The Super Bowl has yet to be played and the NFL Draft is still months away but it's not too early to start looking at where Ball State University quarterback Nate Davis might be drafted.
With the Senior Bowl now played, the focus turns to all the draft prospects and not just the ones that graduated. Davis should be training for the NFL Combine. If he did the smart thing he hired somebody that knows what happens at the Combine, and is now training for those specific things.
How Davis does at the Combine, assuming he participates, and his pro day, his draft stock could rise or fall quite a bit. Most draft experts, Mel Kiper Jr., Todd McShay, Scouts Inc. and others, have Davis rated as a second round draft pick.
In order to start forming a prediction for Davis' destination, a good place to start would be creating a list of teams likely to consider a quarterback in the first two rounds. My list of teams that have at least a small chance of taking a quarterback that early is: Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, San Francisco, New York Jets, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Carolina and Seattle.
Those teams control the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 10th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 22nd, 33rd, 34th, 35th, 37th, 38th, 43rd, 50th, 52nd, 54th and 59th picks. By my count, and check my math, that's 20 possible selections Davis could go at if he is taken in the first two rounds like most experts believe he will be.
We can easily narrow it down even more. Davis is not going to be a top 10 pick no matter how well he does in the Combine and his pro day. That brings us down to 15 possible spots.
If Davis dominates the Combine, including the Wonderlic test, he could jump to 17th with the New York Jets. If he does as expected at the Combine he will likely be taken somewhere between the 43rd and 54th picks. That's a window of 37 picks.
The best thing going for Davis, other than his tremendous talent, is the number of top tier quarterbacks in this class. Right now Mark Sanchez of USC and Matt Stafford of the University of Georgia are the only quarterbacks clearly rated above Davis.
ESPN's Kiper originally had Davis third, but after his bowl game performance dropped him to fourth behind Kansas State University's Josh Freeman. Another ESPN draft expert, McShay, ranked Davis fourth, ahead of Freeman, when the University of Oklahoma's Sam Bradford was still thought to be going pro.
Of the 32 teams in the NFL, at least 10 of the teams will want a quarterback in the first or second round. Davis is the third-rated quarterback in the nation, according to most experts' opinions, and will likely be picked at the end of the first round or early in the second. In the last four years, the third-rated quarterback has been the 32nd pick on average.
Even if Davis ends up as the fourth quarterback drafted he should still be taken in the second round. The fourth quarterback has been taken with the 53rd selection on average in the last four years.
When you consider Davis has a cannon for an arm, played in an NFL-style system with a Super Bowl-winning, NFL quarterback coach as his offensive coordinator and is very athletic for his position, he is the type of player likely to impress at a Combine or pro day.
From here on out his stock should only rise. The only thing that can be foreseen to hurt his stock is the Wonderlic test. However, like I said earlier, if he hired a good Combine expert he should be able to do well enough on the test.
I've gone this far so I'll make a prediction. I think he will be taken with the 43rd pick by San Francisco. Wait, no. That's what I wish happens because I'm a 49ers fan. He'll be taken with the 35th pick by St. Louis, although I sincerely hope not. I don't want to wait six hours only to have Davis taken eight picks before the 49ers by a divisional opponent, but that's the marathon called the NFL Draft.
Write to Levin at ltblack@bsu.edu
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