Saturday, April 2, 2011

Why Blaine Gabbert is Overrated




Here are Blaine Gabbert's rankings from the experts.
McShay: 6
Kiper: 12
Mayock:5
Dave:32

Lets look at why Blaine Gabbert will be sub-par in the NFL.

Scheme Adjustment: Gabbert played in the spread during college and not any old spread but a truly bizzare spread. I thought Mizzou had Chase Daniel line up 10 yards from the center because he was short but it turns out that it must be a Gary Pinkel eccentricity. Either way the system is awful and had Gabbert throwing more bubble screens than deep outs.

The Parcells index: Out of Bill Parcell's four categories Blaine qualifies for non of them! He is not a senior, did not graduate, only started 2 years, and only won 18 games in college. Not saying that this is the only indicator but it is pretty disconcerting.

Accuracy: During his best season at Mizzou Gabbert completed 63.4% of his passes. If you compare those college numbers to past first round draft picks he is comparable to Eli Manning, Carson Palmer, and Joe Flacco. This might sound pretty good until you realize that Gabbert played in the spread which helps with a QBs completion numbers. To put this into perspective spread QBs like Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow, Alex Smith, and Phillip Rivers had college completion percentages of 67.9, 67.8, 67.4, and 72% respectively.

Decision Making: Gabbert had a 16/9 TD/INT ratio. This is average at best in the NFL and down right bad if you are playing against college kids. If someone is a potential number one pick you should expect much more.

Regression Analysis: Based on his College numbers it looks like Gabbert will have a NFL QB rating of 84 or the equivalent of Jason Campbell. Not many people would draft Jason Campbell 2.0 with the #1 pick.

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