This is cutting it a little close to the draft. I’ve already done a Caleb Williams post, then my 5th ranked QB (JJ McCarthy) and my 4th ranked QB (Michael Penix).

All we’ve got left now is 2 and 3, which I’m sure you can guess are Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels, and then my 6th ranked guy is Bo Nix.

To be honest, I put off writing about these three guys for so long because the other three are just far more interesting to me. I think Caleb Williams is the best draft QB prospect since Andrew Luck in 2012, I think Michael Penix is being undervalued, and I think JJ McCarthy is being widely overvalued. I think McCarthy is your classic case of a QB that suddenly just flies up the rankings after the season concludes, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. Usually, these guys do not pan out well in the league.

As for Maye, Daniels and Nix, I really don’t have strong feelings on any of them. I think they’re all good players, although I put Nix below McCarthy just because while I’m a serious McCarthy doubter, I think that based on the tools he has and how much younger than Nix he is, he does have higher upside and unrealized potential, so for that reason I would probably roll the dice on him over Nix if I were drafting for a QB and Williams, Maye, Daniels and Penix were already off the board.

So in this post, I will quickly go over my thoughts on Maye, Daniels and Nix and why I have them ranked the way I do.

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2. Drake Maye

Drake Maye is my second QB in the draft. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really see a whole lot of him in college because I don’t really watch a ton of ACC football. But what I did see of Maye, I liked.

Previously, I was going back and forth between him at #2 and Daniels at #2, I flipped them a few times, but I’ve settled on Maye at #2 in my rankings because I simply do not trust Jayden Daniels’ small frame. More on that in a bit.

Drake Maye has great size–he’s big, but not too big. He’s 6’4″, 223lbs. Hands a touch on the small side at 9 and 1/8th inches, but that’s okay. We don’t have a 40 time for him but he’s pretty athletic and mobile, which is obviously a plus.

I see him as a playmaker, not just a standard pocket passer. He does have a little bit of that magic to him, where he makes “Wow” plays out of nothing. I didn’t realize how creative and cheeky he was until I pulled up his tape. At the same time, though, he can hang back in the pocket and deliver strikes.

The arm is good but not phenomenal. I think as a prospect, Drake Maye is a clear tier below Caleb Williams–there’s nobody in this draft that even comes close to Caleb, in my view. But for Maye, I think he throws a nice deep ball, I really love his throwing motion–it’s just so smooth, efficient and above all, natural. Maybe it could be a little quicker, but I wouldn’t change it. He looks like a natural passer, it’s not all clunky and over-coached. It almost looks like he came out of the womb with that throwing motion–like he was born to throw a football. He throws a catchable ball, he throws with anticipation, into tight windows. He’s a really good thrower of the football. There is a lot to like with Maye. He can do it all.

In terms of upside for Maye, I would probably say he has the potential to be a top 10 QB in the league, but I won’t play the comp game because really, who knows? People are saying his comp is Justin Herbert, which I guess I can see, but again, I don’t like comps because when has a comp actually ever played out?

To be honest, he reminds me more of Josh Allen than Justin Herbert, but I can see a bit of both those guys in him, which is a really good sign.

I’d probably be more excited about him if Caleb Williams wasn’t overshadowing him, and really, the more I think about it, I would not be surprised if Drake Maye turns out to be a really good NFL QB. I feel like he had to carry his UNC team for most of his college career, and they put a lot on his shoulders, which I think bodes well for the NFL.

I love those quarterbacks who didn’t have that elite level success in college, played for like a C or B-tier program, didn’t have a ton of talent around them, but had to do virtually everything for their teams. Mahomes was this way, and actually, low key, CJ Stroud was this way as well–even though he played for Ohio State, their defense while he was there was pretty awful, and he really had to shoulder a lot of the burden from basically his first start. Josh Allen played for freaking Wyoming, come on.

Justin Herbert is another quarterback who was like this in college–even though he went to Oregon, which is a top 5-7 program currently, when he was there, they were in rough shape. Herbert played all four years there and he had three different head coaches.

I think quarterbacks who are in situations like this in college, where they have a ton of responsibility and are asked to do everything for their teams, overcome dysfunction and chaos–these guys really grow up fast and become grown men. I think they’re the most NFL-ready when they come in. Caleb Williams is another guy who was in this type of situation in college–he was asked to carry the team since he was a freshman at Oklahoma.

Jalen Hurts is another guy–started at Bama as a freshman, overcame adversity later in his career with being benched, had to transfer to Oklahoma, really developed there as a passer. By the time Hurts got to the NFL, he’s been through so much and was such a grown up.

I do like these types of guys more than, say, a Trevor Lawrence type who was on a team that was so good he was able to win a National Championship as a freshman. They had like a 28-29 game win streak, they were in the National Championship two years in a row–I just don’t think he faced a ton of adversity in college and didn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders at Clemson. I don’t mean to pick on him, I just wanted to provide an example.

Now a counter-argument could be Joe Burrow, who was on a National Championship-winning team with absolutely world class receivers, but when you really look at Joe, he went through a lot of adversity. He was at Ohio State first, graduated without ever starting a game; competed with Haskins but got beat out due to a hand injury. Transferred to LSU, had a rough first year–Joe Burrow really developed himself a ton and had to basically go out and take everything he wanted. Nothing was given to him, he wasn’t some highly-touted QB prospect. He was really that proverbial rose who busted through the concrete, you know?

Anyway, I like the fact that Drake Maye didn’t play for some elite team in college. I like the fact that his team relied on him so heavily in every game. I think that builds maturity, and I think it gets you ready for the NFL.

Maye finished his college career with 952 pass attempts, which is over my crucial 900 career college pass attempts mark that I think is really important, so that’s a big plus.

Another thing I like about Maye: he started as a redshirt freshman, and really just came out guns blazing in that 2022 season: 4300 yards, 38 TDs and 7 INTs, 517 pass attempts, 66% completion rate. He was asked to do it all from the very start, and he did. Obviously late bloomers like Joe Burrow can and do pan out wonderfully, but I really am a big fan of these guys who show that NFL potential immediately. CJ Stroud was another one where it was apparent almost immediately that he was really good.

So I am firm on Drake Maye as my #2 QB prospect. I flipped back and forth, but eventually I came to my senses and locked him in here at #2.

It’s one of those “don’t overthink it” things. Drake Maye has for years now been considered the #2 QB in this draft class, and then, after the season, suddenly he’s not? Our opinions on him flipped in a couple of months? It happens every year. Pre-draft Overthinking.

I talk incessantly about how stupid the 2021 draft process was, where we had known since 2018 that Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields were by far the two best QB prospects in their class, they are going to go 1 and 2 the moment they’re able to go to the NFL. And that status quo remained in plac3 until about a few months before the draft, when all of the sudden it’s like, “Well actually, Zach Wilson is the #2 prospect. And actually, Trey Lance is the #3 prospect. And now Justin Fields might actually be the 5th QB in this draft!”

It was ridiculous. They’d just blown up the whole QB draft board, outside of T-Law, in a matter of months. And it all happened after the season had concluded!

And not only did they move Zach Wilson and TREY LANCE ahead of Fields, they were also talking about moving MAC JONES ahead of him? When the Niners moved up to the third pick, there was real talk going on that they moved for MAC FUCKING JONES. Serious people believed that.

And when the Bears were drafting that night, I was on the ground on my knees praying to the Lord above that they would take Justin Fields and not Mac Jones. It was a real conversation back then. People really were talking about Mac Jones like he was a top-10, potentially top-5 QB draft prospect.

All this is to say, let’s not do the overthinking thing again when it comes to Drake Maye. Drake Maye has been penciled in as the second best QB prospect in this draft class behind Caleb Williams for years now. When he was a freshman, we did the whole “If this kid could declare for the draft now he’d be a top 5 pick” thing.

That said, Chris Simms has him ranked sixth in the class. He’s got him behind McCarthy, Penix and Bo Nix. There was a while there where Drake Maye had fallen out of favor to a large extent. Even though people have come back to their senses a bit, nobody’s really excited about Maye. It’s like… Eh, he’s fine. And I get it, because I’m the same way–it’s all about Caleb. But, still, the more I look at Maye, the more excited I get about him.

What I want to do now before I move on to Jayden Daniels is consider some of the downside stuff for Drake Maye.

Chris Simms gets clowned for a lot of his position rankings, and a lot of them are bad, but he evaluates the quarterback position pretty well. He’s awful at evaluating wide receivers, and I don’t pay attention to his other position rankings, but when it comes to QBs, he’s got a pretty damn good track record. He was pounding the table for CJ Stroud last year, told everybody who would listen that Stroud was hands-down the best QB in the draft and Bryce Young should not go ahead of him.

So it does give me pause when Chris Simms says he isn’t high on Drake Maye. Basically he said there’s a lot of good plays, but also a lot of bone-headed bad plays. And look, Simms might be completely right. Merrill Hodge is another guy who is really down on Maye, even going as far as to say he’s the type of player who will get a GM fired. And Merrill Hodge knows what he’s talking about.

I’m not saying I know more than these guys, because that’s obviously not true. I’m just saying, I like Drake Maye as a prospect a lot. I think he’s got a wide skillset, there’s not much he can’t do, and he’s got all the tools to be great.

I think Maye has been unfairly judged for this past season, which saw his numbers take a noticeable dip:

Granted he played in two fewer games in 2023, but in 2022, his completion rate was 66% vs. 63% in 2023. His raw yards per attempt went up slightly this year, but his adjusted yards per attempt, which factors in touchdowns and interceptions, was considerably lower. He had 38 TDs vs 24 in 2023, and he had fewer interceptions in 2022 than he did in 2023 despite playing in two more games in 2022. His passer rating dropped from 158 to 149.

So he definitely looked to have taken a step back this past year, but I think a lot of that had to do with losing his offensive coordinator, Phil Longo, who went to Wisconsin to join Luke Fickell’s staff in 2023.

Also, in 2022, he had an NFL-caliber receiver in Josh Downs (brother of Ohio State safety Caleb Downs). Downs was drafted in the third round by the Colts last year, and UNC didn’t really have an adequate replacement for him this past season. Well, they did–Tez Walker, a transfer–but for some reason the NCAA slapped some stupid and selective ineligibility restrictions on him which made him have to miss the first half of the season, until they finally came to their senses and let him take the field.

So Maye was dealing with a new offensive coordinator and a downgraded wide receiver corps (until Tez Walker was allowed to play). I think that, more than anything else, was the reason you saw regression.

More importantly, I don’t think he was bad this season by any stretch, nor do I think the Drake Maye of 2022 just suddenly vanished. It’s like Caleb Williams–there’s this idea that he regressed from 2022 to 2023, but in reality, the team around him just got worse and it forced him to press and take too many risks. Same thing with Drake Maye.

But see, this is the kind of stuff the NFL guys miss, because they don’t watch college football. A lot of them are proud of this, too–they don’t watch the games, only the film cuts in the months leading up to the draft. In my opinion, this is why they miss so much, but that’s a topic for another day.

Bottom line: Drake Maye is firmly my #2 QB in this draft.

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3. Jayden Daniels

The talent is undeniable, there’s a lot of comparison with Lamar Jackson although I like Daniels’ arm more than Jackson’s.

But Daniels’ frame concerns me. I just don’t know if I could go for a quarterback built like this:

He’s just too skinny for me. He looks like his pants size is about a 30-32 at the waist.

He’s got the body type of a wide receiver.

And he takes a ton of hits. If Anthony Richardson couldn’t survive an NFL season without getting injured, how will Jayden Daniels?

Obviously Daniels is quicker and more elusive than Richardson, but I really think Daniels is in for a rude awakening in the NFL in terms of what he’ll be able to get away with.

The difference between him and Lamar is that Lamar is really elusive and for the most part good at avoiding those punishing hits. And he still misses a lot of games.

Just look at all these punishing hits Daniels took:

This shit concerns me. It really does.

And it would be one thing if he had a bigger frame, but he doesn’t. He’s got this slender ectomorph frame and he gets blown TF up regularly? It’s worrying.

Twitter was saying he looks like a Looney Tunes character when he gets hit, and when they put the sound effects over the plays, it had me rolling.

