Quote:
Originally Posted by GTripp0012
I'm wary of anyone who makes a name for himself with pinpoint accuracy at the college level, especially if he has a rep for making poor decisions. That doesn't fly in the NFL.
The John Elway comparison sounds pretty accurate...but historic greatness is not predictable before the draft. Elway did a lot of stuff at the college level that Russell doesn't do very well.
I want to hesitate from labeling Russell a bust candidate, but he's just not a good NFL prospect. No QB in recent memory could have used his senior year of college more than Russell. The most ideal situation for him would be 3+ years of riding the bench so that he could get pretty far into his development before having to be put under the microscope. This could allow him enough time to develop into an NFL worthy starter before he gets labeled a bust.
If he goes first overall, he's not going to have that luxury. No matter which team he ends up on, he's going to develop a rep for poor decision making and being INT prone, and probably get the bust label sometime before 2009.
No matter what, he's never going to live up to expectations. He just isn't a good decision maker, period. Most underclass QB's aren't. If he can get into a favorable situation where he doesn't have to play right away, he might earn the perception of a starting quality QB (even though he's really the exact same player--just farther along in his development). If he gets thrown to the Wolves immediately, he's going to have a very rough first three years, and in today's league, generally its three strikes and you're out.
Unfortuante but true.
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Also how in the world can you say he is not a good decision maker????? Perhaps earlier in his career this was the case, when he was young and inexperienced, but certainly not now. Since you are so into stats just look at his. 28tds and 8ints and 67% completion rate. Sorry but those are great stats. 8 ints in 342 attempts is really taking care of the football. Especially in the SEC where the talent level is the highest in the country. And if you looked at his last game he totally outplayed Brady Quinn and for that matter so did Troy Smith in the 06 game. Brady Quinn looked terrible against LSU. He was all over the place with the ball. Now would a smart scout grade Quinn on this performaces in bowl games? Hell no. The guy really proved himself, especially his last two years. Quinn is a great college qb. But Russell also got better every single year. All of his %'s went up in his three years. He had no regression in his three years at LSU. So I'm not sure where your getting your info from about Russell but it's completly 100% wrong.