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There would be little argument that at any point in the next three years, we won’t see a quarterback prospect as strong as Stanford’s Andrew Luck when he comes out.  Luck has two more years of college eligibility at his fingertips, but his stated reasons for coming out, it seems safe to peg Luck as a member of the 2012 draft class, barring a change of heart.  And frankly, if Luck was going to do anything but stick to his plan for himself, he would have been in this year’s draft.

We’ll start deep in the future, and work our way back to the present to try and see if the future offers anything worth waiting for in terms of quarterbacks.

2013 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Matt Barkley (USC), Landry Jones (Oklahoma), Brock Osweiler (Arizona State), EJ Manuel (Florida State), Stephen Morris* (Miami), Nathan Scheelhaase (Illinois), Aaron Murray (Georgia), Tyler Bray (Tennessee).

A couple of players on this list would be leaving a year of eligibility on the table to enter the NFL draft, so do consider this to be merely a best guess at a ’13 class against something that any team with a quarterback need would be waiting for.  There are a number of flaws in this class: Osweiler is a highly touted prospect at Arizona State (mostly, for his 6′ 8″ frame), but he has yet to make a college start because Steven Threet, the Georgia Tech and Michigan transfer, is still in the picture.  Morris, Scheelhaase, Bray, and Murray all shined this year as first year passers, but will all be eligible collegiate passers through 2014.  Manuel split time with an injured Christian Ponder this year, and could achieve great things as Jimbo Fisher reaches year three at the helm of the Florida State offense.  His stock is the most volatile of this class.

But when we mention this class, we’re not yet impressed by it’s depth.  It’s headliners are two potential four year starters, Landry Jones of Oklahoma, and Matt Barkley of USC.  Both figure to be very highly rated players on draft day, even if that draft day comes a year sooner than predicted.  Make no mistake, this is serious one two punch, and none of the two classes prior to this figures to offer a year where two legitimate top five prospects enter the same class.

Although, that might be better news for the 2012 class.  Even though Andrew Luck is expected to be a consensus number one overall pick, the 2012 lacks depth, and it could be enticing for one or both of Jones or Barkley to make the leap with a year of eligibility left.  Just one of those guys leaving weakens the 2013 class much more than it strengthens the 2012 class.  We’ll see if these two passers understand that Andrew Luck’s presence atop more or less every draft board is sufficient enough to stick around and make the 2013 class one of the strongest QB classes in memory.

2012 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Andrew Luck (Stanford), Terrelle Pryor (Ohio State), Ryan Lindley (SDSU), Nick Foles (Arizona), Ryan Tannehill (Texas A&M), Dominique Davis (ECU), Kirk Cousins (MSU), Stephen Garcia (South Carolina), Jacory Harris (Miami), Mike Paulus (William & Mary), Dan Persa (Northwestern).

This has all the makings of the strong class.  What it’s missing is a second big name QB prospect that scouts love that could get in line right behind Andrew Luck as a franchise type player worthy of top five consideration.  It could get that still from the ranks of the underclass (remember, even in 2012, Luck would be considered an underclassmen by draft standards — though he’ll be a Stanford graduate).  But even without another player worthy of top five consideration, this QB class offers plenty of depth.

San Diego State’s Ryan Lindley is probably getting a lot of undeserved scouting love right now, he’s being floated around as a potential first rounder who will drop into the mid rounders after some of his numbers come back to the mid-major pack.  But Foles, going into his third year at Arizona, could be the real deal as a first round prospect.  Both Davis and Cousins have a first round ceiling (though they currently project as mid rounders).  And while I don’t pretend to know what will happen with Jacory Harris as a senior, his ability to make all the pro throws is unquestioned (he will need to learn to not lead safeties to the ball, however).

Paulus, Tannehill, and Persa are all fascinating prospects who will rise or fall in their senior seasons, and it wouldn’t shock me if one of the three became an NFL starter.  From this class, I think we are looking at 3 or 4 NFL starters, and that’s not including any underclassmen who may commit in this draft.  This is a clearly above average class, even before you consider that Luck should be an NFL superstar before too long.  This could easily be the strongest class since, well, the 2010 or 2008 drafts.

2011 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Blaine Gabbert (Missouri), Christian Ponder (FSU), Jake Locker (WAS), Ryan Mallett (Arkansas), Cam Newton (Auburn), Pat Devlin (Delaware), Andy Dalton (TCU), Scott Tolzien (Wisconsin), Colin Kaepernick (Nevada), Jerrod Johnson (Texas A&M), Tyrod Taylor (Virginia Tech), Ricky Stanzi (Iowa), Greg McElroy (Alabama).

The 2011 Quarterback class is getting a reputation as a weak class, though I’m not sure if that will be accurate when we look back on it.  In the last seven drafts, the worst QB draft was 2007, the JaMarcus Russell/Brady Quinn/Kevin Kolb draft.

The biggest criticism of this class is that there’s no clear cut number one guy.  The consensus number one is Blaine Gabbert.  Gabbert has his issues with pocket presence, but he’s the only guy in the class who can get drafted in the top five, and not land in a situation where he will be in over his head.  That would probably be overdrafting Gabbert based on need, but so be it.  He’s accurate, tough, makes aggressive throws down the field, and is advanced in his ability to move coverage.  He will need strong structure to make a quick jump that improves his footwork in the pocket, so as far as first year contribution, it’s buyer beware, but he’s the most talented prospect from day one, and has considerable upside.

Once Gabbert goes, you’re picking through a lot of scraps in terms of pro-ready prospects.  The next guys who are most ready for the pros are Christian Ponder and Ricky Stanzi, but Stanzi to me is not a guy who has very good staying power.  Most of his value will come from his ability to contribute immediately (think Trent Edwards, or more optimistically, Kyle Orton).  Ponder will survive in a far more varied and strenuous environment, and should be drafted higher based on that.  But after Gabbert, the best skill set in the entire class belongs, unquestionably in my mind, to Delaware’s Pat Devlin.

Devlin will be no more ready to take over a pro offense on day one than Joe Flacco was three years ago, but Flacco proved that could turn out alright.  Devlin’s skill set is similar to that of Ryan Mallett’s, but Devlin is a little bit more mobile, and has the ability to throw accurately from awkward body positions under duress is going to help him jump a lot of guys on draft boards.  Devlin is giving up a considerable amount of arm strength and downfield ability to Mallett, however, and doesn’t have Flacco’s arm to rifle balls to the sidelines on the move.  Devlin was a very mediocre college player when flushed from the pocket: he can get positive yards, but is not a creator with either his arm or his legs on the run from defenders.  He needs a strong pocket, and then he can deliver the ball to all fields.  Ryan Mallett is very much of the same player, but doesn’t have the functional mobility of Devlin, therefore a lot more can go wrong in Mallett’s development.

Above, I have named four guys who I would feel comfortable with as franchise-type first rounders (Gabbert, Devlin, Mallett, Ponder), which ignores two other guys who a majority of scouts see first round ability in (Auburn’s Cam Newton, and Washington’s Jake Locker).  I have both as midrounders: Locker’s problem being his accuracy, and Newton’s problem being experience with pro offense concepts.  Personally, I’d rather take the flyer on Newton that I could make him into a pro passer because he has a great ability to play from the pocket (accuracy and ball protection), and that’s the first thing I need from a QB in order to make him successful.  Newton, however, comes with little else, so a third round projection seems about right.  Locker can’t even be that high in my mind because he struggles so much with so much of his college offense.  When Locker is on, his passes can really get to a receiver’s hands in stride, but when Locker doesn’t trust his eyes, he can be every bit as wild as some of the worst passers I’ve ever seen.  I don’t know if I’d spend a draft pick on such a wildly inconsistent player, but he’ll gather some bonus points merely for showing the Matt Stafford-type intangibles of a first round pick.  The fact that the teams picking in the top five may not seriously consider Locker is as much of a red flag of his ability as anything, because separated from passing ability, he’s got everything else you’d want in a first round quarterback.  That ability happens to be sort of a big deal.

This is also a very deep class not just because I have first round grades on two guys who few others have in their top three rounds, but because of a class of second round quality passers unmatched in recent years: Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick, TCU’s Andy Dalton, and another guy I would absolutely throw up in this round, Wisconsin’s Scott Tolzien.  Each of the three is a project-able starter based on skill sets, and each has a skill set very different from someone else.  Tolzien offers unmatched efficiency at the college level, and would likely bring similar efficiency to the pros after having to take some lumps as a rookie starter.  Kaepernick is another guy with great intangibles who could play right away and absolutely lead an offense, but struggles at times with some throws that should be gimmies in the pros.  Dalton could be the best of the three, but never played with the precision of Tolzien, and doesn’t offer the project-able skill set of Kaepernick.

I want to at least mention two guys in Texas A&M’s Jerrod Johnson, and Virginia Tech’s Tyrod Taylor: these guys both have pro skill sets.  They are long shots to make it as NFL starters, and I like Johnson as a long-term project more than Taylor, who has to overcome his short-ness to play professional QB (he can make ALL the throws with accuracy).  But long-shots as they are, they deserve a mention in the depth of such a QB class.  They’ll go between the 6th round and undrafted, but would make great projects.

Here, at last, is my first QBs list of the 2011 draft, and some general notes about the three draft classes to come:

1. Blaine Gabbert, Missouri (Top 15)
2. Pat Devlin, Delaware (1st – 15-32)
3. Ryan Mallett, Arkansas (1st – 15-32)
4. Christian Ponder, Florida State (1st 15-32)
5. Colin Kaepernick, Nevada (2nd)
6. Scott Tolzien, Wisconsin (2nd)
7. Andy Dalton, TCU (2nd-3rd)
8. Cam Newton, Auburn (3rd)
9. Ricky Stanzi, Iowa (4th-5th)
10. Jake Locker, Washington (5th)
11. Blake Bolles, NW Missouri State (5th)
12. Greg McElroy, Alabama (6th)
13. TJ Yates, North Carolina (6th)
14. Alex Tanney, Monmouth (IL) (6th)
15. Mike Hartline, Kentucky (6th)
16. Jerrod Johnson, Texas A&M (7th)
17. Tyrod Taylor, Virginia Tech (undrafted)
18. Ben Chappell, Indiana (undrafted)
19. Troy Weatherhead, Hillsdale (undrafted)
20. Nathan Enderle, Idaho (undrafted)

As always, this is very early in the process for everyone, including me, and these rankings WILL change before draft day.

There are 15 or 16 guys in this class I think have, at least, the potential to achieve NFL starters.  We know from prior research that only about 1/3 actually have that ability, so it’s going to be about 5 or 6 players from this class who reach that level.  What that means is that this class is deep enough to meet demand for NFL QBs, barely.  But since the draft doesn’t occur with perfect information, and draft busts will occur, a couple of teams who take QBs high in this draft will be right back here in 2 years, with that 2013 class, looking for a different quarterback.

The supply of first rounders seems to get a little bit stronger in future years, with at least two per year compared to really, just one this year, and a cast of flawed characters.  The 2012 class has a good chance to offer the same type of depth that the 2011 class will, and looks like the best of the next three years.  Then again, if no one besides Andrew Luck commits early, the 2013 class would be the strongest class at the top.

Right now, it looks like the year to wait for is 2012 in terms of available quarterbacks.  There’s no reason to play the draft ultra-aggressively in 2011.  But with the potential best class being two years away, it may be smart for teams to roll the dice now in the first or second round and try to solve the position, instead of waiting for 2012, when only Andrew Luck qualifies as a currently established prospect in a class with plenty of talent underneath him.

As first predicted by LiveBall Sports in this article, the Eastern Washington Eagles and Delaware Blue Hens will meet for the Division I Football Championship.

These games went according to script.  Eastern Washington played like the team that was supposed to win their game over a dangerous, but mistake-prone opponent in Villanova.  Delaware was more fortunate: they were able to avoid a game with the William & Mary tribe, who beat the Blue Hens in the regular season.  Georgia Southern’s offense did not look good in this game.

Delaware has faced two different triple option offenses in the last four years, but they were both Navy offenses.  The triple option should have been a good match for the Delaware defense, but Georgia Southern moved the ball and made critical errors.  Ten points scored both overstates and understates the job they did.

Eastern Washington’s big plays, their identity, didn’t come from their downfield passing offense against Villanova, or long runs.  It was mostly a lot of screens that broke and bring special teams plays.  The Eagles defense kept them in the game, giving the Villanova quarterback fits in his reads, and keeping the Villanova passing game to short, ineffective attempts.

When these teams meet on January 7th in Frisco, Texas, Delaware’s defense will be the story of the game.  They didn’t look great against Georgia Southern one week after dominating New Hampshire’s spread attack, but were the benefactors of numerous turnovers.  Eastern Washington will give up those same turnovers, but this is a team that is trying to catch you in a poor defensive call and get a big play.  When Georgia Southern turned the ball over, they were shooting their own offense in the foot: this is a team that didn’t even complete a pass until late in the third quarter.

I fully expect Delaware’s defense to be the difference.  Their corners, led by 5th year senior Anthony Walters, have been great in this postseason.  By taking away the deep pass, it’s Delaware that has all the advantages going into this game.

This is the first season that the FCS Championship will be played the same weekend as the BCS Championship.  It’s an interesting marketing move, but I think it’s something that they need to do in order to hold relevancy.  Placed right in the midst of the BCS Bowls, the Championship gives itself the opportunity to compete with the big money games in terms of viewership, instead of playing the game in the early part of the bowl season, losing the competition to other Division I bowls.

When you don’t have mass media coverage like the top conferences have, a playoff field is inevitable.  But let’s look objectively at how Delaware and Eastern Washington got to this point.  Delaware was a highly rated team who lost it’s last game of the season in overtime to a team that wouldn’t have made the postseason if it had lost (Villanova).  If Delaware had won that game, they would have been the first seed in the tournament.  They weren’t.  Instead, that seed went to Appalachian State.  Appalachian State lost to Villanova in the quarterfinal.

