Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune talks quarterback prospects. Of the top four, there has been less enthusiasm than previously about Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch:
“‘Listening to guys at the Senior Bowl talk about [North Dakota State’s Carson] Wentz, I finally had to ask them if the kid from Memphis had fallen off the earth,’ a national scout for one team said. ‘Everyone was touting him and all of a sudden here is Wentz. What happened?'”
The Senior Bowl happened. Once scouts got a good, live look at his size and his arm and once he performed well in the practices and the game, his stock took a massive upward turn. Wentz impressed everyone, including myself. Lynch, on the other hand, wasn’t helped when he had a poor bowl game.
The comments highlight two things to keep in mind:
- It was a huge mistake for Michigan State quarterback Connor Cook to skip the Senior Bowl. I don’t know who he thinks he is but right now he’s a second rounder at best. The Senior Bowl was a prime opportunity to show scouts what he could do and Wentz is the best possible example of how its done.
- Having said that, both Lynch and Cook (and California’s Jared Goff) will have their opportunity to impress scouts at the Combine and it looks like all of them will throw. Its unfortunate that it won’t be in the kind of competitive environment that the Senior Bowl provides and they may never get the momentum back from Wentz now. But they’ll all probably get a bump from it.