Well, it’s October, and if the first five weeks of the college season are any indicator, it could be a very good year to need a quarterback in April.
Earlier this week, I polled a handful of execs and college scouting directors to ask which quarterbacks not named Caleb or Drake had helped themselves and maybe entered the first-round discussion, to this point. No fewer than
six names were raised—Oregon’s Bo Nix, Washington’s Michael Penix, Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, Texas’s Quinn Ewers, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Duke’s Riley Leonard were those six.
Nix is one we addressed in
the mailbag Wednesday, and one whom multiple evaluators raised to me. “Athletic, competitive, solid arm, improved accuracy and overall passing,” says an AFC exec. “He’s competitive with playmaking instincts.” It’s also helped that his production hasn’t just held up, it’s improved, with former Oregon offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham (who was credited with Nix’s post-Auburn uptick last year) now gone.
Another exec, this one from an NFC team, agreed that Nix could go in the first round, and then added he believed McCarthy would go before him—“He’s got a lot of the quarterback traits you want. Tough, accurate, smart, instinctive. Calm in the pocket. Can run and hurt you with his legs. I think his arm strength is probably just slightly above average, but it’s not an issue.”
A third, from an NFC team, picked Leonard and Sanders as his two. “Leonard’s a big, mobile, athletic guy who can spin it—very good toughness and leadership, with big upside,” he says. “And Sanders has proved he can do it vs. top competition now. He’s extremely tough, has a good arm and pocket awareness. He just needs to understand he can’t extend play to the point where he takes so many hits and sacks. But that can be coached.”
And then there’s Penix, who has been the most productive of any of them—“He still needs to prove he can make real throws against good defenses, but the productivity is there,” says an AFC college scout. And Ewers has been more efficient this year, erasing questions that lingered after his transfer from Ohio State.
Will all eight of these guys go in the first round? Of course not. But having this many names in the mix is exciting and should give fans of bad NFL teams (and really all NFL fans) really cool stuff to follow for the rest of the fall.