This suggests that the FCS’ playoff field may be too large.  Villanova lost four games, got in, and got all the way to the National Semifinal because that’s how strong they were.  This is the equivalent of letting Alabama into a playoff field for the bowl teams this year.  Everyone knows that Alabama is strong enough to beat the best teams in college football this year, but with three losses in the regular season, how may more losses should they get before they are out of the National Championship picture?

One of the reasons a non-playoff system gives you a no. 1 and a no. 2 is because teams deflate the quality of their schedules, making the difference between an undefeated and a one loss team a big one.  It’s not the same way in the FCS.  Delaware could have been a zero loss team, or a three loss team.  Based on their playoff draw, they would still have reached the championship game.  Their regular season losses were, in hindsight, irrelevant.

But at the next level, there are elite teams at the top each year.  There are elite teams that would not be beaten in a playoff field by lesser seeds.  It’s not the NFL, where the 4th seeded team has a good shot to beat the 1st season in a playoff.  Stanford would comfortably handle Michigan State in the second round of a 16 team playoff, where Delaware doesn’t know exactly what Georgia Southern team is going to show up in a playoff there.  The difference is that the playoffs are necessary for the Championship series.  In the BCS system, they become a revenue-creating luxury.

The BCS’ issue is that they have a two team playoff, and that’s a poor number in most years: you ideally want to keep playing until every team has a loss.  A playoff becomes relevant when you can pair Boise State and TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, ensuring one would lose.  In that 2009 field, you’d lean towards desiring a four team playoff because it’s the only way to ensure that the non-champions lose.  If you have only one undefeated team throughout the year, the match-up between one and two is highly unnecessary.  The FCS didn’t even have two zero OR one loss teams.  That’s what made this playoff field meaningful: hard schedules, hard conferences.  What didn’t make it meaningful was not knowing who the best teams were.

LiveBall Sports wished for the best team in the CAA, Delaware, to go up against the best team out of the Big Sky Conference, in the FCS Championship game.  Now fans know for a fact this will happen.

This is a pretty fascinating QB draft class.  I’ll give you three reasons why — even though I’m sure that I’ve said that every year — this time, I’m right:

1. The NFL-NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement (or lack thereof) means that while the draft will progress as normal, there will be signing complications regarding the drafted players.
2. The senior class is very week in terms of well rounded prospects.
3. The young QB development in the NFL has been horrendous going back to 2006.

NFL teams aren’t developing their good, young quarterbacks anymore, not to mention that they aren’t even trying to find players playing in other leagues anymore.  With NFL Europe a thing of the past, and the UFL turning to re-treads to lead their teams, it’s on current franchises to make sure practice reps are had by promising players.  Instead, Derek Anderson, Bruce Gradkowski, and Charlie Whitehurst ended up starting for NFL teams who have or had legitimate playoff aspirations this year.  Those spots would have previously been used to discover QB talent like Jake Delhomme, Kurt Warner, Jeff Garcia etc.  Now, not only are franchise QBs not “found” by front offices, but even NFL first rounders are struggling to get a fair shake at development.

Three years ago, QB demand was at an all-time low.  Players like Jeff Garcia (Tampa Bay), Daunte Culpepper (Oakland), and Cleo Lemon (Miami) were fighting with prospective rookies such as Kevin Kolb, Troy Smith, Josh Johnson, Nate Davis, and Dennis Dixon for a roster opportunity.  Three years later, we know very little about those young players as NFL-level quarterbacks, while a retirement crunch of the old guard has created voids across the league at the QB position.  Once again, NFL passers are in great demand.

Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme, Marc Bulger, Garcia, Culpepper, Kerry Collins, Jon Kitna, Mark Brunell, Kyle Boller, David Carr, Patrick Ramsey, Chad Pennington, Chris Simms, Todd Collins, and Matt Hasselbeck will all be leaving the game within a year, making this a mass retirement crunch at the position.  While I propose that the pool of young QBs to choose from has never been deeper than it is currently, the lack of development at the position means that the draft value of a young quarterback is going to be driven up this coming April.

And right on cue, we have a Senior class of college quarterbacks that is…nothing to write home about.  There are two players at the top of the senior class, Delaware’s Pat Devlin and Florida State’s Christian Ponder, who could get first round grades from me.  Both, however, are too flawed to take in the top ten, and would probably be viewed as “system” players by NFL coaches.  What this class features in spades is an endless supply of intriguing prospects who badly need development that the NFL refuses to offer.  There are potential franchise players in Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick, Iowa’s Ricky Stanzi, Wisconsin’s Scott Tolzien, Alabama’s Greg McElroy, TCU’s Andy Dalton, and Virginia Tech’s Tyrod Taylor.  I’d also throw in much maligned college players Jerrod Johnson (Texas A&M), and T.J. Yates (North Carolina) to the same group.  Then there’s small school players such as Northwest Missouri State’s Blake Bolles, Hillsdale’s Troy Weatherhead, and Alex Tanney from Monmouth (IL).  It’s a banner year for small school QBs.  Adding in Washington’s Jake Locker, that’s 14 players from the senior class who deserve draft consideration, but only two who I’d feel comfortable recommending in the first round.

That’s because the strength of this group comes from the underclassmen, where up to FIVE guys can come out with first round grades.  The problem is, it’s likely you’ll get just two of them to come out, in my opinion.  The guy who every NFL GM is salivating over being able to choose is Stanford’s Andrew Luck, who may be as close to a sure thing as I’ve ever seen in all my years of draft preparation (no, I wasn’t around for the Peyton Manning draft).  Luck, as Adam Schefter has pointed out on Twitter, is unlikely to leave Stanford before his fourth year, and nothing he’s said or done indicates that either head coach Jim Harbaugh or Luck is going to leave Stanford prior to 2011.  Sorry, personnel guys.

It’s very likely that two underclassmen will go draft eligible this year: Auburn’s Cameron Newton and Arkansas’ Ryan Mallett.  I’ll throw in Missouri’s Blaine Gabbert and Arizona’s Nick Foles as two guys who might go pro on a whim, but likely will be sticking around one more year in college.  If Terrelle Pryor (Ohio State) took it to the next level after the Sugar Bowl, that would be a stunner.  He’s eligible to do so.

Newton and Mallett can be safely put into the draft class, I believe, but at this poing what we are really dealing with is a big supply-demand logic puzzle.  Mallett is a solid first rounder, likely to be the first quarterback off the board.  Newton could go anywhere between the first overall pick and the fourth round.  I have no feel for how he’s perceived in NFL circles.  Either way, we’re looking at a max of four players (more likely three) who are capable of fulfilling first round draft promise on a reasonable time table.

