Plankton
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https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/10/17/2...m-darnold-josh-rosen-lamar-jackson-josh-allen
Over the summer, a general manager told me how stupid it was of all of us to go slobbering over what looked to be a bumper crop of college quarterbacks available in the 2018 draft. That might seem like typical, curmudgeonly scout talk. In fact, it is how a lot of those in the scouting community view the current-day, 24-7-365 coverage of the NFL draft. But this was more than that: He had a point to make, and he used the three quarterbacks everyone was talking about to drive it home.
• Sam Darnold was incredible in 2016, throwing for 3,086 yards and 31 scores against just nine interceptions, and leading a scuffling USC team to nine straight wins, capped by an epic effort in the Rose Bowl. That said, he came into 2017 with just 10 collegiate starts under his belt.
• To watch UCLA’s Josh Rosen throw a football is to see a kid who looks like he was born to do it, and he’s been talked about in an NFL context since early in his true freshman season. But faced with all that hype, Rosen leveled off severely as a sophomore, then got hurt, just as questions about entitlement and partying started to mount.
• Wyoming’s Josh Allen was the great quarterbacking discovery of 2016. His production was one thing, putting eyes on his physical ability was another. But that was just it coming into this year—he was seen as raw as they come, and making strides would be essential in proving he could eventually be as polished as Darnold and Rosen are.
You probably get it. Yes, all the potential was there for those three to head a generational quarterback class, a group that had more than one NFL fan base openly advocating tanking. Conversely, each of those three came into 2017 with far more left to prove than Andrew Luck had going into his final year at Stanford or Marcus Mariota had before his last year at Oregon.
That’s why I figured, here at the midway point of college football’s regular season, the time was right to poll experienced NFL evaluators (I got eight of them on the panel) who’ve watched these quarterbacks on where they stand now. The concept here is easy: Rank them 1-5, with five points for first place, four for second, and so on. These are the results from Monday’s polling:
Over the summer, a general manager told me how stupid it was of all of us to go slobbering over what looked to be a bumper crop of college quarterbacks available in the 2018 draft. That might seem like typical, curmudgeonly scout talk. In fact, it is how a lot of those in the scouting community view the current-day, 24-7-365 coverage of the NFL draft. But this was more than that: He had a point to make, and he used the three quarterbacks everyone was talking about to drive it home.
• Sam Darnold was incredible in 2016, throwing for 3,086 yards and 31 scores against just nine interceptions, and leading a scuffling USC team to nine straight wins, capped by an epic effort in the Rose Bowl. That said, he came into 2017 with just 10 collegiate starts under his belt.
• To watch UCLA’s Josh Rosen throw a football is to see a kid who looks like he was born to do it, and he’s been talked about in an NFL context since early in his true freshman season. But faced with all that hype, Rosen leveled off severely as a sophomore, then got hurt, just as questions about entitlement and partying started to mount.
• Wyoming’s Josh Allen was the great quarterbacking discovery of 2016. His production was one thing, putting eyes on his physical ability was another. But that was just it coming into this year—he was seen as raw as they come, and making strides would be essential in proving he could eventually be as polished as Darnold and Rosen are.
You probably get it. Yes, all the potential was there for those three to head a generational quarterback class, a group that had more than one NFL fan base openly advocating tanking. Conversely, each of those three came into 2017 with far more left to prove than Andrew Luck had going into his final year at Stanford or Marcus Mariota had before his last year at Oregon.
That’s why I figured, here at the midway point of college football’s regular season, the time was right to poll experienced NFL evaluators (I got eight of them on the panel) who’ve watched these quarterbacks on where they stand now. The concept here is easy: Rank them 1-5, with five points for first place, four for second, and so on. These are the results from Monday’s polling:
