2020 Quarterback Draft Preview with Ben Solak

Dolphins official podcast network covering your Miami Dolphins. I am your host, Travis Wingfield, and I'm here to bring you your daily dose of Miami Dolphins football and on today show the podcast, I'm sure many of you have been waiting for the quarterback preview edition of our draft shows, and who better than Benjamin Solac of the Draft Network.

He's gonna stop by to give us detailed analysis on the top four as well as the rest of this quarterback class and this interview it got very, very in depth all of that and more on this Monday, April edition of the Drift Time Podcasts. And we're gonna get to that interview with Ben here in just one second. But first, a couple of notes off the top here. I want to remind you Dolphins fans to check out our virtual Draft on the Miami Dolphins official Facebook page.

We're gonna have player interviews, draft breakdowns, a live panel covering the draft from every angle for your Miami Dolphins and the team of course, that leads the draft this year with four teen picks, fourteen selections for your Dolphins in the NFL Draft, that, of course is Thursday April at eight o'clock Eastern, and then once the draft concludes, we're not gonna be done yet with that, because we're gonna have articles and podcasts and interviews and plenty of

comprehensive coverage and all the new rookies heading to Miami in twenty at the conclusion of this year's draft, So don't miss it the Miami Dolphins Virtual Draft April on Facebook. Now, let's go ahead and get to the reason you're all here to hear Benjamin Slack breakdown this quarterback class. And this guy, if you haven't seen him on Twitter breaking down videos, breaking down players and prospects, he's one of

the very best in the game. And he has charted all these quarter backs all season long and twenty nineteen and has a good grasp on who can do what and what system. So we're gonna get to him in just one second. But first, there is obviously a lot of speculations surrounding Alabama quarterback to a tongue of Voloa and Ian Rappaport on Thursday, took to Twitter to talk about some of the workouts and the availability of those workout videos. The quarterback put out into the atmosphere for

NFL scouts and GM's tape. Look at this from Rappaport's timeline. He and Mike Garafolo sharing the story on this one. This is reading verbatim to a Tongue of Voloa participated in a one hour long workout with fifty five scripted throws and another twenty throws in a dynamic drill setting at a local private gym in place of a traditional pro day workout. There were less than ten people present

for the workout. The health and safety guidelines set forth during the COVID nineteen pandemic or practice with everyone's health and social conscious in mind. The video will be distributed to all thirty two teams per Tongue of Voloha's reps. It is that time of the year again with the draft. News is gonna come in hot and heavy from every single angle, speculation rumors, who's trading up, who's trading down.

One thing, we know for sure, we're gonna get the ins and outs on the things these quarterbacks can do to be successful at the next level with my guest Benjamin Solak of the Draft Network. So let's go ahead and roll this interview. You guys are gonna love this one. And joining the podcast now is the Senior. That's right, you heard it right, the senior draft analyst at the Draft Network and the author of Contextualized Quarterbacking Joe Burrows

releases on Saturday. The entire thing drops on Tuesday. I can't wait to read that on the Draft Network. He is Benjamin Solak, Ben, what's going on? Man? Yeah, I'm

doing well, Travis. Thank you. I appreciate you driving. The Senior can't tell you how many times I get dropped on a radio hit somewhere, and clearly the host is like just seeing, like, you know, my profile picture in my bio and he goes to introduce me and he sees that senior and he like doesn't know what to do, and he goes, he's a senior draft analyt's to the Draft Network and that's the title. Brother. Me and Ben.

