TCU QB Andy Dalton has received an invitation to the NFL draft and there is buzz in the NFL scouting community about him landing in the first round that has only been fueled by items like that from Sports Illustrated ’s Peter King suggesting Dalton might be this year’s version of Drew Brees or Kevin Kolb .
What makes the draft so unique is that it takes only one team to pull the trigger on a player early. There’s a chance Dalton could leapfrog Jake Locker as the third quarterback off the board, with Seattle GM John Schneider privately said to be comparing Dalton to Aaron Rodgers , who fell into the Packers' lap during Schneider’s tenure in Green Bay.
PFW surveyed five teams for opinions about Dalton and the reviews were very mixed, but generally favored a reaction of surprise.
“You get mesmerized with his record in college. You get mesmerized with the kid,” one evaluator said. “He has average arm talent — average. The offense was tailored for him with nice short, easy throws. They will show all the hard throws he makes on highlights, but look at the SMU game and he was just missing wide-open targets. His (statistics) say he was accurate, but I think his ball placement was consistently off. He got in rhythm from Game Five on. They went to more rhythm throws in three-step or five-step out of the gun, and that’s when he settled down. Coaches running the West Coast offense have seen him make those throws and that’s why they got excited. To me, it’s a lot different when they are working from under center. The way they run the ball — no one brings this up — they run a little read-option so they don’t see a lot of exotic stuff on the back end. It’s pretty simple for him.”
“I graded him in the fourth,” said a college scouting director. “Grade them for the way they play. That’s how I thought he played.”
“All the coaches want to look like geniuses,” said another high-ranking personnel executive. “I think 'robot man' is just a solid starter in the league. To me, he is what you want in a No. 2. He should go in the third when all is said and done.”
One GM with no vested interest in quarterbacks said his staff overwhelmingly graded Dalton as a backup, with one evaluator grading him as a No. 3 quarterback and only one of his evaluators stamping a starter-level grade.
“When you talk about some of the critical factors, he grades highly in some areas, so I could see why there is buzz,” the GM said. “I didn’t spend a lot of time on him. My biggest concern was with his arm strength. It’s all pitch and catch.”
A fifth well-established evaluator said: “When you talk about Drew Brees , what everyone forgets was how long it took him when he came into the league. It wasn’t until his fourth year, after they drafted Philip Rivers , that he figured it out. … Throw on (tape of) Kevin Kolb . He had one good game vs. Atlanta, but I think he’s been awful in (nearly) every game the last two years. He had one good game vs. Atlanta and that is it, and I think the Eagles know it. Whoever trades for him gets had.”
Source: http://www.profootballweekly.com/2011/04/07/questions-linger-about-fast-rising-quarterback
Mike McCormack Frank Gatski Ozzie Newsome Joe DeLamielleure Gene Hickerson Joshua Cribbs
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