Josh Allen is expected to do all the throwing drills at the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis and that will give both the teams in attendance and people watching on NFL Network a chance to see how hard he can throw the ball.
According to that network’s lead draft analyst, those throws should have a lot of power. During a conference call on Monday, Mike Mayock compared Allen’s arm to that of a quarterback who once went with the first overall pick. Mayock said that Allen is “biggest arm quarterback I’ve seen since JaMarcus Russell” and believes that should put him in the mix for the Browns, who own the first and fourth picks in April.
“I think when you’re the GM of Cleveland, you’ve got to be thinking about the weather, you’re playing outside, you need a big arm,” Mayock said. “His new offensive coordinator came over from Pittsburgh, and he’s used to Ben Roethlisberger. So, to me, Josh Allen has to be in that conversation at 1 or 4, along with [Sam] Darnold, perhaps [Josh] Rosen and Mason [Rudolph]. But this is my gut. I think Darnold and Allen are the two guys they would consider the most highly.”
Left unsaid is that having a big arm didn’t help Russell carve out a long career as an NFL starter and the big arm isn’t enough for Mayock to rank Allen ahead of Darnold as an overall quarterback. Allen’s arm strength didn’t do much for his accuracy as a passer at the college level, for example, and that is one of the reasons why others might not rank him as highly as Mayock when they set their draft boards.