That upright, devil-may-care running style concerns me. And yes, I am absolutely factoring injury risk into these evaluations. I thought Bryce Young’s diminutive stature was enough reason to knock him down in my rankings–the talent and character were off the charts, but unfortunately Bryce Young is 5’9” and 185lbs. That has to be taken into account. That is way too small for a quarterback.

With Jayden Daniels, he’s plenty tall (about 6’3″ and a half), but again, his slim frame and the amount of big hits I’ve seen him take, that gives me major cause for concern. It doesn’t matter how good and talented a quarterback is if he cannot stay on the field. We don’t even know if Anthony Richardson is any good because he got injured so quickly in his rookie season. He could not protect himself, and even as big as he is, nobody can withstand the level of punishment the NFL represents. Cam Newton, the biggest, baddest physical specimen to ever play the quarterback position, in my opinion: washed out of the league by 31. The hits took their toll on him. He did not have a long career.

Lamar Jackson, I don’t care that he won the MVP this year. That was a joke of an award anyway since the Ravens defense carried them. Your League MVP scored 10 points at home in the AFC Championship Game–enjoy the trophy, though. Lamar is not the same player he was in 2019. I’ll stand on that. I don’t think Lamar is one of those guys that will play until he’s 35, 36, 37. I think he’ll be washed by 31 or 32. He’ll be a shell of himself.

Again, I think Jayden Daniels has a better arm than Lamar, but I just don’t think Daniels will be able to stay healthy.

I don’t know, man.

But let’s get more into the overall picture with Daniels.

He’s the least “impactful” Heisman winner in quite a bit. What I mean by that is, his team was never really relevant in the national picture. They lost their first game of the year and from there you’re basically already out of the playoff picture barring something crazy. And as we now know, not even a Heisman quarterback season could salvage their season. 

So even though he played in the SEC at a high profile school like LSU, Daniels’ Heisman campaign was relatively obscure. His team was an afterthought in the SEC, deep in the shadow of both Georgia and Alabama. Admittedly, I haven’t really seen a whole lot of Daniels. His team wasn’t really relevant nationally, the only games I can really remember were the FSU and Bama games. And the end of the Ole Miss game, too. Now I’m not saying it was his fault, because their defense was atrocious. He did all he could. But still, this year, more than any I can remember in recent years, the Heisman felt like an afterthought.

Last year, when Caleb Williams won it, at least his team was in the Pac 12 Championship. The other three finalists–Stroud, Duggan and Stetson–were all on playoff teams. 2022 had an extremely relevant Heisman race, where the main competitors were on the best teams.

Same with 2021, too: you had Bryce Young, Aidan Hutchinson, CJ Stroud and Kenny Pickett. Young and Hutchinson were both on playoff teams. It was a relevant Heisman race.

Anyway, not to get too carried away here, but I think it’s the fact that Daniels was the least nationally relevant Heisman winner in several years that makes me kind of undervalue him. I think I’m biased against him and prone to viewing him as a guy who puts up great numbers that don’t translate into winning–empty calories. Even though I know at the same time, it wasn’t his fault because of how bad their defense was.

Their defense at LSU this past year was fucking awful. Truly awful.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s hard for me to evaluate him fairly, or really take him seriously as an elite prospect, yet I know it isn’t really his fault. And it’s unfair of me.

I look at Jayden Daniels and see a more polished Lamar Jackson with a better arm.

Now, he does not have that freakish explosive speed Lamar has. Or at least had, I don’t think Lamar is quite as explosive as he was in 2019, likely a result of repeated leg injuries.

But make no mistake, Daniels will come into the league and be one of the three fastest quarterbacks alongside Lamar and Justin Fields. Daniels has legit 4.4 speed, don’t get it twisted. He is fast as fuck, boi. He’s more of an upright runner, and it makes it look kind of like he’s scampering a bit, kind of running for his life, whereas Lamar legitimately looked like Percy Harvin running the ball.

It’s not a huge deal. All I’m saying is I just don’t see that “holy shit” or truly explosive quality to Daniels’ running that younger Lamar had, but that’s okay because pretty much no quarterback other than Lamar and Michael Vick has had that unreal burst. Daniels is still really shifty and elusive, and he can absolutely run away from dudes.

