Let's Talk 2016 NFL Draft Quarterbacks

[barrett]

Originally Posted by Warren

I don't think that college completion percentage is a good measure of accuracy, although a particularly low percentage can be an indication of a problem. When I say "accuracy" I mean ball placement, touch, etc. A college QB's completion percentage can be skewed by his offense, if he's mainly only being asked to make the easy throws, and all college stats can be suspect due to the big talent differences that can exist between teams. Florida probably only played a handful of teams during Tebow's career that were as or more talented than they were. Tebow didn't have to have pinpoint precision throwing to guys like Aaron Hernandez and Percy Harvin against college DBs, but in the NFL he found out that the coverage is much tighter. I do agree that he had other issues, and no doubt his bad mechanics played a big part in his lack of accuracy.

I think the accuracy got worse when he tried to correct the mechanics. The accuracy was definitely a problem, but he couldn't read an NFL defense and started looking to bail from the pocket at about the 1 second mark. In college he only read half the field, never called audibles, never took snaps, etc...

The number of successful NFL QBs who played in the spread in College is tiny. Cam Newton is one, and I can't really come up with another one with any kind of sustained success. Half of being an NFL QB is pre-snap, and the spread guys spend the whole pre-snap period looking at their coach and waiting for him to tell the whole team what to do.