We're joking off air before the podcast. His Skype profile photos from like four years ago, so he looks even younger than that one, but you wouldn't know it from his football knowledge. This guy as a wealth of knowledge, especially when it comes to the quarterback position. Before we get into that, Ben, we had a chance to meet in person back in Indianapolis before the world got crazy, and that was pretty much the last thing that I did before quarantine. How are you holding up in these

crazy times? Man? Yeah, it's wild. I mean, like, it's it's very odd to be so thankful for the NFL Draft. Usually by this time in the in the process, I don't care about these players. I don't care about these pigs. I just wanted to happen so I can go to bed and I can start thinking about something else. You know, eventually you just get inundated with it. But man, the the league, I think has really done a good job here in finding the safest way to do this while

still doing this because we really do need it. I really like we really do. It seems foolish to say we need something that's not even really live sports. It's live teams picking players to eventually play a sport. But it's something new in the sports world. And you didn't realize how much you relied on that to just kind of get through the monotony of your day until you lost it and that's kind of how that goes. And so I'm really excited and happy that the league found

a safe way to get the draft done. Hopefully it's also virtually safe and nobody gets hacked and started picking kickers in round one, of course, but we I think we have a really good opportunity to to put something together that will help out a lot of people who are struggling through this. So I'm safe, My family saved,

and that's tremendous. But it's really cool to be a very small part of what I think is an important event right now, which is the NFL Draft in the middle of quarantine, giving us all something to talk about that isn't how crazy we're going stuck at home. Yeah, the back end of March and the first part of April flew by where the tournament and stably a basketball tournament would have been, and not having that, like, that's when it really hit me that we just you're sucking Cide.

The best things to do watch sports, in my opinion, is not available to you. So I completely free agency was a great break as well, even though it's only a couple of days long. But we're gonna get into the weeds here on this draft class. But first I want to ask you some general scouting questions, Ben, because I always appreciate the way you break the game down.

You know, there's plenty of accounts out there that will tweet a video of a play and they'll tell you quarterback X throws the ball accurately here, but that doesn't really give you a whole lot of what actually happened. But you do so well to get into the design of the offense, the structure of the defense, and the

process that brought us the result of the play. So my question to you, Ben is with those really in depth videos you do, and you guys can find those on his timeline at Benjamin Solak, when you're watching the tape or those clips typically, are those clips typically like a culmination of what you think the player is and how did you arrive at this place where you're able to see things that so many others really don't. Yeah, it's tricky, so les las to it, right. I think

the first thing is which which play you choose? And sometimes it's this is a really cool play, I want to talk about it, But most of the time it's I the play that's representative of something I see frequently on film because I think the coolest thing that happens with those videos is when somebody who isn't a pro isn't an expert, wasn't a writer, who's just watching prospects because it's fun, goes back and and and you know, responds to that twee or quote, tweets that two months

later or three months later, however long, and says, I feel like, this is what's happening here, and they can correctly identify it on that player's film later a similar trait is similar issue with similar strength whatever. So so I want to grab something that's representative of something that's common on the player and also something that's important to

the evaluation of the player. You know. I think if you look at like all the Justin Herbert videos in the world from a draft perspective on Twitter would be about his arm strength. And it's just not very interesting for me to talk about arm strength in a vacuum because I don't think it's hard to to see. I don't think it's hard of it. That ball was fast, that ball was far, you know, means like pretty standard stuff. Obviously it's something you have to watch for, but I

don't think it's something that's particularly educational. So the primary thing I want to highlight these videos is an interesting event for the player that I think is representative of their film, and you can replicate finding it in different games. Now, when it comes to having the information necessary to really break down a play, I wish it was an easy answer, and it's not. You you have to expose yourself to everything,

like you gotta. The best thing I ever did was get on Twitter, which Twitter is bad for a lot of reasons, but I I you know, if I could get off Twitter, I would like it. It puts gray

hairs on my head. But the best thing I ever did, and I oh, Chuck Booth, my editor at section two on five back for us, and I always will, you know, everything I get out of this job will always go back to him saying, you've got to get on Twitter because you have to get associated with the community, and you have to expose yourself to the community, because that's where you see seven year NFL that's happening to talk

for fifteen seconds about an offensive tackles pass set. That's where you see old coaches, not where you see clips from college coaches. And this is where the information gets dispersed. You have to consume everything because the most important thing you can do in scouting, and this is the massive difficult hurdle to overcome. So you have to be able

