MORE: Wyoming's Josh Allen keeps analysts guessing to the end
Kirk Herbstreit has seen them all.
The ESPN college football analyst was at the USC-UCLA game last season to watch Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen in person. He’s seen Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield and Louisville’s Lamar Jackson plenty and studied Wyoming’s Josh Allen.
Those five will almost definitely be first-round NFL Draft picks later this week. And Mayfield is Herbstreit’s top guy.
“It has everything to do with production, it has everything to do with accuracy and decision-making,” Herbstreit said. “People get caught up on how athletic a guy is, how big of an arm a guy has. When I watch quarterbacks, it’s decision-making and it’s accuracy. Baker Mayfield is off the charts in all those areas.
“If he was 6-foot-3, people would be marveling at this kid. He’s not 6-3, so of course there are some concerns. He played behind as big of an offensive line as you’ll ever see in the NFL and had no issues whatsoever sitting in the pocket and making those throws and finding those passing lanes and evaluating defenses. His accuracy is incredible. He reminds me of a young Drew Brees coming out of Purdue.”
After transferring from Texas Tech to Oklahoma, Mayfield had a phenomenal career in Norman. He won the Heisman Trophy. He played in the Orange, Sugar and Rose Bowls. He finished his college career throwing for 14,320 yards with 129 touchdowns and 29 interceptions. Maybe most important for NFL executives, Mayfield completed 68.6 percent of his passes, nearly 71 percent his last two seasons with the Sooners.
And Mayfield is known as a highly-competitive winner who is not afraid of the big stage. He embraces that role.
“Baker Mayfield is my favorite because he’s an 11-on-11 gamer,” ESPN analyst Louis Riddick said. “Volume isn’t going to be a problem for him from a mental standpoint. From everything I’ve been told, he’ll be able to handle all that. The offense down in Oklahoma under Lincoln Riley on first and second down, yeah, it leads to a lot of big throwing windows because they have a great play-action passing game. So do a lot of teams in the NFL. Have you ever seen Kansas City’s passing game? As good as there is.
“Baker will be able to tear people apart on first and second down because he’s used to that by virtue of the offense they ran at Oklahoma. Third down when you watch Oklahoma, he’s very good at scanning the entire field and you know he can buy time, he has a heck of an arm and he’s as accurate as heck. The only thing people are going to be worried about is the size. No one is worried about Drew Brees’ size. All that is is a convenient scapegoat to knock a kid down. They’re going to worry a little about off-the-field and he needs to answer those questions.”
There could be significant concerns there - and well-documented ones. After Oklahoma smoked Ohio State in Columbus early last season, Mayfield took the Oklahoma flag, ran around the field with it and then planted the thing at midfield. At Kansas last season, Mayfield was seen grabbing his crotch and mouthing an expletive to the Kansas sideline, prompting the ESPN announcer to say that NFL general managers would mark down those actions.
Last February while in Fayetteville, Ark., police arrested him after he tried to run away after being questioned following an early-morning fight. He was tackled by three officers against a concrete wall and then after pleading with the police and stating that he didn’t say anything, one officer says, ‘No, you’re just a dumbass who tried to run.’
“Some teams love him and some teams just kind of go, ‘That’s not my cup of tea’,” NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock said. “The film is good, but at the end of the day you have to make a decision in your building about who you want being the face of your franchise. He’s really cut both ways for a lot of teams.”
According to a report on Cleveland.com, one NFL scout told reporter Mary Kay Cabot that, “Baker has a pattern of disrespect. Off the field, he’s Johnny Manziel.”
In a Sports Illustrated story, a number of people close to Mayfield at his high school, Austin (Texas) Lake Travis, highly dispute those claims and argue against those Manziel comparisons.
But those off-the-field questions have been a serious concern and something Mayfield, who reportedly keeps a list of media members who have “crossed a line” with criticisms of him, has had to address multiple times during the pre-draft process.
“He could be as good as he wants to be,” Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell said. “He’s going to be the only one who stops himself and gets in his own way. He’s a very talented kid, he knows how to throw in passing lanes, he’s a very competitive performer. He can move, he can extend the play, his arm strength is good enough.
“He’s the type of guy if he loses a few games and gets down on himself or down on his team, he could really self-destruct. That’s the only thing that could stop him is the off-field stuff, his ultra-competitiveness, his pettiness so to speak, if that gets in the way then you could see a guy who becomes a real failure in the NFL. As far as on paper, when you’re talking about a quarterback who could do everything you’re looking for and just go out there and fight and compete, he’s a winner for sure.”
Mayfield is expected to be one of the first quarterbacks off the board. That means he will probably be headed to a struggling franchise. That’s an opportunity and a danger - a highly-competitive and skilled quarterback who can help turn a franchise around but who needs the patience to suffer through some tough losses, maybe some difficult seasons.
If Mayfield can behave himself, one NFL team who takes a chance on him could be hitting the jackpot.
“When I watch NFL games whether it’s (Tom) Brady or what (Nick) Foles was doing late in the year or what (Jared) Goff was doing, these great quarterbacks, they have answers,” Herbstreit said. “And how do they have answers? Hours and hours of prep during the week, understanding when they show this look, they’re going to bring this blitz and when they do that, bang, this is our answer. It’s finding the quarterback, not how tall they are, not how far they throw the ball, not how fast they are. It is about how quickly they process information and how quickly they have an answer to whatever computer they have in their mind reads and sees and how quickly they can get the ball out and make a decision and throw an accurate ball.
“All the things I just described are Baker Mayfield. You could get scared off of him because he’s not tall, but I’m not caught up in how tall you are. I’m caught up in quick decision-making and accuracy and that’s why I have Baker at the top of the board.”