Newton is a statistically similar college quarterback to Mark Sanchez, an observation first made by Football Outsiders’ Bill Barnwell.  Sanchez rocketed up draft boards all the way to no. 5 overall.  It would have helped Newton had former college teammate Tim Tebow enjoyed some success as a rookie.  As far as Gus Malzahn quarterbacks go, we have no meaningful record to fall back on.  Maybe our best indication to date of his impact on passers is how spectacularly disappointing they’ve been at the next level without him: Mitch Mustain (Springdale (AR) HS) at Arkansas then USC, and then the failure of either Paul Smith or David Johnson (Tulsa) to make an NFL roster, even as a third quarterback with spectacular passing numbers.  Malzahn may simply be one more in the line of elite college coaches that can shred defenses with unspectacular talent.  Malzahn’s offense added 2.2 yards per attempt to Chris Todd’s college numbers before he could have even made a dent in terms of recruiting.

Along with the college starts, none of that really shapes out in Newton’s favor at the pro level.  Mark Sanchez played most of his college snaps with Steve Sarkisian bringing in the plays.  One criticism that absolutely will not hold up about Newton at the next level is that he’s just a runner.  This guy, from his community college days on, was a passing oriented player.  His running this year on his Heisman trophy campaign was likely out of necessity, which is also what made it a lethal weapon.  I project success for Cam Newton at the next level, but only relative success.  He’s not the next Eli Manning or Matt Ryan, and with that in mind, I think that there is a part of the draft where it will be too high to take Newton.

Complications of Quarterbacking

The NFC West race is going to have a significant outcome on who is positioned to land a quarterback in the upcoming draft.  Division winners, even bad ones, are playoff teams.  And playoff teams, even ones with poor records, don’t pick in the top half of the draft.  If St. Louis wins the NFC West, both San Francisco and Seattle will be in position to take a quarterback, and then it’s the team that has the higher draft selection that can get all the spoils, leaving scraps for the other.  But if St. Louis doesn’t win it, we’re looking at one of the two other contenders, San Francisco and Seattle, one of them being completely out of position in the draft to land the player that they want (although if the player they want is Pat Devlin or Christian Ponder, they might get lucky).  The other one is going to be likely up drafting inside the top ten picks, and could be in position to target the passer they want.

There are simply too many teams who will be drafting in the top ten this year who are going to go for a quarterback for teams who have 7 or more wins to be in position.  One of the reasons that I feel, ultimately, that Foles or Gabbert might declare for the draft leaving an excellent opportunity at a conference championship as a senior on the table is that both of those guys might go in the first ten picks if they come out this year.  Right now, the top ten picks in the NFL draft are as follows:

1. Carolina
2. Cincinnati
3. Denver
4. Buffalo
5. Detroit
6. Arizona
7. Dallas
8. San Francisco
9. Minnesota
10. Tennessee

All of that is subject to change.  Carolina could choose to stick with Jimmy Clausen for his second year, but the timing is bad: how often do you actually get to pick first overall.  Heck, the last time Carolina finished with one win they got to pick second because Houston was an expansion team.  Cincinnati is bound to start over if the guy they want is available at quarterback (for that offense, seems like that would be Mallett).  Denver is fine one way or another at the position.  Buffalo is the other team likely to take a guy they like if he’s there, but they are not a danger to reach for one of the seniors with Ryan Fitzpatrick playing more than adequately.  Detroit isn’t taking a quarterback in this draft, not to mention that they are likely to get to 4 or 5 wins.  Arizona’s need at the position probably trumps everything else, and at no. 6 (more likely no. 4 or 5), they become a likely candidate to trade up to no. 1 especially if Carolina is willing to stick with Clausen.  Dallas is fine, obviously.

San Francisco has a great need, but now at this point, may not have a choice.  No players who are graded as top five players are going to slide out of the top five, so either San Francisco would have to avoid the position until the second round, reach for the next best guy, or make someone like Buffalo an offer they can’t refuse to trade up (read: 2012 first rounder).  And if Andrew Luck really does stay in school, every team without legitimate playoff aspirations wants to closely clutch that 2012 lottery ticket.  Carolina wins that lottery this year if he comes out, but in 2012, he becomes that much more valuable.

There may be nothing but scraps left for the Titans when they pick: a re-tread like Carson Palmer, Byron Leftwich, or Brady Quinn could be the best option there if they cannot mend fences with Vince Young.  Which is one of the many reasons that firing Jeff Fisher and handing the team back to Young could be a far superior option to letting Fisher win his standoff with the franchise’s quarterback.

I think ultimately, this quarterback class will be defined by how the late rounders do, and the strength at the top defined by whether Luck, Gabbert, and Foles commit.  If none of them commit, we’re looking at 2012 being an all-time great quarterback draft class.  Here’s the problem (and for Jake Locker, the thing that justifies waiting a year): those teams need those quarterbacks right now.  Patience may be the greatest virtue, but in the NFL, it can get you fired.

This weekends televised match-ups for the D2 Football Playoffs feature one must-see-TV game and an intriguing match-up between two programs who have made it just a little further than expected this year.  LiveBall Sports’ previews of the games are below.

Shepherd Rams vs. Delta State Statesmen

This game is not exactly a marquee matchup for the D-II football playoffs, in fact, any number of games from the prior two rounds have paired more dynamic teams.  Delta State beat the highest seeded team in their region, the Albany State Rams, to reach this level.  Shepherd beat a likely over-seeded Mercyhurst college by a resounding score of 49-14.

Delta State has been at this level once recently, losing to National Champion Grand Valley 49-30 on the road in 2006.  They were also the national champions of this level in 2000, beating Bloomsburg of PA.  It’s been a long road back for the Statesmen.

Shepherd can light up a scoreboard.  Just this year, they’ve put up: 56, 55, 53, 49, 46, and 41 points.  Two of those results have come in the D2 playoffs, and on the road no less.  It took a lot longer for Delta State’s offense to get going, but a 47-24 decision over North Alabama counts as a quality victory.  Shepherd has done it big on the road this year, but for a team from West Virginia, it’s a big difference going “on the road” to Pennsylvania to knock off teams ranked in the 10-20 range, which they’ve done the last two weeks, and going to southern Mississippi to play an established program in Delta State.

It seems that Delta State would be heavily underdogged had they drawn the short end of the travel stick, but seeding is a big determinant of success in the D2 Football playoffs, and it makes sense to pick Delta State to advance to the Championship Round.

Northwest Missouri State Bearcats vs. Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs

It’s kind of amazing what head coach Mel Tjeerdsma has done with the Maryville Teacher’s College Northwest Missouri State Football Team. This is perhaps one of the greatest coaching pieces, ever.  In any sport.  Another 12-1 record, another appearance among the final four teams in Division II college football.  With a win, the Bearcats will head to Florence, Alabama to play in the D2 title game for a sixth consecutive season.  When he took over this program 17 years ago, they didn’t even win a game.

