For three years Ball State University fans have been treated to the theatrics of Nate Davis. For three years he has dominated the Mid-American Conference. Yet with a month to go before the NFL Draft, Davis is falling off the radar.
Davis was considered a possible second-round pick when he declared a year early after Ball State's loss in the GMAC Bowl. Now as the calendar closes in on the month of the draft he is considered a possible draftee. So how does a prospect fall from possible second round to possibly undrafted?
The simple answer is because NFL teams continue to draft in a way that allows great players to fall much farther than they ever should. Teams have prospects do continuous workouts where the prospect interviews, takes tests and shows off his athletic abilities; all done in an atmosphere nothing like an actual game.
A player can eventually prove themselves and go from undrafted to Pro Bowler. Players have done it before and it will almost definitely happen again. So how does every NFL team, despite having a half-dozen scouts, a half-dozen or more coaches, a general manager, a president and an owner, somehow not spend one of its up to 10 draft picks on a future Pro Bowler?
Teams continue to weigh what happens off the field in between a prospects final game and draft day way too much. What a prospect proves on the field should heavily outweigh what happens on some Wonderlic, IQ-esque test, or in drills where the player has to make no split second decisions like in a game.
NFL teams' ineptitude when it comes to drafting is how players like Tom Brady can be taken in the sixth round, or a player like Marques Colston can be taken in the final round.
Davis proved himself in his three years at Ball State to be worthy of at the least a fourth-round selection, yet here we are with less than a month until the draft with reports going around that Davis won't be drafted. What are the reasons for his free fall? Well lets dissect them one by one.
Davis had two horrific games to end his career, in which he fumbled almost every time he got hit. While I agree Davis looked like a player that could use another year, he did suffer a hand injury early in the GMAC Bowl and was rumored to be sick during the MAC Championship Game.
Those don't fully account for the fumbling issues but I weigh what Davis did in Ball State's other 37 games while he was a Cardinal much more than his final two games. Davis rarely fumbled in those other 37 games despite having 156 rushes and more than 1,000 passing attempts.
The next commonly mentioned reason for Davis' plummet is that he is undersized. According to the NFL Combine's measurements he weighs one pound more than Matt Stafford and one pound less than Mark Sanchez. In addition Davis was measured to be three-fourths of an inch shorter than Sanchez and seven-eighths of an inch shorter than Stafford.
Sanchez and Stafford are considered top 10 prospects in this year's draft but neither is considered undersized. I have never known or heard of a quarterback who failed in the NFL because of seven-eighths of an inch. For comparison, Drew Brees is more than inch shorter than Davis.
Another reason for his dropping draft stock is that he played in a shotgun-oriented offense. That offense was run by Stan Parrish, the man who helped resurrect Brad Johnson's career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers which enabled the Bucs to win the Super Bowl.
If Parrish was a successful quarterbacks coach in the NFL I'm pretty sure he knows how to prepare a quarterback to do well in the NFL. Besides a lot of NFL offensive systems rely heavily on the shotgun formation. The NFL's top-10 ranked offenses from last season had its quarterbacks throw 2,848 out of 5,429 passing attempts from the shotgun. That's 52.4 percent.
So what does this all mean? It means Davis will fall much farther than he should because NFL teams, after more than 70 years of drafting, still don't know what they are doing.
Write to Levin at ltblack@bsu.edu
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