But the main thing here is his arm. Jayden Daniels was out there dotting dudes up this season. Go watch his highlight reel–there are some incredibly impressive throws. His ball placement may be the best in the draft just in terms of hitting guys perfectly in stride and putting the ball in the perfect spot. He can drop it into a bucket, and it almost seems unfair that he’s as good a runner as he is as well.

I don’t know if Daniels is on that CJ Stroud level as a ball placement wizard, but he’s honestly not that far off. Again, just go watch his highlight reel; he’s frequently dropping it in there to covered receivers. These are some very impressive throws, and for people who haven’t watched a lot of Jayden Daniels, they probably think he’s a pure running quarterback with an arm more or less like Lamar’s.

No. Daniels has a better arm than Lamar Jackson–way better than when Lamar was coming out of college, and honestly, still right now. (I don’t think Lamar has a good arm–there are a lot of people in the media who say he’s got this elite arm, I don’t buy it.)

So there is a lot to like with Daniels. If he learns to protect himself, maybe fills out a little bit, I think he could be a really, really dangerous dual threat quarterback. He can beat you with his legs and his arms. There is a ton to like here.

But that frame and those hits, I can’t rank him any higher than this. Pure talent-wise, he’s right up there around Caleb Williams. I just don’t think he’ll be able to stay on the field.

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6. Bo Nix

College pass attempts: 1936, the most of any QB drafted in the first round since at least 1998.

Feel like the ceiling with Nix is lower than all the rest of the QBs in this class, but I do think he has a decently high floor. Nix is a grown up, he’s a great kid,  and any team should be happy to have him. He will be an asset to whoever drafts him, but how much of an asset?

I see him as a checkdown merchant who rarely threw the ball downfield. That can work in today’s NFL, if you are in the right system.

But I just don’t see a lot of dynamic with Nix. 

And it’s hard for me to get the images of how bad his first year or two at Auburn went–back when they used to call him Bo Pix.

If you actually look at his Auburn stats, though, they’re not that bad, honestly. He was thrust in as the starter as a redshirt freshman, threw 16 TDs and 6 picks, with a 6.7 yards per attempt mark. Yes, he only completed 57% of his passes, but I was expecting a lot more INTs for a guy who got the nickname Bo Pix.

Overall, in five years of college action (2020 season didn’t count so he’s actually played five full years), he has improved his completion percentage and yards per attempt every single year.

His numbers really took a giant leap, however, once he transferred to Oregon in 2022. Is that a result of weaker defenses and overall competition in the Pac 12? A better and more competent offensive system? Probably a combination of the two, I’d wager.

So what’s not to like about Bo Nix? Why am I so low on him?

Well, even though I just said his years at Auburn may not have been as bad as I thought, at least statistically, there were some rough moments that are kind of hard to get out of my head. First impressions are key, as we all know. 

I think it’s really just that ever since then I’ve always kind of written him off as an NFL prospect, you know? I saw him at Auburn and it was like, there’s no way this guy will ever make it to the NFL. 

Well, now here we are. He’s proven that wrong, and he’s basically become a completely different quarterback. There’s not a quarterback in this draft class that has improved more during his college tenure than Nix. I mean this guy was completing just 57% of his passes as a freshman at Auburn, but this year at Oregon he completed over 77% of his passes. That’s a remarkable improvement.

And just off the top, his numbers from this season were stellar. 45 touchdowns vs. just 3 INTs, over 4,500 yards passing, 9.6 yards per attempt.

On top of that, the guy is a capable runner. He’s definitely no Jayden Daniels, but he’s got 39 rushing touchdowns in his college career and 1,649 rushing yards. He only ran for 234 yards this past season on 54 attempts, which only comes out to a 4.3 yards per rush average, but last year he ran 91 times for 546 yards (6.0 YPC) and 15 rushing touchdowns. That’s pretty darn good.

There is admittedly a lot to work with here, and I’m almost questioning whether I should be higher on him.

But the thing I can’t get past is the checkdown merchant stuff. Apparently–and I am unable to confirm this since I can’t find the advanced stats, so I’m going off an account I follow on Twitter–Bo Nix in 2023 had one of the lowest ADOTs, average depth of target, in the entire FBS at just 6.9 yards. That means on average, he was only throwing the ball 6.9 yards past the line of scrimmage.