to talk about what isn't there. You have to be able to say, this is what should have occurred, this is what could have possibly occurred, this is what we expect to occur before the ball is even snapped. But while the play is going on, before you see the outcome, you have to be able to talk about the range of outcomes, the possibilities, what could be done. How do you know the quarterback should have thrown the check down

relative to the deep past. If you haven't watched a ton of NFL quarterbacks in similar context make that same decision, you don't know what you're measuring them up against. So whenever I make the videos, and hopefully you know, in in things that I write and in scouting reports, you can find that I'm constantly trying to have a voice of he he could have done this, He was able to do that, This was available to him, but he

chose that. And that's not necessarily a weakness. Oftentimes it's just stylistic things I like what I've been using Justin Herbert as an example. I constantly talked about Justin Herbert having more throws than other quarterbacks because with his arm talent, he just got more at his disposal. He's got more things available to him. He can attempt things that Jake from cannot attempt because of his physical tools. Now he

chooses sometimes too and sometimes not to. But it's important to discuss those possibilities because it helps us calibrate to what could have happened and what actually did happen. So the main thing in order to to scout successfully is not to be able to say Justin Herbert is a better arm than Jordan's. Love was a better arm than two and Tug is a better arm than Joe Burrow like, which is all true and good, but it is to say Justin Herbert could have done all of these things.

He could have managed the pocket like Joe Burrow, and he could have thrown in rhythm like to a toungo by Lola, But he elected to hold the pocket strong, be strong, steady, his feet throw out of rhythm deep down the field. This is why he was able to do it. This is how the outcome of the play was this is the sort of offense that will work in is the sort of offense it won't work in.

You need to have all of this information, all of these outcomes at your disposal in order to accurately talk about how valuable play is, what it was in context, and what it brings to a team. So the most important thing is exposing yourself. Anything that you can watch, anything that you can read, the talks about why a play happened, Do it, and continue to gain the knowledge

game and knowledge game the knowledge. Then make your own assumptions, make your own scouts and scouting decisions, your own judgments, publicize them, and when they're wrong, swallow the pill and keep rolling because you just got better and you're gonna get it right next time. I absolutely love that answer for two reasons. One, you talk about exposing yourself. I've

always called myself a football sponge. And you talk about being on Twitter, Like you said, there are so many great accounts that can tweet videos of prospects and tell you here's the technicalities of what they're doing wrong or

what they're doing right. But also just like watching different things on television or being a sponge on YouTube, like, for instance, I learned a good tight end blocking technique based on Luke Wilson trying to learn how to block at tight end on hard knocks one time, you just like always open yourself up to what's out there for un available. People have vast knowledge of this game and they'll teach you that stuff. And also just putting yourself

in front of the screen. Because when I first started out, Ben, you made a mention back to team. I started a website called third and ten dot com where I charted every single quarterbacks throws in the NFL that year, And at first I didn't really know what I was doing, but by the end of the project, I had a better idea better field because I had seen thousands and thousands of throws. So at the time the effort, I love it, I appreciate it, and it shows in your workman.

And with that, let's go ahead and get into the weeds here on these quarterbacks, not the draft quarterbacks yet. I want to talk first about Ryan Fitzpatrick because you talk about the options that the quarterback has at his disposal, and he was playing so well down the stretch. The offense was humming. You saw it against your Philadelphia Eagles.

Ben not to bring up a sore subject there, but you know I say this all the time, and it gets greeded with backlash that quarterbacks with cerebral aptitude for the game, the more they see, they're only going to get better as their career goes along. And so last training camp, when Ryan Fitzpatrick tells US Dolphins reporters that he thinks his best ball is ahead of him, I think he was right. Do you see that on his tape? Right?

So Fitzpatrick is so freaking fun, right, and and and what I think your reality is with Fitzpatrick is he doesn't look it because he's a bearded Harvard middle aged wild man. But the league has developed towards his skill set. Right. Fitzpatrick in twenty nineteen had a top ten intended air yards per Next Gen Stats. I think he was like seventh, And then he had a bottom five time to throw.