Their opponent, Minnesota-Duluth, was the number one seed in the entire nation coming into this playoff field, and they’ve done little to dispel the perception that they should be the favorite.  This is the best team in the field.  Against possibly the toughest non-GLIAC schedule in division II football, this team’s average margin of victory: 4 TDs.  They may be ripe for the picking: their playoff results included a three point survival in overtime over St. Cloud State.  Of course, they then went in and held an Augustana team to 13 points one week after they put up 38 points against Grand Valley.

Northwest Missouri has a couple of problems.  Their average margin of victory is under two touchdowns in a conference they typically dominate.  The culprit is their defense.  Quarterback Blake Bolles (pictured above) is a legitimate pro prospect, and the best chance that Tjeerdsma’s team has of overcoming Minnesota-Duluth.  However, Saturday’s win over Central Missouri at home was the first comfortable win for the Bearcats since the end of October.  No one is better suited to win a close game than the Bearcats, but it’s difficult to expect Minnesota-Duluth not to win by a comfortable margin and head into the NCAA D2 Championship Game a heavy, heavy favorite.

Expecting Arkansas to have actually competed in the brutal SEC West this year given the stature of that program and the type of competition they faced on a week-in, week-out basis was predictive folly at the beginning of this season.  It wasn’t smart.  Alabama, Auburn, LSU: these are all stronger programs than Arkansas, and while Ryan Mallett was expected to earn his high first round NFL draft projection over the course of these four games, there wasn’t great evidence that he could be a great college quarterback in the SEC.

So perhaps the biggest surprise of the SEC West this season isn’t that Cam Newton is superman, or that Alabama’s defense struggled at times, or that Mississippi tanked and lost to a Jacksonville State team that isn’t among the ten best teams in it’s own subdivision.  The biggest surprise of all may be…that Arkansas was as good or better than they were expected to be.

In fact, the Razorbacks are just a Cam Newton ineligibility ruling from being the best team in the SEC this season.

It’s a remarkable accomplishment against the schedule they played, and you could make the argument that Arkansas’ 10-2 record is more impressive than Auburn’s 12-0.  The Auburn-Arkansas game was both the most impressive win that Auburn had this season and the most deflating loss that Arkansas took, but it’s college football and the way the scoring was run up at the end of that game, Auburn might have come up on the short end had they not knocked Mallett from the game.

And if that result was different, Arkansas is potentially knocking on the door of a national championship where at one loss, they are dangerously close to overtaking TCU in the BCS standings and probably would with a victory in the SEC title game.  Arkansas couldn’t stop Auburn’s ground attack in that game, so who knows if a healthy Mallett would have made any difference?  My points are that: it was a close outcome game until the very end, and in hindsight, that was the biggest college football game of the year.

How easy would it have been at 4-2, and no chance to play for the SEC title because of head to head losses to the two frontrunners for Arkansas to fold at that point and limp to 7-5 and a forgettable bowl bid?  Really easy, I imagine.  Instead, they will wait on Auburn to go in and beat South Carolina, and then, just maybe, Arkansas will be heading to the Sugar Bowl as an at large team in the BCS.

I think it will be very well deserved.  They clearly aren’t ahead in the at large pecking order of undefeated TCU (automatic), and one-losses Stanford or Ohio State, but the BCS is ten teams.  The Big Ten can’t send it’s third one loss team as another at large, per BCS mandate.  That means, competing with Arkansas for that last at large bid are: Boise State, Oklahoma State, Nevada, and Missouri.  Anyone else who could possibly attain that at large bid is going to be playing this week in a conference championship match, where a loss would send them to three losses (out of the BCS running), and a win sends them to the BCS.

The ONLY team playing a conference championship this week that could lose the game and still make the BCS is the Auburn Tigers.  An Auburn loss to South Carolina puts the Gamecocks in, and drops the Razorbacks out of the BCS.  But when you look at the competition: Boise, Nevada, OSU, Missouri, consider that by-and-large voters are a “what have you done for me lately” group.  All Arkansas has done lately is win their last six games putting up 30 or more points in each game, and by an average margin of about 3 TDs per game.

I think that feat alone makes them more BCS-deserving than every available option this side of Boise State, and Boise cannot overcome the financial discrepancy between having two SEC teams and one SEC team in the BCS.  Pending the South Carolina-Auburn outcome, Bobby Petrino’s team is headed for the Sugar Bowl because they’ve been college football’s best team since the middle of October.  TCU and Arkansas would be a Sugar Bowl dream match-up.

2010 may be the most parity-driven year in college football, and it goes beyond the big-money power conferences and bowl football in general.  We can look at the fact that just this past Friday, a national title contender, Boise State, lost a conference game for the first time since 2008.  They lost on the road in heartbreaking fashion to a great-but-still-inferior Nevada team, who has now propelled itself into discussion for a pretty good bowl.  That’s parity: Boise State now splits the WAC title in a year where Boise State was expected as of last week to be in good probability to play for the National Championship.

This concept of parity isn’t just exclusive to elite college football in 2010.  There is only one team in the entire Division I – Football Championship Subdivision who made it through their schedule with fewer than 1 loss: the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats, a school that might be better known for its band than its football team.  While fans clamor angrily for a playoff in the Bowl Subdivision, imagine if coaches had to vote on the two most deserving teams in a subdivision where all the best teams have two losses.

The favorites to win the bracket this year are all the usual suspects: Appalachian State, William & Mary, Delaware, Montana State, Villanova, and Eastern Washington.

Delaware Blue Hens

The Delaware Blue Hens received the most favorable draw in the playoff bracket as the third seed.  They will face Lehigh at home next Saturday in a play-in type game.

Delaware is the highest rated team in the entire FCS subdivision per statistician Jeff Sagarin, who also is responsible for drawing up one of the six computer formulas that make up that division of the FCS equation.  Even after an overtime loss to neighboring Villanova, the Blue Hens have to be one of the playoff favorites.  Sagarin’s Pure Points system, which synthesizes margin of victory (or defeat) against the schedule a team has played this year ranks Delaware as the 56th best team in the nation, and they would likely be bowl eligible playing a C-USA schedule instead of the arguably more difficult Colonial Athletic Association.

Delaware brings the best scoring defense in the nation, as well as the only quarterback in the entire subdivision who is likely to be drafted into the NFL next year, Pat Devlin.  Devlin is having a fantastic year: he’s completing a preposterous 67% of his passes, and has been intercepted just twice in 266 passing attempts with 14 TDs.  I had the opportunity and pleasure of analyzing Joe Flacco’s final college season with the Blue Hens, and with an arguably superior supporting cast, Flacco never posted numbers anywhere near this.

The real reason that the Blue Hens have been so dominant is because they haven’t had to do much on offense to win, the defense — so maligned in 2009 — has been beyond spectacular this season.  This is a team that has a great running game to lean on, and a great rush defense.  The pass rush has some issues stemming from the fact that their most active tacklers aren’t great pass rushers, so teams with dropback passing games can get time to find receivers against a tight secondary.

The one thing the Blue Hens had during their 2007 run that they don’t have now is a great, reliable kicking game.  Both of their losses have come on the margins with either a missed field goal or a decision not to attempt one that could have decided the game.  Otherwise, this team is already beyond the level of that team that made it to the Championship round of the 2007 FCS tournament.

