Alan Truex: All-out rush is on for flawed quarterbacks in upcoming draft

This time last year the NFL teams were bemoaning the lackluster quarterbacks they were about to draft.  No Andrew Luck, no Carson Wentz, not even a Jared Goff.  Only one was deemed “ready to start,” and Deshaun Watson was slammed for lacking “exit velocity.”

Hey, is he supposed to hit receivers or home runs?  Has anyone pointed the radar gun at Drew Brees or Philip Rivers?

But this year everyone is more forgiving of quarterbacking flaws.  Six or seven NFL teams are stumbling over each other to grasp a quarterback.  Doesn’t matter that all the available ones, according to all the scouting reports, are more flawed than Watson or Mitch Trubisky, who turned out to be the best of the 2017 draft.  So far, anyway.

A year ago a passer with Sam Darnold’s unwieldy delivery and history of turnovers (22 in 2017) would not have been a top-10 pick.

As for Josh Allen, he looks eerily similar to Blake Bortles: big, mobile, power-armed, but about as accurate as a loose garden hose spraying water at full volume.

Allen was seventh-ranked passer in a fringe conference.  But he aced his Wonderlic and all the other tests and appears to have what it takes to be rated No. 1 by the Cleveland Browns.

The Browns, who will keep trying until they get it right, are again choosing First Overall, repeating, against all odds, as worst team in the NFL.  They like Allen’s upside, not that they’d know an upside if they saw one.

Baker Mayfield?  Very accurate (70% completions), but Patrick Mahomes beat him out at Texas Tech.  Is it picky to mention that Mayfield is shorter than 6-1 and that his Air Raid schooling didn’t teach him how to backpedal?

And are you comfortable with a leader who taunts opponents and grabs his crotch in front of TV cameras?   Baker is so flaky that one NFL team reportedly hired a detective to track his off-the-field journeys.  Is he following the footsteps of Drew Brees?  Or Johnny Manziel?

Those teams leery of bipolar or personality disorder might also shy away from Josh Rosen, who polarized the most laid-back locker room in America: UCLA’s.  He offends some with his brashness – the way Aaron Rodgers does – and with his blue-state political views – the way Colin Kaepernick does.   Rosen wore an anti-Trump cap on the president’s golf course.  He’s asking for nuclear twitter war.

Perhaps it’s beside the point, but Rosen’s arm is quick, and accurate at all ranges.  He’s the most talented, most developed of this group of QBs.  But how committed is he to football?  Wouldn’t he rather be on Roseanne?

The most disturbing question about Rosen:  Is he Sam Bradford, big, tall but too immobile to avoid injuries?  Rosen already has had right-shoulder surgery and two concussions.

After that Big (or not so big) Four we have Lamar Jackson, who the most respected of quarterback evaluators, Hall of Famer Bill Polian, calls a wide receiver a la Terrelle Pryor.  “The accuracy isn’t there.  . . . clearly not the thrower the other guys are.”

By the way, Polian was spot-on a year ago, advocating for Watson over Trubisky and Mahomes, who went, respectively, Nos. 2 and 10 in the draft, to Watson’s 12.  Watson was on his way to multiple rookie records until stopped by a knee injury during a Houston Texans Nov. 2 practice.

Much unlike Watson – or Rosen or Wonderlic ace Allen — there are questions about Jackson’s intelligence.  For one, he flunked the Wonderlic.   And for another, why would anyone beyond seventh grade hire his mom as his legal representative and negotiator?  All that said, Jackson is expected to be called in the first half of the first round at Jerryworld a week from Thursday.

After Jackson: Mason Rudolph, who worked out for the New England Patriots, auditioning as understudy and successor to Tom Brady, whose social media forays indicate weariness of Bill Belichick’s humorless autocracy.  Yes an autocrat can have a sense of humor.  Napoleon.  Even, on occasion, Trump.

Relative to others at his position, Rudolph could be a bargain at No. 31, where Belichick will exercise his second pick.  Unless he trades up for Jackson, whom he also worked out.

Rudolph is 6-5, accurate (65% completions) and mobile.  Scouts compare his skill set to Dak Prescott’s.

A fourth-rounder in 2016, Prescott had a resume at Mississippi State comparable to Rudolph’s at Oklahoma State.   How times have changed, with Rudolph projected for top of the second, at worst.

One reason for the quarterback frenzy is that other positions this year are not so top-loaded.

Penn State’s Saquon Barkley is an all-purpose running back comparable to Ezekiel Elliott, Le’Veon Bell and David Johnson.  But most franchises will not invest a first-rounder at a position with low durability.  At 29 a quarterback is young and a running back ancient, Frank Gore to the contrary.

If you’re not choosing a quarterback, protect the one you have with a left tackle.  Or draft an edge rusher to dismantle the opposing quarterback.

This year no tackle stands out, though I doubt anyone will regret gambling on  Quenton Nelson, a tackle-sized guard (6-5, 325) from Notre Dame.

No edge rusher is as admired as 2017’s overall No. 1, Myles Garrett, whose rookie year was curtailed by injury and the relentless Curse of the Cleveland Browns.

The best of the incoming edge rushers is thought to be Bradley Chubb of North Carolina State.  But even Chubb acknowledged, “If a team doesn’t have a quarterback, they really don’t have anything.”

Here are some teams with questionable quarterbacking: Browns, Jets, Bills, Cardinals and Dolphins (though they cling to the Ryan Tannehill delusion).

The Giants, Chargers, Saints, Patriots and Steelers have concerns with starting quarterbacks of 36+.  Denials notwithstanding, the Packers are troubled by Rodgers’ off-and-on grumpiness and increasing brittleness at 34.

As a class, the 2017 first round disappointed.  Running back Leonard Fournette and cornerbacks Marshon Lattimore, Tre’Davious White and Marlon Humphrey excelled, along with linebacker T.J. Watt (brother of J.J.) and offensive tackle Ryan Ramczyk.  But that was about it for impact players.

So general managers are thinking that since the draft is a crap shoot, let’s roll the dice with the top quarterback on the board and hope we get lucky.  I go back to what Atlanta Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff has said: “You’re never happy until you have a franchise quarterback.  You have to keep trying until you get one.”