[ReynardMuldrake]

Oh my god, I just figured out why Krantz kept calling him Jay Cutler. Pure comedy.

Why Patrick Mahomes Could Be the Next Jay Cutler


History shows college quarterbacks with losing records usually struggle in the NFL

By Jim Chairusmi and Michael Salfino

On a recent visit to ESPN’s campus, Patrick Mahomes threw a football over a walkway connecting two buildings, hitting a cardboard target on the other side.

That superhuman arm strength is a primary reason the 6-foot-3, 230-pound former Texas Tech quarterback has emerged as a possible first-round draft pick in Thursday’s NFL draft.

Mahomes, who threw for over 5,000 yards in 2016 with 41 touchdowns, while running for 12 more, last season, appears to have all the physical qualities that teams seek in a franchise quarterback. “I hear the buzz from teams, they’re fired up about him. He has a huge personality, a big arm, teams want to work with him,” NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said.

But there’s one major troubling statistic: wins and losses.

If he is taken in the first two rounds of the draft, Mahomes’s college record of 13-16 would be the 10th-worst for quarterbacks taken that high since 1996, based on games in which they threw at least 15 passes, according to Stats LLC.

Among the other players in the bottom-10 are Jay Cutler (Vanderbilt), Tim Couch (Kentucky), Jake Locker (Washington) and last year’s top overall pick, Jared Goff (California), who endured one of the most disappointing rookie seasons in history. Brock Osweiler finished 8-8 at Arizona State and struggled as a starter in the NFL last season.

Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells said the poor track record of losing college quarterbacks making the transition to the NFL isn’t a coincidence. “Teams are so desperate to find quality at the position that they will take chances like this and, frankly, I can’t blame them,” Parcells said. “But if you are going to be a very good pro quarterback, not even elite, you should at least have won most of your games in college.”

Former Super Bowl-winning coach Brian Billick, whose Ravens drafted future bust Kyle Boller 19th overall in 2003 despite his 14-26 college record at Cal, thinks wins and losses are overrated. “Otherwise you’d just draft the Alabama quarterback every year. But guys who just put up stats by flinging the ball into coverage and who are more careless than aggressive will cost their teams wins.”

While Mahomes was hurt by the Red Raiders’ abysmal defense (last in the country at 43.5 points allowed per game), some talent evaluators see a recklessness in Mahomes’s play that won’t work in the pro game.

“I liken [Mahomes] to what I saw from Jay Cutler when he was coming out of Vanderbilt,“ said former Seahawks scout and current NFL Network analyst Bucky Brooks. “Because [Cutler] played loosey-goosey at Vanderbilt, he never developed the management skills [needed] to play winning football.”1

In four years at Vanderbilt, Cutler finished with a 10-32 record before the Broncos selected him with the 11th overall pick in 2006. In his 11 NFL seasons with Denver and Chicago, Cutler has a 68-71 record as a starter.

Parcells said that intangibles such as work ethic and leadership ability can ultimately prevent quarterbacks from succeeding in the NFL. But he added that a losing college record is a tangible way to determine if these intangible deficiencies are hiding in the player. “I would have to be convinced in these cases that there are very, very strong extenuating circumstances [for losing].”