He was third last in the league. I remember this because in twenty nineteen he beat up on the Eagles, uh for the Dolphins and d and he did it in Tampa and it was the exact same thing. It was extremely low time to throw and extremely deep intended air yards. Ryan Fitzpatrick is an ideal deep rhythm thrower.

Ryan Fitzpatrick will take a shotgun snap, sit back on a three step drop, and if he sees he has one on one coverage to the outside, whether it was to Mike Evans DeVante Barker in twenty nineteen, he's taking the shot because Fitzpatrick understands. Listen, if I've got a fifty fifty ball twenty five yards down the field, that's got plus e V relative to an eight ball, it's five yards down the field for example New England's in Week seventeen. I mean, let's got the best cover corners

in the league. How's Miami putting points on them? Well, it's because even if they're low percentage throws, explosive plays will even the odds. It will even the seesaw for offenses that are potentially struggling against top defenses. So Fitzpatrick gets rid of the ball quickly but down the field. And I said that the league has grown towards his play style. It certainly has. You know, this is the

rhythm game. In the twenty thousands, two thousand five, thou eight was the quick game and the deep passing game was the under center, seventh step drop all the way down the field, reading against two high safety game now out of a shotgun thrown against leverage one on one coverage outside the numbers. This is something that has become the standard deep passing play in the NFL's It's been

adopted from college spread systems. That's a great throw for Fitzpatrick's skill set, so the league has grown towards his play style. He's an incredibly aggressive quarterback who still remains risk averse because of how quickly gets rid of the ball, so he doesn't take sax. He doesn't fumble the ball in the pocket nearly as much as other quarterbacks who

throw the ball deep down the field. We had Neil Reynolds of Sky Sports on the podcast last week and he was breaking down uh an interview that he had with Ryan Fitzpatrick one on one, and he put it perfectly. In my opinion, Fitzpatrick looks like a guy that want a quarterback competition from the fans to come out and play for a game, and he Fitzpatrick loved it. He agreed, he laughed about it. But he's out there getting the job done. Lead the team in rushing, had the big

plays explosive downfield aerial assault like you mentioned Ben. And with that, now let's go ahead and transition back towards the young pups coming into the league this year. There are a top four list in this draft. I think everybody is unanimous on the draft network is unanimous on these guys, all within the top thirty seven players on your guys big board. Joe Burrow to a tongue of voloa, justin Herbert Jordan Love. He touched on the arm strength

a little bit there. But can you kind of separate these guys in terms of who does what the best? And where might these guys come off the board? Uh? Just two weeks now? Yeah, Joe Burrows, he's kind of good travel. I don't know to watch him, you intern, I can play a little ball. Uh. Burrow will be right up there with Baker Mayfields as the most accurate quarterback I've charted in three years so. I've been doing

textual as quarterbacking since the eighteen class. I started it as a result of the ten class and kind of the incredible amount of of debate and and and scheme specific questions that were on that class. Baker was the most accurate quarterback by far, He's one of the few quarterbacks that's been accurate on more than nine out of ten passes. Uh, Burrow is going to be another one of those guys. And actually Jordan's Love is accurate on exactly point nine zero one pent of his passes, which

is funny, but that Loves a different conversation. Burrow is going to go down as one of the most accurate quarterbacks that I've ever evaluated. Now, what Burrow brings that Mayfield didn't have was pocket management like you wouldn't believe and and Burrows elite trade his pocket management and ploys. Bur is never out of a play. When we talk about players who can extend plays, we typically think of

Russell Wilson's. We think of Kyler Murray's and Patrick Mahomes and these quarterbacks have elite physical tools to break tackles, to escape sacks, and to run on the hoof making throws on the run while still abating defenders. Burrow does have plus athleticism. You know, people, oh Burrows sneaky athletic and Burrows like got all high school state point guard like Burrow has been athletics since the beginning. What Burrow has his pocket management. Burrow does not need to break

the pocket to extend plays his his vestibular sense. So the understanding of where space is developing in the pocket, where offensive linemen are going to end up pushing rushers, how twists and stunts are going to develop to create space up when you're hitching up in the pocket, it's sublime. And for a player who hasn't started for more than two seasons, it's ridiculous that he's this experience that he's poised. We typically associate poise developing with maturity, developing with experience.

