As anyone who has visited this specific electronic destination on a regular basis at any time over the past 15-plus years knows, we focus on the gathering of information (through aggregation and our own reporting) and the analysis of it, fitting pieces of the puzzle together and/or peeling the onion and/or otherwise trying to provide something more meaningful than basic facts.
When it comes to the draft, we’re not studying film or traveling to Pro Days or otherwise pretending to engage in the inherent crapshoot that is determining which successful college football players will thrive and which will fail once they make it to the next level. But through 15-plus years of doing this, people who purport to know things about how the draft will unfold either have developed a strong track record for accuracy with us, or they haven’t. One source who has proven to be very accurate in the past has shared the current assessment of the manner in which teams regard the top quarterbacks in the draft.
The top five, each of whom could potentially go in round one depending on how anxious teams are to roll the dice for a potential starter (and/or the always-elusive franchise quarterback), are as follows: (1) Mitchell Trubisky; (2) Deshaun Watson; (3) Patrick Mahomes; (4) Davis Webb; and (5) DeShone Kizer.
As the draft approaches, there seems to be a stronger sense that the quarterbacks will go earlier than previously expected. Which makes sense; some teams can’t resist the lure of a potential franchise quarterback, which often results in the guys regarded as the top quarterbacks in a given drafted being drafted sooner than they should be.
In twelve days, we’ll all know the number of first-round quarterbacks and the order in which they exit the board. The question then becomes whether in their first NFL destinations the coaching and the supporting casts will be good enough to help them become among the best in the game.