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 Oregon‘s Bo Nix, who started 61 games in his college career, an NCAA record.
SCOUTING SUMMARY
Some see Nix's age, 24, as a negative, but it has made him one of the more knowledgeable quarterback prospects with a better pre-snap understanding of defenses than most at the position. When the ball comes out of his hands, it has a consistent pace with good control.
His pocket presence is good, but he could stand to climb the pocket more instead of fading away. He is an above-average athlete for the position and is always a threat to keep an RPO or scramble.
As a passer, he is also accurate out of structure. He gets in trouble due to his footwork, as his feet are not as light as they could be. His knack for avoiding negative plays, including sacks, is a top-class trait.
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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 NIX 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, Nix’s metrics in the most predictive of data subsets measure up poorly.
While Nix didn’t fare very well in our stable metrics, he thrived in unstable metrics, such as grade under pressure. While it typically fluctuates year over year, Nix earned a career 75.6 grade under pressure in college. That mark ranks 16th out of 106 qualifying quarterbacks since 2019.
Not only does Nix play well under pressure, but he also avoids sacks at an elite level. In his last college season, Nix held a 1.2% sack rate, ranking second among all quarterbacks.
NIX’S PROJECTIONS
In league-average circumstances, here are Nix’s projections for yards per attempt and completion percentage as an NFL rookie:
Let’s look at how Nix does when we make his situation better. With a low pressure rate, a high play-action rate and more downfield looks, things remain mostly the same, but he falls a little below the league average.
Let’s also look at how Nix does when we make the situation less favorable. With a high pressure rate and a low play-action rate, Nix’s projections don’t change very much. He played very well under pressure throughout his college career.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Nix's experience manifests in the form of pre-snap reads, play under pressure and avoiding negatives. His footwork needs to be more disciplined, and he will take some time to really read progressions better in the NFL, but he is a quarterback with starting-caliber tools in his arm and his legs with added out-of-structure playmaking.
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