William and Mary Tribe

The Tribe is responsible for one of Delaware’s two losses on the season. This is strictly a dropback passing team who didn’t post great rushing numbers on the year, but plays very strong defense and gets their plays in the passing game (7.33 YPA average, 14 TDs, 5 INTs).  In essence, they are a CAA team who is here because of what their defense does for them, like Delaware.

The only real difference is that William & Mary lost badly to North Carolina, and they are a two loss CAA team also among the 60 best teams in college football.  They are seeded 2nd in the tournament, behind only Appalachian State.  Their offense is run by two different quarterbacks: Mike Callahan, and Michael Paulus.  Callahan had the better year of the two, but Paulus won some big games, including the big Delaware win that gave William & Mary a share of the CAA title.

Villanova Wildcats

Villanova is the third rated AA team in the Sagarin rankings, behind only Delaware and William & Mary, it’s two CAA rivals.  Villanova is a four loss team, so they do not have a a great seed in this tournament, but one of the three losses came to a Temple team that entered the season as the MAC favorite, and two of the other losses came to teams in the FCS playoff field: New Hampshire and Williams & Mary.  The predictive difference between Villanova, Delaware, and William & Mary is basically nil: I’d take these three teams and give you the field in a gambling situation, but Villanova is really hurt by it’s tournament seed, having to start on the road at Stephen F. Austin, and then likely over to Appalachian State to keep playing for it.

Villanova is good enough to win both those games, possibly convincingly.  It’s still a tough draw, no matter how you look at it.  For Delaware and William & Mary, the worry is about being each other to advance to the Championship route.  Villanova has its toughest matchups before the semifinal.

The Wildcats are lead by dual threat rusher-runner Chris Whitney at quarterback, and their best offensive weapon is RB Aaron Ball, who is strictly a runner.  Villanova’s struggles with scoring defense are a cause for concern, because even though they can score points without great offensive numbers, this is still a team in a defense-first conference, and it’s the defense that will have to get them deep into the bracket.  Villanova has made just three field goals all season, which has helped in some ways because it’s given them four downs to get in the end zone, but it’s also why they have struggled in close games (2-4 in games decided by less than a TD).

Appalachian State Mountaineers

This year, perennial powerhouse Appalachian State may be number one purely on the strength of their rich history (and hey, someone who lost two games HAD to be number one), but this team has won a championship in a year which they had two regular season losses.  In fact, that year was the year they beat Michigan at the Big House.  They actually went on to lose to both Elon and Wofford before going undefeated in the postseason to take the title.

There’s a couple of troubling trends for this App. State team.  Number one: former QB Armanti Edwards was the most dynamic player in the subdivision for four consecutive seasons.  He’s in the NFL now.  Number two: Appalachian State was blown off the field in Gainesville by a Florida team that has struggled prior to, and since that game with even the most pedestrian conference opponents.  Their other loss came to a Georgia Southern team that is in the playoff field.

They have another top dual-threat QB in DeAndre Presley, who leads the team in both rushing and passing, and RB Travis Cadet is having a great season on the ground.  This offense is still the best in the field.  The defense is not up to the standard of a great App. State defense, which you probably figured when this Florida offense hung 40+ on them.

Montana State Bobcats

It’s difficult to find any information about a team that doesn’t keep it’s own stats, but this team played a lot of quality opponents this year.  They lost a bad one point decision to Pac-10 also-ran Washington State, but they convincingly beat Eastern Washington, who is the 5th seed in this tournament, and they will likely have a rematch at the same location next week, provided both teams win.

Montana State has a bunch of close wins over inferior opponents this year, and they are probably overseeded in this bracket based on the head to head result with Eastern Washington.  This team was blown out by Northern Arizona, and they rank 104th in the Sagarin Pure Points poll.

Eastern Washington Eagles

This is the team of the red turf fame who is probably the best bet to come out of their half of the bracket and make the Champhionship round.  They don’t have a great draw in front of them, but SE Missouri State and Montana State aren’t powerhouses, and then if they do have to go to Appalachian State for the national semifinal, they are rated just behind them in the Sagarin poll.  If they match-up with Villanova in the semis, Villanova has to travel all the way across the country to get to them.  Overall, that’s pretty good position.

Eastern Washington features a superstar back, Taiwan Jones, who has rushed for 1344 yards on 176 carries and has 11 TDs.  Their passing game is deceptive: they have 25 passing TDs, which is a lot, but inflated by their weaker opponents.  In the playoffs, they will lean heavily on Jones to get them to where they want to go.

The Eagles are strictly a big-play high-risk offense.  They outscore their opponents on average by 5 PPG.  They, however, give up more first downs both on the ground, and through the air than their opponents.  Big play offenses tend to shine in the playoffs, so as long as they keep doing their thing, Eastern Washington is a team that could go all the way.

Liveball’s Pick

Your writer likes the Eastern Washington Eagles to come out of their bracket on the strength of a Villanova upset against the Appalachian State Mountaineers, hosting the National Semifinal in Cheney, Wash.  The Championship game is as far as they will go.  The CAA is the SEC of this subdivision, and given the success that that conference has had, it’d be foolish to not take a CAA powerhouse to go all the way.

My pick is that the Delaware Blue Hens will defeat the William & Mary Tribe in the National Semifinal in a revenge game, and then beat the EWU Eagles to win the NCAA Div-I FCS National Championship.

This article is about Cameron Newton and the Auburn Tigers, but with all the investigative press swirling around Newton like vultures, it’s not really about Newton at all.  It’s about his team, and about the BCS, and the way that SEC teams aren’t held to the same standard as teams elsewhere in the nation.

The BCS works for the SEC.  In that conference, the system is essentially a season-long playoff, or a season-long survivorship.  You can make a coherent argument that the SEC is the strongest conference in college football, and the voters themselves enable this argument every single season.  Look around.  Right now it’s Auburn that has survived the SEC through 75% of the season.  They are the only team without a loss.  It’s accepted that this makes them the front runner to represent the SEC in the BCS Championship game.

Are they appreciably better than LSU, Arkansas, or Alabama?  Probably not, but they survived the best punches of LSU and Arkansas at home, and are at least 50-50 to beat two loss Alabama in this years iron bowl.  If they do, they will have the best resume of any SEC team this year, and provided they survive the SEC championship, they are likely either no. 1 or no. 2 in the nation.

Progressively more, however, the BCS isn’t about picking out the best teams for number one or number two.  This goes back to the SEC survivorship bias.  There’s a really good probability that every season some team will come out of the SEC without a loss, but there’s a really low probability that YOUR favorite SEC team can do it in any given year, which is the strength of schedule element.  It’s one of the reasons that Alabama can still claim to be the elite SEC program: they’ve lost two games, but because they have such a strong strength of schedule rating, they can argue that they are as good as any team they’ve lost to in the SEC.  It’s the transitive property: they may not have beaten LSU or South Carolina, but they beat Arkansas.  Arkansas beat South Carolina and Georgia.  Auburn is immune from the transitive property…until they lose, then every team in the SEC has a “we’re better” argument.

