Behind the Steel Curtain
It’s hard to believe it, but we have little more than a month left in the college football regular season. Schools will play their last scheduled games by Nov. 29, conference chamionships will follow the week after, Army-Navy week, and then bowl season will officially have arrived, followed by the college football playoffs.
There’s still a lot to learn about each of the teams jockeying for playoff position, but for our purposes, the field of top quarterback prospects is growing ever clearer. While I think consensus is starting to crystallize around who the top four passers in this class are — each of whom has remaining college eligibility — there are still questions about at least a handful of other names that could sneak into first or second round consideration.
Below you will see big board rankings from several notable outlets and experts. These rankings reflect a quarterback’s overall prospect ranking from the listed source, and are not position-specific unless otherwise noted.
These rankings paint a picture for us. For starters, there is little consensus on who the top quarterback is, which tells you how wide open this class is and how uncertain publications and draft experts are on who will actually declare. The only two signal callers above who have no choice but to declare — Nussmeier and Beck — are having the types of seasons that could see them fall out of the first round altogether.
Still, I think it’s safe to say we can narrow our scope just a bit. Until we hear otherwise, the names above are the passers we should most pay attention to moving forward.
The games still on the schedule will be most important for analyzing these prospects, but in the meantime, let’s examine these prospects through the lens of an existing theory that’s been making its rounds for nearly 20 years.
If you’re up to date on your NFL football history, there’s a chance you’ve heard about the criteria for drafting a quarterback laid out by Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells. Parcells was the Executive VP of football operations for the Miami Dolphins in 2008 when they selected Chad Henne in the second round of the draft. While explaining the pick to the media after the draft, Parcells lent some insight into his decision-making process when selecting a signal caller.
Parcells’ “rules” have been oft discussed since, and essentially boil down to these tenets:
Now, before you rush to the comment section, let’s recognize that this isn’t a foolproof rule set. Henne was not the savior the Dolphins have desperately been seeking since Dan Marino’s retirement, nor does simply following these rules guarantee success. Still, I hear...
