Fifth Avenue Forum

I disagree. Better QBs play at better programs for the most part. Best non-major program QBs - Ben and Wentz? Compared to say, Mahomes, Lamar, Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Wilson

Probably for a short while you could've added Delaware's finest and elite football dragon Joe Flacco to the best non-major program QBs list.

If the Browns skip him at 1 and he's their guy (which you can't put a price on...this isn't an auction, it's a draft...what you get is a lot more important than some perceived "value" that you think you can achieve in a transactional sense versus some parroted consensus that has its majority made up of people who have no professional knowledge of the process).

If they go Barkley at 1, they run the risk of being selected by any other team in the league at 2 or 3. They weren't willing to take that risk. I'm not saying it's right, wrong, or indifferent...but just assuming that they would get him at 4 also suggests that we know what every NFL team's draft board looked like...

They didn't need to know every team's board. They needed to have a sense of what NYG and NYJ were doing, and both those teams were pretty clear about what they wanted ahead of the draft. Shoot, the Jets even traded up a month before the draft to get into the 3-spot because they were targeting a QB. And it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to intuit that no one else was as big on Baker as CLE was. The Giants were pretty clear by draft day they wanted Barkley if CLE didn't select him 1st overall, the Jets were clear they wanted Darnold if he was available (and as I recall Allen was their fallback). The risk of any of the other 29 teams making a trade to move into the 2 or 3 position in the 20 minutes that would elapse between the 1st and 3rd is exceedingly minimal imo.

It turned out, no other team even had Baker in their top 3 at the position, let alone overall, although that's much more of a 20/20 hindsight thing.

Yes they did because trading was set to [ON], so everyone is in play. Groundwork can be laid for trades for a while with contingencies and the like.

How do we know that last line?

That’s why I figured, here at the midway point of college football’s regular season, the time was right to poll experienced NFL evaluators (I got eight of them on the panel) who’ve watched these quarterbacks on where they stand now. The concept here is easy: Rank them 1-5, with five points for first place, four for second, and so on. These are the results from Monday’s polling:

1. Sam Darnold, USC (35 points, 4 first-place votes, appeared on all 8 ballots): Darnold’s been uneven this year, without question, having already matched his interception total from last year. But the feeling I’ve gotten is that scouts will cut him some slack because of the offensive line issues the Trojans are having. The biggest criticism is that he’s trying to do too much, not unlike what Jameis Winston his final year at Florida State.

​2. Josh Rosen, UCLA (34 points, 3 first-place votes, 8 ballots): The Bruins are 3-3, but it’s hard to pin that on Rosen. He’s played from behind a bunch and still has the best completion percentage of his career (64.2) while throwing for 2,354 yards and 17 touchdowns through six games. That said, he’s been a little sloppy with the ball at times.

3. Josh Allen, Wyoming (23 points, 1 first-place vote, 8 ballots): Allen’s numbers are mediocre and his team is 4-2. But there’s youth all around him and scouts trust the talent. One voter put him first, and another put him in front of Rosen.

4. Luke Falk, Washington State (10 points, 6 ballots): Falk was really rolling before Friday night’s five-interception meltdown at Cal, resulting in the Cougars’ first loss. He came into that one with a 19-to-2 TD/INT ratio, and is still over 70% passing.

5. Mason Rudolph, Oklahoma State (7 points, 3 ballots): There’s more variance on him than any of the other quarterbacks. Is it Mike Gundy’s system and his receivers? Rudolph was second on one ballot, and didn’t appear on five others.

​6. Baker Mayfield, Oklahoma (6 points, 4 ballots): If Mayfield were just a little bit taller, he’d probably be two spots higher on this list.

7. Lamar Jackson, Louisville (5 points, 2 ballots): The Heisman winner is as electric a runner as we’ve seen at the position since Mike Vick, and has flashed a strong arm. But inconsistency as a passer remains.

​8. Ryan Finley, N.C. State (1 point, 1 ballot): The junior has a shot to be this year’s Mitchell Trubisky. Two of our eight voters conceded they needed to do more research on him.

Ben Dinucci is a backup QB tonight