The more time you spend in the pocket, the better you'll get it managing it. Burrows stepped in. Even his best trade was pocket management in nineteen he only got better. This is extremely natural for him to manage the space of the pocket. So in a in a timing based offense, Burrow is gonna be just fine. He's gonna be quality, just like two would be because he can deliver the ball on time, deliver it with the accuracy you understand spacing.

But even in a in a if you think of like a Tennessee style offense, a Los Angeles Rams style offense, Green Bay Cincinnati, I'm talking about the Sean McVeigh tree here where they're gonna ask you to take five step drops from under center after play action and there's gonna be two to three routes all developing deep down the field. You've gotta be able to hang in that pocket for two point five two point seven five three seconds. Burrows

the ideal quarterback. He's the ideal candidate because he makes blocking for him so easy because he moves his spots so nicely. So that's where Burrow is going to be at his strongest, and that trade translates everywhere. No matter what offense he ends up in, Burrow is gonna be able to make big plays because he's gonna be able to last in the pocket for a long time and

evade the first and invade the second sack. He's more so a pocket passer, and when he gets the comps to Drew Brees, they're accurate because his ability to distribute short intermediate in the quick game accurately and in rhythm is delightful. I mean he's pure, right, I mean, he's he's he's steady. You can set a metronome to this dude, like he's just so consistent, justin Herbert his quarterback three for me, and I think Tuah is closer to Herbert

than Tuah is to Burrow. I think that that that Herbert and Tuah is more so of a tier than Tah and and Burrow is a tear. Herbert has never been better than he is right now. And that's important to talk about because Herbert first jumped onto NFL radars in the back half of it started for over a

full season. It was his sophomore year. Oregon football was finally turning around, first year with Marcus Arroyo as his offensive coordinator, and he really started to show that that arm strength and that mobility was going to become NFL draft worthy. That junior season was up and down. He was going to be a first round pick, but it was up and down. There were question marks his ability to handle pressure. He faded away from contact, his mechanics

fell apart whenever the pockets started to get nasty. It was up and down. He elects to go back to school and he got better. That's a really big deal that at no point in his entire career would his stock be higher than it is right now. He has an absolute rocket. Oh my God, like you watch this dude makes him throws and you're just piste off. He gets me up out of my seat. I mean, it's just silly bow Billy I. He's so much fun to

watch because of the physical tools. This is a very similar player to Josh Allen coming out of Wyoming two years ago. Jordan left the final one here. Quarterback four for me and contextualized quarterbacking distinguishes between the two, and it's critical that it does. Accurate balls are catchable. He puts the ball into places receiver can make a play on the football, but balls with good placement are adjusted relative to defenders, relative to leverage, relative to yak. You

want to throw with good placement. You don't always want to hit a receiver right between the numbers every time, right Travis. Sometimes you want to lead him down the field, bring him post a line of scrimmage, bring him into the ground, forced him to elevate. These throws require context. So right now, he is such delightful arm talent. He throws with touch like college quarterbacks typically can't throw out. And that's so important was grabbing him and developing him.

When the dude gets outside of the pocket, he still has all sixty yards of the field to throw it too, because he has such a natural release, such a smooth and explosive release of the football off of his hand,

and he's got delightful deep accuracy. So I am so in on Jordan's love, and I want to take a quick detour right there, Ben, because one of the things you'll often see in scouting circles are on Twitter or whatever it might be, is that some quarterbacks, as you move throughout the course of the draft might have to develop their game a little bit further as we get into day two and day three. I sometimes think those

arguments lacked context. So when you talk about having a year to kind of grow and develop, I think that can be kind of a trope or maybe like a cliche thing for a fan to say, or maybe even you know, someone in the in the industry to say, this guy just needs some time to sit and learn behind quarterback X, Like, can you tell us what that means?