Auburn fans certainly are familiar with the 2004 season, when a 12-0 AU team led by Jason Campbell, Ronnie Brown, and Cadillac Williams finished third in the nation and missed the title game.  I think that definitely factors in here.  However, according to the rule of the law in the BCS, if Auburn isn’t the most impressive or second most impressive team in college football, they’re not supposed to be deserving of consideration at no. 1 or no. 2 in the polls.

Frankly, that’s the case here: I’m not sure what the argument here for Auburn is vs. teams like Oregon, TCU, and Boise State, the other undefeated teams.  When you look at Auburns season, and look at their key games, you find the following facts:

• 3 point road win at Mississippi State
• 3 point OT win at home vs Clemson
• 7 point home win vs South Carolina
• 3 point road win at Kentucky
• 22 point home win vs. Arkansas*
• 7 point home win vs. LSU

Auburn has played in a lot of big games with a lot of media coverage.  That 22 point home win against Arkansas should be asterix’d because while the Tigers showed they were the better team, the point differential was a function of multiple defensive TDs scored against Arkansas’ backup quarterback.  The story of Auburn’s season has been relatively unimpressive home wins against quality opponents.  Would they win a bowl game against TCU, Boise, Oregon, or even Ohio State?  Based on their resume, you would expect the answer to be “no.”  Auburn doesn’t win by comfortable margins against good teams.  They’ve merely survived every test.

That’s essentially what a playoff system does, is it not?  If the BCS formula was that any team that is undefeated in the SEC conference automatically gets to play for the BCS title, Auburn clearly has qualified to this point, and is just three tests away from automatic qualification in the title game.  That’s not officially the BCS position however.  The official position is that the three most impressive teams, clearly the ones who beat opponents consistently by multiple TD margins, should be the top three in the polls.  That’s Boise, TCU, and Oregon right now.  Then you can consider other really impressive one loss teams who have run through their schedules for the most part with only losses to top ten teams before considering the first SEC team this year.  I’d say the resume of Ohio State, and of Stanford is just as impressive as Auburn’s this year.  That doesn’t mean I don’t think Auburn is entitled to be ranked above these one-loss teams: if they beat Alaabama, they certainly will have done more against a more difficult schedule.  But I mean, to honestly make a case for undefeated Auburn over Oregon or TCU or Boise, don’t they need to beat Alabama by more than a score?  Is that not what those other undefeateds have been doing all year?

That’s essentially privilege in the SEC.  In no other conference would a team receive an automatic berth for merely surviving the SEC gauntlet.  Style points are supposed to and need to matter.  Well, except for the computer average, but thats a different story entirely.  Auburn’s chances of winning the SEC as an undefeated team are somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2, which is a realistic possibility.  Their chances of being so impressive in their last four games that we glance at what TCU and Boise have done all season and think, “you know, those teams are certainly no…Auburn?”  That’s not a realistic possibility, I don’t think.

It’s in a bout of irony that this injustice will likely be rectified, as the wolves surround Auburn and Cam Newton’s status as an eligible amateur athlete.  If Auburn loses, either in the court of the NCAA or on the field, it’s unlikely that any SEC team is going to one-loss its way to the national championship (considering that LSU is the only other team with just one loss…to Auburn).  At that point, we probably would get the two most deserving teams in college football playing for the championship, even if **gasp** none of them play in the SEC.

Washington Huskies quarterback Jake Locker has his team fighting it’s guts out at 3 wins and 4 losses this year, with the most impressive victory being a last second win at the gun over USC.  With that win, Locker moves to 2-1 for his career against the Trojans, and establishes his legacy as an above average college quarterback, and one of the better QBs that Washington has had in it’s history, dating back to the early 90′s with Mark Brunell and Billy Joe Hobert.

Locker also continues to be projected as an early first round pick by television analysts.  He has now started 34 college games at Washington, and if he stays healthy, should be able to get up into the rage of 40 starts by the time he makes the jump to the pros.  That’s a good sample size to tell what kind of quarterback a player is.

In Locker’s case, the best part of his game is his legs, which makes him a great comparable for Brunell, another Husky quarterback who struggled to complete even 55% of his passes in college.  Brunell went on to have a very successful career, playing for the Packers, Jaguars, and Redskins before finishing up as a backup for the Saints and Jets.

Again though, Brunell was a fifth round draft choice, a project pick in the 1993 draft by Packers GM Ron Wolf, because it was hard to see any reason prior to 1994 to believe that Brett Favre might someday be a hall of famer.  Brunell was the pick necessary to insure that the Packers would have a quarterback.  They did, and Brunell was dealt to the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars in 1995.

At that point, two years into Brunell’s career, it was a safe bet for any team that had a quarterback that Brunell would be worth the price of two mid-round picks.  We have no idea right now if Locker is worth two mid round picks, and that’s not even particularly relevant considering that a team is going to have to use a valuable first round pick to get him.

Locker’s career completion percentage has actually declined from where it was in 2009, when it was claimed by Scouts Inc. Todd McShay that Locker was passing accurately, but just not getting any help from his receivers.  Obviously at Washington, Locker isn’t going to get the most help, so this could be the case, but it reminds me of the Michael Vick conundrum in Atlanta where Vick’s receivers were at the top of the league in dropped passes year after year, even though Atlanta overhauled it’s receivers more or less every year.  Then when Atlanta brought in Joey Harrington to replace Vick, Roddy White and Michael Jenkins both had career years.  Vick was getting screwed by dropped passes, but the dropped passes were the result of systematic inaccuracy and lack of timing, not because the receivers were bad.

That’s the argument being made for Jake Locker’s passing accuracy.  You can put the tape on him yourself if you wish, and it’s clear that Locker lacks the passing accuracy to be a great quarterback at the next level.  We know this as open-minded fans because he played so much college ball that his strengths and weaknesses are apparent.  Locker moves the chains because he can use his feet on third down as well as any quarterback in football, and plays pretty well from outside of the pocket, which is among the many things that Locker does right.  He also has a good chance to get Washington bowl eligible, needing to simply finish 3-2 on the season.

A bowl game will help showcase Locker’s many talents, but with all the flaws in his game, it’s not going to help his overall draft profiled.  I doubt that’s a big deal for him.  Locker made the correct decision to stay in school, and it would be a great accomplishment should he prove able to get the Huskies back to the bowls.  Locker isn’t hopeless as an NFL talent, he’s just proving to be a poor use of a high and valuable NFL draft pick.

I have a complete list of DI-FBS Football Teams who have yet to fall this season: Alabama, Oregon, Boise State, TCU, Auburn, Arizona, Oklahoma, LSU, Ohio State, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Utah, Missouri, Nevada, Northwestern, Michigan, and Michigan State.

