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 LSU’s Jayden Daniels, the 2023 Heisman Trophy winner who has been gaining steam as this year's QB3.
SCOUTING SUMMARY
Daniels' scouting report starts with his mobility. His success on RPOs and when scrambling means the defense has to account for his legs at all times.
He is a fundamentally sound thrower with light footwork, fluid hips and a repeatable follow-through. This, plus his overall arm talent, yields adequate velocity to all three levels.
His touch in and out of structure has the potential for big plays. He is still speeding up his processing, an issue that resulted in a high sack rate in college, and he needs to protect himself more when tucking to run.
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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 DANIELS 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, Daniels’ metrics in the most predictive of data subsets measure up poorly.
Despite his not ranking very well in PFF’s career stable metrics, there’s no denying Daniels' improvement in college. In 2023, Daniels ranked in the 93rd, 93rd and 92nd percentile in clean-pocket grade, standard-dropback grade and first-and-second-down grade, respectively.
Daniels might not be the most polished passer, but he is a prolific runner. He leads all FBS quarterbacks in rushing yards since 2022, with 2,329, nearly 600 more yards than the next closest signal-caller.
DANIELS' PROJECTIONS
In league-average circumstances, here are Daniels’ projections for yards per attempt and completion percentage as an NFL rookie:
Let’s look at how Daniels does when we make his situation better. With a low pressure rate, a high play-action rate and more downfield looks, things drastically improve.
Let’s also look at how Daniels does when we make the situation less favorable. With a high pressure rate and a low play-action rate, Daniels remains just below league average.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Daniels' rushing ability and fundamentals give him a high floor as a player who can put a ton of stress on a defense. His arm talent is adequate to give him a decently high ceiling, making him a worthy first-round bet.
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