The 2024 NFL Draft is fast approaching. The PFF big board is live, mock draft season is in full swing and the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine has wrapped up.
This year's draft presents an exciting quarterback class chock full of big names. USC's Caleb Williams headlines the group as one of the nation's premier playmakers, but North Carolina's Drake Maye, LSU's Jayden Daniels, Michigan's J.J. McCarthy and Oregon's Bo Nix have all been taken in the first round of recent mock drafts.
Let's look at South Carolina‘s Spencer Rattler, who posted a 79.4% adjusted completion percentage last season, ninth-best in the NCAA.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
Rattler's time at Oklahoma was a roller coaster of high and low plays, but he has become a more mature player since transferring to South Carolina. His preferred style comes in a shotgun system (over 85% of his snaps) with spread formations.
He has adequate arm talent for the NFL level, though his velocity isn't the top tier. He has clean fundamentals, especially in his lower half. His protection was terrible in 2023, as he was pressured on almost 40% of his dropbacks.
Despite that, his pocket presence is at an NFL level. Though he sees coverage well, he does struggle to see secondary defenders (linebackers and safeties).
WINS ABOVE AVERAGE
WAA represents the number of wins a player is worth over an average college football player and is a metric that evaluators can utilize to assess performance. It combines how well a player performed in each facet of play (using PFF grades) and how valuable each facet is to winning football games. The result is a first-of-its-kind metric that allows for cross-positional valuation and predicts future value at the player and team levels.
HOW RATTLER RANKS IN THE STABLE METRICS
The most stable facets of quarterback play are those with the biggest sample sizes — even though they intuitively seem “easier.” When projecting a quarterback’s future output, their performance from a clean pocket, on early downs and with no play action should be weighted heavily, and these are strong components when projecting PFF’s Wins Above Replacement metric. Good quarterbacks dominate these situations, while lesser quarterbacks rank near the bottom of the league. Negatively graded plays are also highly correlated from year to year, meaning the quarterback is largely in control of their negatives, while their positive plays may fluctuate due to supporting cast and play calling.
Compared to other players with PFF college data, Rattler had up more mixed results in the most stable passing stats.
Rattler's highs have been really high, and the lows have been pretty low. He will take some questionable sacks, but since 2019, only 12.3% of his dropbacks have earned a negative grade, the eighth-best mark out of 106 qualifying players.
He’s also a creative playmaker, having earned a 91.1 grade outside of the pocket and a 92.8 grade on play action.
Rattler was on the move a lot this last season and threw for 855 yards while under pressure, third-most in college football.
RATTLER’S PROJECTIONS
In league-average circumstances, here are Rattler’s projections for yards per attempt and completion percentage as a rookie:
Let’s look at how Rattler does when we make his situation better. With a low pressure rate, high play-action rate and more down-the-field looks, things look similar to Drake Maye’s projections under the same conditions.
Let’s also look at how Rattler does when we make the situation less favorable. With a high pressure rate and low play-action rate Rattler’s yards per attempt take a hit that would keep him well below average.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Rattler has a mature game with fundamentals and pocket presence in addition to good accuracy in and out of structure. His arm is adequate, but he needs to continue to improve at seeing additional coverage defenders post-snap.
He projects as a Day 2 QB with starting potential.
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