Plankton
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https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/07/10/2...ock-jarrett-stidham-trace-mcsorley-will-grier
Baker Mayfield was drafted into the NFL two months ago, six years after Russell Wilson and 17 draft cycles after Drew Brees. If you look closely, you won’t find too many torchbearers for the vertically-challenged passer in the years between those three.
Should Mayfield, the No. 1 pick of the 2018 draft, be an inspiration for the six-foot-and-under crowd? Without question. Is he a trend-setter? Tap the brakes. Brees’s success was supposed to open the minds of NFL decision-makers on the established decision-makers for quarterbacks. It didn’t. Wilson’s breakthrough was seen as the potential front end on how teams viewed the position. It wasn’t.
Last July, pegging Sam Darnold, Josh Allen and Josh Rosen for the first round of the 2018 NFL draft was an easy bet. Those players hadn’t just produced at their respective colleges, but they were prototypes for the ideal NFL quarterback. Mayfield wasn’t considered to be a first-rounder at this point, but he wasn’t exactly anonymous either. The 2017 Heisman winner finished in the top-five of the voting for college football’s most prestigious award in ’16 and ’15.
But it’s a different story as we come out of the 2018 draft cycle and move into ’19. There’s a glaring absence of prototypical first-round quarterbacks, and predicting which passers could be drafted on the first night (if any at all) is anyone’s guess—and based on the type of QBs that college teams are recruting, NFL teams might not have a choice on what kind of quarterback they want to draft for much longer.
“This is not up to the NFL,” says Trent Dilfer, head coach for the high school Elite 11 quarterbacks program and a former NFL first-round pick himself. “This is up to college coaches. And what college coaches want is—if I’m going to simplify it the most—competitors that have twitch in their body and their arm.”
Baker Mayfield was drafted into the NFL two months ago, six years after Russell Wilson and 17 draft cycles after Drew Brees. If you look closely, you won’t find too many torchbearers for the vertically-challenged passer in the years between those three.
Should Mayfield, the No. 1 pick of the 2018 draft, be an inspiration for the six-foot-and-under crowd? Without question. Is he a trend-setter? Tap the brakes. Brees’s success was supposed to open the minds of NFL decision-makers on the established decision-makers for quarterbacks. It didn’t. Wilson’s breakthrough was seen as the potential front end on how teams viewed the position. It wasn’t.
Last July, pegging Sam Darnold, Josh Allen and Josh Rosen for the first round of the 2018 NFL draft was an easy bet. Those players hadn’t just produced at their respective colleges, but they were prototypes for the ideal NFL quarterback. Mayfield wasn’t considered to be a first-rounder at this point, but he wasn’t exactly anonymous either. The 2017 Heisman winner finished in the top-five of the voting for college football’s most prestigious award in ’16 and ’15.
But it’s a different story as we come out of the 2018 draft cycle and move into ’19. There’s a glaring absence of prototypical first-round quarterbacks, and predicting which passers could be drafted on the first night (if any at all) is anyone’s guess—and based on the type of QBs that college teams are recruting, NFL teams might not have a choice on what kind of quarterback they want to draft for much longer.
“This is not up to the NFL,” says Trent Dilfer, head coach for the high school Elite 11 quarterbacks program and a former NFL first-round pick himself. “This is up to college coaches. And what college coaches want is—if I’m going to simplify it the most—competitors that have twitch in their body and their arm.”
