Combine Snap Judgments: Draft's top two QBs leave NFL uncertain

Though only a junior, Matthew Stafford was a three-year starter at Georgia. Todd Rosenberg/SI NFL Combine 2009   Latest Columns KING: Monday Morning Quarterback PAULINE: How the QBs, RBs, WRs fared BANKS: WVU's White shines among QBs PAULINE: Risers, sliders among OL, TE BANKS: Effect of spread offenses; notes PAULINE: Top 50 Pre-Combine Big Board BANKS: Lions drop hints about No. 1 pick CURRY: Top LB tells how he's preparing BROOKS: Top 10 prospects by position TUCKER: Physical testing is irrelevant SI Photos Top '09 Prospects Combine Legends

INDIANAPOLIS -- I hate to spoil the party before it even starts, but any time spent trying to figure out if there's another Matt Ryan or Joe Flacco-like instant success story lurking in the first round of this year's NFL Draft strikes me as wasted energy.

There isn't, and that's not to say that the NFL careers of top-rated quarterbacks Matthew Stafford and USC's Mark Sanchez won't be long and prosperous. It's just that in the eyes of many NFL personnel evaluators, it's a bit of apples to oranges comparison to lump Ryan and Flacco -- who both hit the league last year as fifth-year seniors -- with the likes of juniors Stafford and Sanchez.

There are plenty of hesitations within the league when it comes to expecting early results from a highly rated junior quarterback, and the track record of such picks is less than comforting. Yes, Ben Roethlisberger was the exception to the rule in 2004. But for every Big Ben -- and there's only one -- there have been an Alex Smith, a Tim Couch, a Ryan Leaf, a Heath Shuler or an Andre Ware.

"As a general rule, the more games they play in college and the more years they play as a starter, the better their chances of success in our league,'' said Steelers director of football operations Kevin Colbert, the man who drafted both Roethlisberger as a junior in '04's first round, and the less successful Omar Jacobs as a junior in '06's fifth round. "And if you take a junior, the longer they wait to play [in the NFL], the better they're going to be long-term in the NFL. And that's true for even the senior quarterbacks who aren't forced to play right away.''

Most NFL coaches and personnel men characterize '09 as a down year for quarterbacks in the draft, and there's a good chance for the first time ever the first four off the board will all be juniors: Stafford, Sanchez, Kansas State's Josh Freeman and Ball State's Nate Davis. While Ryan and Flacco both led their teams to 11-5 records and trips to the playoffs as rookies, the bar of expectation is being set considerably lower for projected first-rounders Stafford and Sanchez.

Sanchez will enter the NFL with a meager 16 career collegiate starts at USC, where he did at least spend four seasons after red-shirting his first year. Stafford was a three-year starter for Georgia, but he also just turned 21 two weeks ago. To expect either one of them to pull a Ryan or a Flacco later this year seems to me a flight of semi-fancy.

"I just keep trying to warn people that the Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco thing is an anomaly,'' NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock said Friday morning at Lucas Oil Stadium, on Day 3 of the NFL Scouting Combine. "You haven't seen, maybe ever, in the NFL two rookie quarterbacks like that. But they were both fifth-year players. There's a track record on tape. There's a track record off the field, with their work ethic, everything. You can track it better and more accurately.

"When you're talking about Matthew Stafford, he just turned 21. He's got three years as a starter in the SEC, which is impressive, but still you don't have the same tracking mechanisms as you do with those other guys. So it's harder to read. With those younger quarterbacks, there's no question the intangibles at that position are more important than what I see on tape.''

Roethlisberger and Trent Dilfer are the only junior-drafted quarterbacks who own Super Bowl rings as starters since the league began drafting underclassmen in 1989, and Dilfer's path to that pinnacle was full of early-career setbacks. And even Colbert admits Roethlisberger had no business winning his first Super Bowl ring in just his second season.

"People can look at Ben and say, 'OK, wait a minute. He was a junior, and he was ready,' '' Colbert said. "But two things: He was a redshirt junior, so he had been in school for four years, and second, he wasn't ready to do what he did. And that sounds wrong, because he had a great rookie year. But we never felt he was going to be ready that soon. Tommy Maddox was still coming off a pretty good year for us, and then he gets hurt in Week 2. But we drafted Ben with the thought that he would eventually replace Tommy. We didn't anticipate him playing that early, and we certainly never thought he'd play that well that early.''

Many personnel evaluators within the league feel that a quarterback who hits the league with less than 30 collegiate starts under his belt is a riskier bet than even your typical highly rated senior quarterback. That's why Sanchez and his limited track record of 16 starts are generating such widespread debate in this pre-draft season.

"There is no replacement for experience,'' Vikings head coach Brad Childress told me Friday. "You look for skills and ability first, but you want to see a body of work. Is the guy a one-year wonder? Is he capable of continuing to ascend, or was it a one-time thing? Myself, I'd rather see a guy play four years, with 12-13 games a year. But I'm not going to ding a guy and say 'that's an early-out guy' if he has undeniable skills and ability.''

To their credit, both Stafford and Sanchez showed up for their media interviews sessions Friday more than ready for the questions surrounding their experience, or lack thereof. And to be fair, Sanchez has a different burden of doubt to fight against than Stafford, who does have those three seasons of starting on his résumé.

"The best way to answer that is to talk about the kind of experience I've had,'' Sanchez said. "[I've played] against the top players around -- most of them [are] in the NFL -- since my freshman year. I've started 16 games, and played and practiced every day with a pro-style offense, against a pro-style defense, with guys like [Brian] Cushing, [Rey] Maualuga, [Kaluka] Maiava, [Clay] Matthews, Taylor Mays, Kevin Ellison, Lawrence Jackson, guys like that who are in the league and are going to be the league [as] first-rounders.

"So I think the experience I've had has been very valuable, and the type of atmosphere I've been in. I've been in a big city, a large media market, and we played in the Rose Bowl. We played in nationally televised games and I'm ready for this league.''

With a little prompting from me, Sanchez even used New England quarterback Matt Cassel -- he of zero collegiate starts at USC -- to buttress the case for his own experience level. Left unsaid, of course, was that Cassel apprenticed for three years in New England before he needed to play last season.

"I have more starts than him, that's for sure,'' Sanchez said of Cassel, his friend and fellow ex-Trojan.

Sanchez has decided to throw here at the combine on Sunday, while Stafford will not. That's the right call for the player who has more to prove, because already some teams would stay away from him in the first round due to his limited playing time. Stafford is taking the more traditional approach for the draft's top-rated quarterback, refusing to throw to unfamiliar receivers, in essence doing nothing here to hurt his standing.

"I guess I come at [the issue] and say I played in 39 football games in college,'' Stafford said. "That's a lot of football games. Probably more than some seniors have played in. I was actually there (at Georgia) for an extra semester. I've been doing this for a while, but obviously I have a lot to learn.

"It's a whole different ballgame in the NFL, but I understand what it takes to prepare and get ready to play early. And I do feel like I have a lot of experience. I played in the SEC, a tough conference, and I played against some NFL defensive coaches who are down in that league right now. I got a little bit of a taste of what it's like, I think.''

Maybe, maybe not. Chances are, wherever Stafford and Sanchez wind up in the NFL, they will wait their turn for a while before getting their shot at the No. 1 job. Starting their NFL careers as starters, like Ryan and Flacco did with spectacular success in '08, isn't necessarily the act they're destined to follow.