Because we hear it so many times, Like what when the quarterback gets drafted, Like for instance, let's use Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City, they already had Alex Smith who was playing good ball limited quarterback, but he he was a good quarterback. They bring Patrick Mahomes and behind him, who was basically the key to the ferrari of the offense,

but they develop him four years. So when you draft that quarterback like Mahomes, you draft him, is there like a set plan in place where you say, we're gonna have him learned this aspect of the offense and O T s. We're gonna open him up to this in training camp and then throughout the course of the season he'll do this, And like, how does that work? I love the question. I'm so glad you asked it because

I was going along there. Usually if I was ever going to say something like he needs a year to develop, I would immediately parse that because we absolutely use it as a throwaway line and it needs to be discussed. Development is not the same player as a player. Dwayne Haskins came out in twenty nineteen. I low grade on him. I was worried about Askins. You're one starter, big ten Urban Meyer, horizontal spread, throw the ball to the fast guy.

Let the fast guy do a lot of work right and Haskins had issues dealing with pressure and adjusting his reads pre snap the post snap. That to me could have been prohibitive for year one play. This was a player that I believed strongly needed to go out and be bad in his first season. He needed to play because even though it was going to be ugly, experience was going to be the best teacher for a player like Haskins who had so little experience at the college level.

You had really a multiple ball of clay here. He hadn't been taught that much for that long, and with the Urban Meyer offense, as we know, the stuff he'd been taught was pretty fundamental, was pretty simple. So you got to get him out on the field and you can help build up his habits, build up his reflexes, what he sees and how he reacts to it, fundamentally

with your own offense that's in place. And that's a big thing right now for Haskins, having already changed head coaches in Washington, is that they've really got to start getting him on the right developmental path that they're gonna lose that window to create his habits Accordingly, I want a player to sit when I believe he has bad habits, I need to wean him off of I need to take him off the playing fields that he does not

resort to the bad habits when things break down. I need to teach him new reactions to things like pressure, to things like post nap rotation. Two things that always change the NFL level the faster speed of corners and linebackers, the closing windows. I need to teach the new reactions to these things, because if I don't, he help fall back on old habits and will never get away from them.

If you guys want to find Ben's contextualized quarterback up on the Draft Network, Joe Burrow drops on Saturday, the rest drops on Tuesday, I believe is the plan for the Draft Network, and go check out their entire website. They have every player across this draft ranked. There are player profiles, mock drafts, everything you could want. At the Draft Network. We have Ben Slack here on the Drivetime podcast. Here your official Miami Dolphins podcast network, and those are

your top four quarterbacks. I think most folks expect those four to come off the board at some point in the first round night number one Thursday. Then we get to Friday and maybe one of these guys could sneak into Thursday night. But you guys have a big gap between Jordan's Love at thirty seven, down to Jalen Hurts at seventy seven, Jake from An eighty two, and Jacob Easton at nine two, and then of course there's another massive,

massive gap. But those three players, I mean, you could not cut these players with more vast differences than Hurts from and Easton. Let's go ahead and get into their games. Hurts from Easton, where do you see them coming off the board on draft night? I think in that order, and hopefully it's the word we've got him in so we'd like to see that sum But I think that

order is going to be reflected in the league. We walked into the season with from as a pro ready item, Easton as the developmental prospect a Jore and then Hurts isn't unknown and as seems to be the case with Lincoln Roddey quarterbacks, Hurts proved something to us across the course of the season. These Cats just keep getting better under Riley. Hurts has improved as a passer every season

at Alabama's. Like I said with Justin Herman's Justin Herbert, excuse me, improvement across the course multiple seasons is a tremendous thing to see hurts accuracy at Alabama was prohibitive to NFL play. It wasn't NFL caliber. Now NFL caliber. One of the things I charted in contextualized quarterbacking is not just passing attempts, but also all dropped back and

