A look at the position heading into the first three-day draft in NFL history – April 22-24:
Player, college Ht. Wt. Projection
Sam Bradford, Oklahoma 6-4 236 Top 5 pick
Jimmy Clausen, Notre Dame 6-3 222 First Round
Tim Tebow, Florida 6-3 236 Second Round
Colt McCoy, Texas 6-1 216 Second Round
Tony Pike, Cincinnati 6-6 223 Third round
Dan LeFevour, Central Michigan 6-3 230 Third Round
(Rankings and projections by Rob Rang, senior analyst for NFLDraftScout.com)
The word: It’s not exactly 1983, when John Elway, Jim Kelly and Dan Marino – and, to a lesser extent, Ken O’Brien, Tony Eason and Todd Blackledge – not only entered the league but transformed it. Actually, it’s not even close. As Mike Mayock, draft analyst for the NFL Network, put it, “I think it’s a bad year for quarterbacks.” While Bradford is the consensus No. 1 in this group, the order of the others is open to debate. “No matter how many teams I talk to, there are just as many opinions out there as to who the next quarterback is,” Mayock said. “There are more questions than answers in the quarterback class.”
What about: Tebow, and his off-the-chart intangibles. All he did at Florida was win: 48 games, two national championships and a Heisman Trophy. In his final game for the Gators, Tebow set BCS bowl records for passing yards (482) and total yards (533) in a 51-24 rout of previously unbeaten Cincinnati. But all the pre-draft talk is about his throwing mechanics – specifically a looping, elongated motion before he releases the ball. Tebow has been working on holding the ball higher as he drops and sets. But no less a QB guru than Mike Holmgren, the Seahawks’ former coach and now president of the Cleveland Brown, offered, “It’s always been my opinion that that’s the most difficult thing to change in any quarterback. He’s trying to change it, but it’s really hard to do – particularly in pressure situations.” The questions now? How many teams will pass on Tebow? And how many will live to regret it?
Don’t forget about: Matt Nichols. The Eastern Washington University QB didn’t get invited to the combine. But he did get to show his stuff at the East-West Shrine all-star game, and displayed better size (6-2, 220) and arm strength than the bigger-school passers on the West team – Kansas’ Todd Reesing and BYU’s Max Hall. Nichols also was productive at EWU, setting 14 school and six Big Sky Conference records in 47 games. But he’s still rated No. 15 among the QBs in this class.
Seahawks situation: The club has made a major transition this offseason, hiring first-year general manager John Schneider and bringing coach Pete Carroll back to the NFL after a ridiculously successful nine-season stint at the University of Southern California. The next big transition for the Seahawks will be life after Matt Hasselbeck. The three-time Pro Bowl QB has one year left on his contract, but Carroll and Schneider already have started planning for the team’s quarterback of the future by orchestrating a trade with the San Diego Chargers to obtain Charlie Whitehurst. Does that move preclude them from also drafting a QB? No, as Schneider stressed twice during the news conference to introduce Whitehurst.