Over a quarter of his passes (27.6%) were behind the line of scrimmage, so bubble screens and swing passes and things like that. It’s earned him the new nickname “Bubble Screen Bo,” which I guess is better than Bo Pix.

39% of his passes were between 0-9 yards, meaning over ⅔ of his passes didn’t travel more than 9 yards down the field.

He’s like the anti-Michael Penix. In fact, if you were somehow able to combine both him and Penix, it would be an unstoppable quarterback–Penix’s deep ball with Nix’s short throwing ability.

But alas, we can’t do that. And if you draft Bo Nix you are getting a guy who doesn’t throw it deep.

Why doesn’t he throw it deep? Oregon fans will probably tell you he was just operating within the structure of the offense–same excuse Michigan fans trot out for why JJ McCarthy didn’t throw the ball much.

But I’m going to offer the same explanation I did for JJ McCarthy: Nix didn’t throw the ball down the field because they didn’t trust him to. He’s not good at it, so they didn’t let him. They stuck to what he was good at and avoided the things he was bad at.

At least for McCarthy, his team won the Championship, so there’s a veneer of legitimacy to the “He just didn’t have to throw!” refrains. Nix’s team didn’t win the Championship, and in fact proved twice to be unable to get over the hump against Washington despite being heavy favorites to do so. So nobody can even try to say, “They didn’t need Nix to throw deep.” The only excuse you can really offer for Nix is, “He was just operating within the structure of the offense; following orders.”

Fine, whatever. But you’ll never convince me the true reason wasn’t that they simply didn’t think he could throw it deep and didn’t trust him to do so.

If he could, they would’ve let him. Might’ve been helpful against Washington.

Again, like I said in the McCarthy post: coaches don’t intentionally make the game harder on themselves. They don’t withhold tools they can use. They don’t voluntarily fight with one arm tied behind their backs.

So I’m operating under the assumption that Bo Nix can’t throw it deep, and that if you draft him, you’re going to need to run your offense like the Saints did in Drew Brees’ later years when his arm strength really fell off a cliff, but he was still incredibly accurate and obviously whip smart.

As it would happen, the coach for those Saints teams–Sean Payton–is in the market for a quarterback, and has the 12th pick. Joel Klatt seems to believe there’s a good chance Denver drafts Nix, as Klatt once played for Sean Payton in New Orleans and believes Nix would fit Payton’s system well.

Personally, drafting Nix at 12 is a bit rich for my blood, but quarterbacks are also valued differently. If Sean Payton is convinced he’s the perfect guy for his system, there’s no reason not to draft him at 12. Or, if you think you can, just trade down and take him later.

But even if he does resemble later years Drew Brees, and has the ability to run Payton’s style of offense in Denver, the real question is: can you picture Bo Nix winning a Super Bowl? Leading a team there? I can’t.

For some reason, I think the best case scenario with him is that he becomes a Brock Purdy type.

Then this came out: 

Brother, you cannot say that. Even if it’s true. Does the south care a little too much about football? Maybe. Maybe people down south do have an “unhealthy obsession,” but saying this just makes you look soft.

We all know the SEC as the pinnacle of competition in college football–the toughest, most unforgiving conference in the country.

And Bo Nix is basically saying, “It was too much for me.”

That’s a soft look.

So now I’m starting to look at Bo Nix as a “nice guy,” which is great, but I want a guy with some shit to him. You see Mahomes yelling and getting heated, Joe Burrow has a calm and cool demeanor but beneath the surface he’s a killer. Tom Brady was called “Psycho T” for a reason. Peyton Manning was dog-cussing everyone in sight when somebody fucked up.

We’re talking about the NFL here, you have to go out there and take every win you get. There’s no gimmes. It’s no place for softness.

Couple that with Bo Nix’s underwhelming skillset–I think he’s a pretty good prospect, but overall, I just don’t see him as a guy you can win a Super Bowl with. I’m not spending a first round pick on a guy like that. I’m just not. Why would I, if I don’t think I can win a Super Bowl with him? I just don’t see a compelling reason.

I see him as a guy who will more than likely be bouncing around as a backup in the next 3-4 years, like a Mitch Trubisky or a Kenny Pickett type.

Doesn’t really move the needle for me.