what the response to a drop back was. Hurt scrambles more than any Oklahoma quarterback before and then includes Kyler Murray, includes Baker Mayfield more than any quarterback in this classy scrambles and critically when it comes to pressure, one of the things that I charge is who's responsible for the pressure? Was it a blown blocked by the offensive line, and or was it the quarterback who had a blitzer? He

should be aware of. You still have incredible elusiveness, tremendous escapability, and so Hurts makes a lot of plays outside of the pocket the quarterbacks don't make, in part because he authors them from himself. He puts himself in those sticky situations, but in large part because he's so athletic and he's got a good throw on the move. Hurts represents a dual threat at quarterback. I think he's the best running quarterback we've had come out in the last five years.

Not named Lamar, right, and that's like Kyler and Trabisky and Josh Allen is a great running quarterback, right, Hurts is the best dual threat that we've had come out besides Lamar. Now, the passing threat isn't necessarily as great, but as we know and I've seen at the college and pro level, when you're quarterback has mobility and adds a dimension the defenses have to deal with. So Jalen Hurts could be a late round one guy for a

team that views him as a developmental starter. The player more likely to be drafted with potential starting ability is Easton. Easton was extremely first read heavy at Washington as a timing based RPO style offense. A lot of inbreaking routes and shallow stuff developing to the outside allowed Easton to get rid of the ball quickly, and much like Herbert, when you have such a strong arm, it allows you to hide some of the deficiencies that you might have

later in the down later into the play. Easton and Gregg Cassell just dropped his scouting report Easton, and one of the main negatives that hero On Eastern was the tendency to bail out of the back of the pocket. Eason actually really good tackle breaking ability. He's got that Ben Roethlisberger framed in were just like, you know, a defensive ends like, oh, I've got him. And then he sees the size of east and he's like, oh wait,

Like I don't need any big dude. But when you when you are able to break that many tackles, obviously you have good throw in the moveability with Easton as well. And now there's so much good stuff developmentally with Easton that he's going to be drafted and he's gonna get an obtune need to start at some point. His arm is gonna look great in camp, like he can make

every throw and then some. And the ability to drive the football on a line thirty plus thirty five plus yards down the field makes him an ideal vertical offense thrower, Like this guy can hit seam balls in time before safeties arrived. It's not a skill that most starting quarterbacks in the league have. So he'll be developed, he'll get an opportunity to start a fight for a starting job in and for Jake From he must remain the same From as a championship caliber quarterback at the college level.

He is consistent, he delivers on time, he has a risk of verse, and he is highly intelligent. At the NFL level, he will be all of those things. And he's got good lower body mechanics, real quality upper body mechanics. That's fine. You can make a long NFL career about with having average arms strength. You asked Chase Daniel how having an average arms strength has gone for him across

the last ten years. Daniel is an extremely valuable backup quarterback because of his intelligence, because of his mobility, and because of his consistency from brings all of those things to the table. And we saw Chad Pennington lead the Miami Dolphins to an an f C East title. Like his arm was basically put together by band aids and

Scotch tape, but it just didn't matter. The guy could flat out spend the football and lead a football team and that's why they won so many games that year because of the leadership, because of the presence of Chad Pennington. Now you close that group of players out with Jacob Easton at number ninety two, and the next guy with a huge gap in between is another player at a Washington school, Anthony Gordon out of Washington state. Gokog's at one. Is he your favorite Day three prospect? I don't want

to break your heart, but he's not man. He's fun though. We talked about him in India a little bit. Dude. I mean, he's just hilarious. And he takes he takes the shotgun snap. He doesn't even move right on the floor, just straight up right, just seeing what's happening. Gordon is uh a similar to a lot of the quarterbacks that have succeeded under the air raid model. He's slight of frame, he's diminutive, he doesn't have great arm strength. He has

better mobility than a lot of people. I think what would adit him to because he spends so much time in the pocket and he's very willing to take open space. The number one trade and air raid quarterback. We hear air raid and always very impressed. The number one trade you can have is just a willingness to throw the open mesh. Just throw the open shallow across. That's a running play in the air raid, right, It's a percentage, is gonna get four yards. It's a running play. And

Gordon does that and keeps the offense on schedule. What's really exciting about Gordon is the mechanics, right, He's got what you call longevity mechanics. We talked about throwing mechanics a lot in terms of accuracy, but the other thing it matters with is is is strain, is wear and tear.

