More and more of this year’s top quarterbacks will be rolling up their sleeves and doing all of the various drills at the Scouting Combine.
Joining USC quarterback Matt Barkley and West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith is Syracuse quarterback Ryan Nassib. Agent Brian Ayrault tells PFT that Nassib will do “everything” in Indy.
It’s an encouraging trend for this year’s quarterbacks, but it’s also arguably a reflection of the fact that this year’s crop of rookie quarterbacks is regarded in some circles as worse than Blaine Gabbert. If any incoming quarterback were viewed as a sure-fire, top-five pick in the draft, that quarterback would most likely not be doing “everything” in Indy.
Nassib made a late rise during the 2012 college season, getting a boost with a bowl-game win over Smith’s Mountaineers at Yankee Stadium.
Still, neither Nassib nor any of the other quarterbacks are high enough on the board to justify shying away from throwing not to former teammates in a familiar setting (i.e., the Pro Day workout) but to pass footballs to guys they know little if anything about under an assembly-line setting in a building the quarterback likely never has even entered before as a player or a spectator.
And so with none of the top quarterbacks at the top of the draft, they have every reason to use the Scouting Combine as the possibly springboard for getting there.