There are few things better in the NFL than striking gold at quarterback in the middle to late rounds of the draft.
A few of the top QBs in the league, Russell Wilson and Tom Brady for example, were later finds in the draft, and the new prototype is Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback Dak Prescott, who fell to the fourth round of the 2016 draft, but went on to start for the Cowboys and earn Pro Bowl and Rookie of the Year honors.
Prescott was a highly-productive dual-threat SEC quarterback with multiple years of starting experience coming out of Mississippi State.
Tennessee’s Joshua Dobbs might not be the exact same player that Prescott was coming out, but Bucky Brooks of the NFL Network thinks teams looking for that next Prescott-like steal should take a longer look at him.
The next @dak ? 👀 pic.twitter.com/AImniVLVCd
— NFL (@NFL) April 2, 2017
Dobbs is actually a better overall athlete than Prescott – posting better combine numbers in the 40-yard dash, the vertical leap, the broad jump and the three-cone drill. Accuracy remains the big questions with Dobbs, however.
Despite strong throwing sessions at the combine and at Tennessee’s Pro Day, Dobbs is still being picked apart for his sometimes sporadic accuracy during his Tennessee career. But like Prescott, Dobbs was at his best as a senior when he posted a 63 percent completion percentage, a jump from 59.6 percent the year before.
That’s not quite as impressive as Prescott’s 66.2 percent completion percentage his senior year, but Prescott also jumped about five percentage points in that category from his junior to senior seasons, so there’s a comparison in the way that they both finished their collegiate careers strong.
Whoever takes Dobbs will be taking a bit of a gamble on a quarterback who struggled a bit too much with his consistency and accuracy in college, but the upside is also very good. If his accuracy improves, it isn’t crazy to imagine that Dobbs could go on to be a highly effective starter in the NFL. And as the draft progresses into the middle rounds, expect some team to take a chance on him with the hope that he can do exactly that.