When you have bad mechanics, you're more likely to get injuries to your throwing shoulder, to your throwing elbow, to your throwing wrist than you are for other quarterbacks because you're putting undue stress on muscles that you shouldn't been putting stress on. Gordon's got such clean mechanics that you don't only expect him to be accurate, you expect him to be accurate and probably not experience a steep drop off an arm strength because he's already just a modest

arms strength player. It's not like he's gonna lose that velocity with age. Is probably gonna stay much the same, and he's going to stay extremely consistent with his releasing, with his accuracy. So there's a really nice longevity projection with Anthony Gordon. He's an air rate quarterback who's gonna have to transition to the league. I prefer James Morgan out of Florida International as a developmental quarterback. Morgan also

done a great lower body mechanics. He doesn't have a great sense of timing, but boy, kids gotta rock it. And we were able to see him at the Shrine Bowl just you know, seventy yards with a hitch, sixty yards standing still. You got Charles Davis down at the field. Yeah, he knows. Charles Davis talks the NFL teams. He tells one of his wide receivers, you'll go stand at the end line. He goes over to the forty and just starts whacking him like like batting practice off a team. Man.

This guy's got real exciting and special armtaln He was two years of bowling. Green transferred to Florida International, played for Butch Davis. Bush Davis calling the best quarterback you ever had, and you can see how the velocity allows him to throw guys open, especially in the intermediate areas. He's got a good knack for intermediate throws. In breaking routes with a linebacker underneath and his safety over the top, you gotta hammer that thing there in time, and he's

able to do that. That's a really incur urging throw to see. I think that he has a lot of the limitations that you expect for a group of five quarterback with such a strong arm. But if you're asking me for the guy that I would take and trying to make into a starter after pick one, Morgan's my cat. He is Benjamin Solac of the Draft Network. You guys can get his quarterback or contextualized quarterback up on the Draft Network coming out your way in its entirety next week.

You can tell this guy knows his stuff. He knows this quarterback position, he knows his game of football. Ben. We're gonna have to get you back on after the draft if the Dolphins do get one of these quarterbacks we talked about, because I want to hear the entire scope of the player in the fit in the system. Once we do get to that point, that's for another podcast, though. You guys can find him on Twitter at Benjamin Slac. Ben, thank you so much for your time today, man. Of course,

Dravis appreciate you having me on. Man, Go fins boy. How about that fire hose of information? Benjamin Solac, one of the best in the game. Love hearing his podcast, reading his work up on the Draft Network. He does a fantastic job breaking down these quarterbacks and really every position on the football field. And we are now just ten days away from the draft, and we're going to have a virtual draft for you guys coming to you live on the Miami Dolphins Facebook page. Tons of good

content for you all there. Don't forget to check that out. We have plenty more draft preview podcast coming your way, taking a look at the defensive side of the ball the rest of this week, have some more good guests line up for that. We have a mailbag podcast here in the near future. We have another edition of the Throwback the Fins Flashback podcast taking a look at previous

Miami Dolphins games. We have a pull up on Twitter right now, should be closing any time, taking a look at either the Wildcat game season opener, the two thousand three Thanksgiving Day game in Dallas, and also what's the other one on there, the wild card winner Lamar Smith overtime touchdown run go ahead and make your vote. We'll cover that next Thursday on the podcast. But that's gonna be my time for today's edition of the Drivetime podcast.

You all please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you gets your downloads from, go ahead and leave us a rating, leave us a five star review, give me a follow on Twitter. It's at Wingfield, NFL fall the Dolphins. At Miami Dolphins, check out the Fish Tank and the Audible podcast, and of course Miami Dolphins dot com. Until next time finds up