That’s 17 teams out of 119 teams at the beginning of the season.  One more of those will fall for sure this week when Michigan and Michigan State meet, though it’s pretty unlikely that 16 unbeatens will get out of this week without a loss.

We can, however, look at this list and find who looks out of place.  Northwestern, Nevada, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Utah, Missouri, and Michigan haven’t played anyone who is currently ranked.  Ohio State, LSU, Oklahoma, TCU, Arizona, Alabama, Oregon, and Auburn all have quality wins over teams that are ranked or could finish ranked, but those are your power programs on the list and it’s hardly a surprise that any of them are undefeated in the first week of October.  Boise State has thrashed everyone they played since narrowly escaping over Virginia Tech.  They last lost in 2008, so their undefeated record isn’t a surprise.

On the other hand, one of the 17 teams weren’t even expected to have a winning record at this point, necessarily, and logged an upset over a conference opponent last week to reach this point.  The Michigan State Spartans are 5-0, and they’ve done it on the strength of wins over Notre Dame and Wisconsin at home.  What makes the Spartans a surprise 5-0 team is that this team wasn’t even supposed to be ready to compete at this point.  They’ve improved on both offense and defense when it would appear that they were set for a decline.

Problem with Michigan State’s early season is that they’ve played four home games, and one “neutral” site game in Detroit against…Florida Atlantic?  Sounds like a home game to me.  Michigan State now must play four of it’s final seven games on the road inside the Big Ten conference.  Of course, going to Ann Arbor to play Michigan isn’t too different than a neutral site game.  The crowd will be partisan, though by home game standards at the Big House, not really up to that partisan standard.

Still, this is a barrier that the Spartans must conquer in order to chase a Rose Bowl title.  Ohio State and Michigan State don’t play this year, so we could have a situation where both teams run the table this year.  Both teams have Michigan and Iowa as their best remaining opponents.

It’s an unlikely scenario that would result in Michigan State running the table to tie an Ohio State team that also went 12-0, but I think they have an advantage against a Michigan team this week that is really struggling on defense at the current moment.  That’s not an advantage that Ohio State will have over Michigan later in the year.  The Wolverines were worse defensively last week than in any of the prior weeks, and Denard Robinson is banged up enough right now to the point where he is going to have to start relying on his arm a bit more than in past weeks.

Robinson will be able to throw on the Michigan State defense, but probably not enough to outpace the work done by the balanced Spartan offense, and I think Michigan State wins this game over Michigan comfortably, by 9-13 points or so.  If this prediction proves correct, it’s going to be tough to stop the Spartans the rest of the year.  The Spartans have proven to be a team with many small weaknesses on both sides of the football, but no fatal flaws that will keep them out of games against better opponents.

And because of the notably soft big ten schedule, a lot more people than just me could be seeing a 12-0 Spartans season after this week.  It’s certainly not unreasonable.  It was only unthinkable prior to the season because nobody really thought Michigan State could possibly be good enough to run through the early part of their schedule at 5-0.  If Notre Dame wasn’t going to get them, then Wisconsin would.  I thought exactly the same thing.  Michigan State proved that assumption wrong, so here we are now, a 5-0 team needing to keep the other Michigan college football team from getting to 6-0 themselves.

Unlike Michigan, this game wouldn’t just mean another win for Sparty, it would validate the first five games of the year.  Michigan can’t get caught looking ahead, nor can they be satisfied with a near-disaster victory in this game.  They’re in a tough spot, and I think they’re going to be in trouble when Michigan State drops them to 5-1 this week and then yes, Rich Rodriguez is going to be pushed back into the “show me” line of fire with the Michigan faithful.  This week and this game can (and will) change the way people are looking at the Big Ten.

If I were to characterize this draft class in terms of it’s quarterbacks, we’d have to think about guys with big arms, great frames, and limited accuracy.  Of course, it’s that last skill that will make or break a prospect at the next level, and a lot of guys that were projected to go high in this next draft simply do not have it.

For Jake Locker, perhaps the most touted NFL prospect in the class, the first three weeks of the season have been a disaster of sorts.  A win against Syracuse and a loss against BYU produced acceptable — but not NFL-type — results.  Locker was up around 60% in completion percentage, he had thrown for close to eight yards per attempt in those games.  Locker just needed a game against a strong college defense to show he could match up with the big guys.  He got that opportunity against Nebraska, a program with an elite defense.  Locker completed just 4 of 20 passes, threw two INTs, and didn’t even throw for four yards per attempt (which is actually pretty good considering those accuracy problems).

Jake Lockers line through three games this year is: completed 46 of 90 passes for 7.0 yards per attempt, 6 TDs, and 2 INTs.  His target completion percentage to be a legitimate first round pick is 70%.  If he throws 300 more passes this year, he would need to complete an obscene 227 of them to meet that mark.  Washington, more or less, won’t lose the rest of the year if Jake Locker is a legitimate first overall prospect.

Locker can’t really be blamed for any of this.  While he doesn’t appear to be much of an NFL prospect at quarterback, it’s not Jake Locker who has been going out of his way to remind you how lucky your franchise would be to have him.  That would be disinterested third parties who are trying to convince you of that.  Locker, to his credit, avoided being another Jevan Snead this year by actually going to pro executives and gauging his draft value before making the decision to come out.  On one hand, he’s probably going to hurt his draft stock going into this next draft.  But on the other hand, someone is going to take a flyer on him in some round next year, and if quarterback doesn’t work out, Locker is plenty athletic to go play another position…or baseball.

Where Locker has failed — changing his prospect make-up — is more along the lines of the status quo for a college quarterback.  There’s another potential pro prospect who is, right now, making a big deal out of himself by developing into a legitimate first-overall type quarterback right before our eyes: Arkansas’ Ryan Mallett.

What’s most impressive about Mallett’s numbers is that they aren’t unreasonably inflated by playing FCS competition.  Arkansas opened against Tennessee Tech, but Mallett threw for more yards against both Louisiana-Monroe, and Georgia, than in that first game.  He’s thrown for exactly three touchdowns in each game, with just two interceptions between the three games — and none against Georgia.  More importantly, his game-winning drive to beat Georgia included a bunch of NFL type throws, with the clock as a significant factor on the road.  While Locker was expected to have his breakout game against a strong defense, it was unquestionably Mallett who has separated himself as the early favorite to be taken first overall.

Ryan Mallett’s line through three games this year: completed 70 of 100 passes, for 10.8 yards per attempt, and 9 TDs to 2 INTs.  He’s right at the mark I set for him to establish himself as a legitimate first overall QB candidate in the next draft.  Mallett has done it against good competition as well, actually finding ways to raise his play when it matters most.

Neither of these guys is likely to be the first overall pick in next year’s draft if Andrew Luck of Stanford comes out (I don’t think he will).  Luck may be a once in a lifetime type prospect someday.  But for Mallett and Locker, the day where they have to take their resume to the NFL and try to sell themselves as leaders of an organization is drawing nearer.  Clearly at the moment, they are moving in opposite directions.