Take Two: Does a QB's height still matter in the NFL?

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Take Two returns with a daily offering tackling a handful of issues in the college football landscape. Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Adam Gorney lays out the situation and then receives takes from Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell and a local expert from the Rivals.com network of team sites.

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When asked about evaluating shorter quarterbacks, Denver Broncos general manager and two-time Super Bowl champion John Elway recently said, “The myth of of quarterback height has been broken by guys like Russell Wilson and Drew Brees.”

When Baker Mayfield was asked about concerns over his height in the NFL, the outspoken Oklahoma quarterback was as blunt as possible: “Height doesn’t matter. ... If you want to say anything else, I’ve got three years of tape you can watch. Height didn’t matter at that point. I think I’ve got less batted balls at the line of scrimmage than all the other guys here. I’m pretty sure I’m shorter than them.”

In Indianapolis, Mayfield measured 6-foot-1 and 215 pounds, hardly a shrimp but not exactly a prototypical NFL quarterback. There are guys like Wilson and Brees, but they are more the exception.

The other quarterbacks expected to be first-round locks are Wyoming’s Josh Allen at 6-foot-5 and 237 pounds, UCLA’s Josh Rosen at 6-foot-4 and 226 pounds and USC’s Sam Darnold, 6-foot-3 and 221 pounds.

In today’s NFL, can shorter quarterbacks succeed regularly and will NFL teams start drafting them earlier, focusing more on their on-field abilities and less on their height?

“One thing about Baker Mayfield is that he took over the job from another quarterback without prototypical size in Trevor Knight. We watched Knight for a few years and it wasn't uncommon for him to have passes batted down at the line of scrimmage. I also remember when Knight ran into Drew Brees one year when the Sooners were preparing for the 2012 Sugar Bowl at the Saints facility. I thought it was interesting that Knight appeared taller than Brees yet still had problems with passes being batted down. I'd always watched Brees after that and noticed how amazing he was at finding windows at the line of scrimmage to throw through.

“Then when Mayfield came along, I noticed he had a similar ability to not only throw to a receiver that was open or coming open, but also to find a window to throw through at the line of scrimmage at times. It's an odd skill set that doesn't get recognized with shorter QBs, but it's something the great ones are able to pull off. Mayfield had passes batted down. Brees has passes batted down. And if you watch Brees and Mayfield, they'll sometimes throw incompletions near receivers because the throwing window didn't allow them the angle to complete that pass. Brees mastered it, as did Russell Wilson, and I think Baker operates in the same manner being a 6-foot-ish QB.”

“I don’t think height is an issue anymore. Brees, Wilson and Aaron Rodgers are not tall. Brees has been successful. If they can throw between the linemen and work their way outside, I don’t see it as a problem.

“Mayfield is probably going to go top 10 and that speaks to the fact that nobody cares anymore.”