It the time of year when everyone, including me, starts paying more attention to player scouting reports and this one by Nolan Nawrocki at Pro Football Weekly reads like a bad movie review:
Started the season red-hot with the help of two playmaking receivers and created a national stir generating a lot of overexcitement in the scouting community. Quickly came down to earth after Kansas State disguised coverages and brought pressure he could not handle and he finished dropping six of his final eight games. A cross between Akili Smith and Aaron Brooks, Smith is a gimmick, overhyped product of the system lacking the football savvy, work habits and focus to cement a starting job and could drain energy from a QB room. Will be overdrafted and struggle to produce against NFL defensive complexities.
In fairness, Dan Pompei at The National Football Post responds:
Many do not agree with Nolan Nawrocki’s sources on Geno Smith… The closest I heard was a couple scouts suspect Smith has a little con in him, and they find him to be a little hard to read.”
Regardless it sound like he’s going to be a bit of a risk and a pick more controversial than usual even for a quarterback.
EDIT: I seemed to remember Nawrocki doing something like this in the past. Sure enough, as I looked back to previous blog entries, I found that Nawrocki posted a similar rip job on QB Cam Newton in 2011 that generated quite a bit of controversy.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that the evaluation isn’t honest but the strong language smells like a way to get more people (like me) to visit the PFW website.