads, and he has a tendency to fade away rather than stepping into his throws. This causes some accuracy issues, and it robs the ball of velocity which, along with his big windup, allows defenders time to cut underneath and intercept the pass. It doesn’t help that he has a tendency to miss late rotations in coverage, which regularly leads to passes thrown right into a safety or linebacker’s chest.

Darnold can make any throw you ask of him, which is why it’s so frustrating that he so often doesn’t. His deep ball comes out low and flat, usually sailing over the receiver’s head. This can be fixed at the next level, and it was noticeably better in the bowl game than during the regular season. But there are a lot of little things like this—both in the mental and physical game—that need cleaned up for Darnold to reach his potential.

But potential is what Darnold is about, and it’s hard to argue with the vision of what he could become. He has the highest upside of any quarterback in this class (barring Jackson becoming some unholy dual threat terror that revolutionizes the sport of football), but he also has the best chance of flaming out in less than three years. I can’t put him above any of the surer choices, and I would be terrified to take him in the top ten. But for a team in the middle of the first round, the possibility of landing a superstar quarterback will probably be too much to pass up.

Baker Mayfield, Oklahoma

Of the top quarterbacks in the draft, Mayfield will have the toughest transition from college to the NFL. The scheme he was in at Oklahoma was as simple as they come, usually asking him to make a quick throw based entirely on the presnap alignment of the defense. And in these circumstances he usually excelled, getting the ball into the hands of his talented receivers in space. But this also caused him to lock on to individual receivers at times, and to stick with them even if they ended up covered and leaving himself no choice but to force the ball somewhere it shouldn’t go.

Mayfield needs a lot of work to learn how to read and operate in an NFL system, though parts of his game are weirdly polished. He does a good job varying the velocity of his passes, lofting the ball over the top of defenders with good touch into the hands of his receivers. He has good instincts for avoiding pressure, either breaking outside of the pocket to make a play on the run or stepping up into an open seam in the middle. Mayfield is a decent athlete, and even though I don’t think he will make many plays as a rusher in the NFL he is creative enough to wreak havoc behind the line of scrimmage.

There are reasonable concerns about Mayfield’s arm strength. He consistently leaves the ball short on deep passes, both due to a lack of strength and hesitance to wait and see the receiver come open. He never really fires the ball into tight windows, and occasionally shaky accuracy makes this an even riskier proposition. And as natural as he is moving in the pocket, he never resets his feet when he gets to his new spot, and he rarely completes passes after dodging pressure.

Mayfield’s instincts and playmaking ability give him the potential to develop into a middle of the pack starter down the road, but I don’t see much more upside than that. The right offensive scheme could turn him into a dangerous weapon, but I’m not sure you can draft a player high just hoping he winds up in the perfect situation. Still, he is a capable long term solution at quarterback, and that is very hard to find in the league, so I wouldn’t be averse to selecting him somewhere near the end of the first round.

Mason Rudolph, Oklahoma State

There is a big dropoff from the top tier of quarterbacks to the rest of the class. There are five quarterbacks coming out this year who have good potential to become long term starters at the position, and then there are a bunch of guys who are almost assuredly backups. Rudolph does have some upside as a potential starter, which puts him at the head of the latter class, but I think it’s much more likely that he fails to ever reach that height in the NFL.

Rudolph isn’t particularly gifted with athleticism or arm strength, and both of these show up on the field. He can make some nice movements behind the line, but he doesn’t throw well on the run and is more or less dead when he escapes the pocket. He can’t fire the ball with much zip, and he rarely challenges tight windows in the defense. He needs his receivers to be wide open to throw it to them, because he can’t reliably count on the ball going exactly where he intends it. His accuracy isn’t great, and it’s especially bad trying to throw to the outside of the field, where the ball regularly sails pointlessly over his receiver’s head into the sideline.

These limitations will hang around Rudolph for most of his career, and they’re the reason I wouldn’t take him before the fourth round. But there are other parts of his game that could make him a particularly dangerous option off the bench. Despite his limited arm strength he is an excellent deep ball thrower, and he can provide a spark of big plays to make up for the smaller plays he leaves on the field. He’s willing to stand behind the line and hold the ball as long as he needs to (too long some times), setting up big plays down the field as his receivers work themselves open.

Rudolph comes from an offense that pretty much never asked him to make NFL reads or throws, and it will be a while before he’s ready for any game action. He has a tendency to lock in on a single receiver, and he doesn’t really do anything to diagnose or manipulate coverages after the snap. In two or three years it might be worth some team giving him a shot to fill in as a starter for a couple games, even if it will likely end with them deciding he’s better in reserve.

Luke Falk, Washington State

Falk is the least physically gifted of the quarterbacks I looked at in this draft, and his lack of tools more or less eliminates any hope he has of becoming a regular starting quarterback. He is an atrocious deep passer, without the arm strength to stretch the field or the accuracy to hit windows between the coverage outside the numbers. His balls float to the sideline with no zip, and his receiver regularly have to wait and let the defense close in as the ball arrives.

There are parts of the field that are just inaccessible to Falk, but where he is able to hit he is a perfectly competent quarterback. He fits the ball nicely into tight windows across the middle, and the ball comes out perfectly timed on quick hitting routes. He moves his feet well to stay balanced as he goes through his reads, and though he isn’t a good athlete, he’s able to make some moves in the pocket to keep himself alive. He’s a good decision maker and does a good job locating a running back as an outlet when pressure closes in, negating some negative plays.

Falk will likely be a very good backup in the league for the next ten years. He can make enough plays to keep a team alive in spot duty, when the defense won’t have much time to scout and take advantage of his clear weaknesses. But I would be shocked if he was ever the presumed starter on a team, and even more astonished if he actually made that work long term. There is virtually no upside here, and I wouldn’t even look at him until the fifth round.