Jimmy Clausen: NFL Flop-To-Be

The NFL Draft will be upon us in just four days. Depending on how you look at it, there are about five top-flight prospects at the position of quarterback: Sam Bradford, Jimmy Clausen, Colt McCoy, Tony Pike, and Tim Tebow (I had to throw Pike in there now that I live in Cincinnati). ESPN recently aired a special in which Chucky interviewed Bradford, Clausen, McCoy and Tebow about the upcoming draft. Watching these interviews convinced me that Clausen has the dimmest NFL prospects of all the interviewees.

Malcolm Gladwell, a couple years back, wrote an excellent piece about what he calls "The Quarterback Problem." In it, he explains why a quarterback's performance in college has a relatively low correlation with his success in the professional ranks. Gladwell focuses in particular on Chase Daniel, standout QB at Mizzou from 2005-08. Daniel broke records for total offense, single-game touchdowns, single-season TDs, career TDs, etc. Despite his success at Missouri, Daniel ultimately went undrafted. Gladwell arrives at the conclusion that it's too hard to predict who will be a successful QB, so teams should try out more candidates before settling on a franchise starter. My plea to all teams with first-round draft picks is this: if you must draft Clausen, have at least 5 other QBs on your roster going into training camp and make him fight to earn every down he plays.

Let's not get too theoretical with it though. I haven't played a down of real football since high school but I remember enough to know that your quarterback MUST command respect. The coach is the leader, but the quarterback is the on-field general. In their Gruden interviews, most of the QBs were poised, confident and seemed to enjoy the conversation. Clausen, on the other hand, was very deferential and seemed to spend more time writing notes from Gruden than actually processing what the coach was saying. Moreover, he had no satisfactory responses to the constructive criticisms Gruden offered. If going over film with someone who's NOT EVEN AN ACTIVE COACH can put him that out of sorts, there's no way he will deal with stress on the field effectively.

Put the ball down and take a seat, Jimmy. You're gonna be riding the pine for a while. If you're lucky, you'll end up like your ND predecessor, now with the Browns Broncos - backing up a QB with a career 76.9 rating.