2014 NFL Draft: Comparing The Top QBs

You know that the 2014 draft talk has jumped the shark when you have a mainstream website comparing the draftable quarterbacks to fictional QBs. I am not sure that comparison was necessary…actually I am just jealous that I did not think of it first. Be that as it may, I do want to take a look at the top quarterbacks that are about to be drafted and compare them, not to movie characters, but to each other.

There are three signal callers that are at the top of most mock drafts are Johnny Manziel, Teddy Bridgewater, and Blake Bortles. All three of these guys are underclassmen, while a few senior quarterbacks are well below them on the hypothetical draft boards. On the surface, it is safe to say that Louisville’s Bridgewater hurt himself the most since the end of the college football season. He chose not to run or throw at the combine, which in retrospect seems like a great idea after seeing his horrific pro day performance at his school. Bridgewater was at the top of the heap before his fall from grace, and now will likely be the third QB taken. Manziel, the showboating gun slinger from Texas A&M, has impressed the NFL scouts and gurus with his workouts. He is considered undersized, but may have turned the tide on his prospects by shining on the field in college and at the combine. Bortles is a prototypical NFL quarterback if you go solely on his build, which is very important to NFL decision makers. General managers love to have a guy who looks like Peyton Manning in a uniform. Bortles has huge upside according to many an expert, but needs to work on the technical aspect of his game.

Stats from the college days of the top three quarterbacks are important obviously, but when you have different levels of opponents, it is hard to say the stat comparisons are apples to apples. Johnny Manziel had the toughest schedule by far, playing in the SEC. We will call a draw on the comparative schedules for Louisville and UCF, as they are in the same conference. The best TD to interception ratio goes to Bridgewater, who threw 69 career TDs as opposed to the 24 picks he tossed. Manziel and Bortles had very close TD / INT ratios.

Bridgewater had the most sacks against him in a career, but did have his lowest total in his last season, so he did make improvements. With the style of play that Manziel exhibits, it may come as a surprise that his QB rating was the best of the big three, at 162.5. All that running around pays off when you are as good, and many times just plain lucky, as J-Football seems to be. With all that statistical data, you still have to look deeper. What are the intangibles, how good were the receivers in college, what kind of character does the guy have, and what is the upside? Roll all that information together and you have what is facing NFL GMs next month….pages of data and some sleepless nights.

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