When it comes to player evaluation for the NFL draft, it is as much about projecting how a player will adapt to the NFL game as it is about how well they played in college. For some positions, that transition is a guessing game and getting more and more challenging.
Legendary NFL quarterback Kurt Warner talked about this challenge when it comes to quarterbacks and summed it up perfectly on social media.
I know many of you LOVE college football, but as I start to dive into these college QBs, it’s hard for me to even watch: very few play on schedule, the pass concepts are a mess most of the time, they run the same play over & over, a million bubble screens, can’t find many concepts that translate to next level… and then ppl are asked to figure out how good they will be at next level!? (Nearly impossible in my mind)
For me CJ Stroud is a great example – obviously really good in college & OSU runs more pro-style concepts than most but they didn’t ask him to process & get ball out as quickly as he did last year in HOU – so I had no idea he would be so good at processing so fast! He’s better in NFL than what we got to see in college, but many times you just don’t know until you know!
Quirky college offenses look complicated on the television broadcast but as Warner points out they are actually over-simplified and don’t give NFL teams much to look at.
