One things folks are not considering with regards to evaluation is the Zoom sessions where white board and film study can be conducted.
An interesting piece with insight from Bruce Arians :
When coach Bruce Arians and quarterbacks coach Byron Leftwich, among others, meet with quarterback prospects, Leftwich will teach the quarterback three plays. They'll move on to other film study before returning to see how much the quarterback retained.
A session at the board can tell Arians quite a bit. Or sometimes, all he needs to know.
"How do they learn? [How do they] regurgitate it?" said Arians, listing off questions he wants to see answered during the board sessions. "How smooth are they in a presentation? What kind of moxie do they have? Do they have a presence? A swagger?
"They have to have something."
One thing Arians wants the quarterback prospects to have is a sense of responsibility.
When Arians and the player break down the quarterback's bad plays, Arians grills him. Why was a certain throw made? What was the quarterback thinking? What happened? Arians watches closely how the prospect reacts. Does he blame others or take responsibility if a play breaks down?
"If they start blaming other people, that tells me something," Arians said. "If it's, 'I screwed up. The read wasn't there,' I like this guy. He was honest, first of all, and he has a reason for what he's doing. You can work with that. That's the fun part of getting to know these guys."
By watching a quarterback break down film and dissect plays on the board, Arians can also get a feel for how they'll be in the huddle -- a foreign place to most college quarterbacks. Of the 14 quarterbacks who attended the NFL scouting combine, 10 threw passes without huddling on 66 percent of their attempts last season.
That's troubling to Arians.
"This is the problem with kids today," Arians said. "They never got in a huddle and looked at 10 other guys who've got families to feed, and had to call a play. They just looked to the sideline, kicked their foot and rolled.
"That's the hardest thing for these kids, to come to minicamp, get in a professional huddle and try to lead these guys. You have to give them a wristband because they can't spit it out or you have to give them a wristband and then all the guys in the huddle get pissed off because he can't call the play. I'm not making eye contact with you and you don't have a hell of a lot of confidence that I know what I'm talking about."
Every coach evaluates a little differently so this isn't an end all. But beyond film and YouTube highlights (which is what most fans base their opinions off of), there are aspects of evaluating that we aren't privvy to. Aspects that may have some bearing on how we and even other teams view each of these prospects.
I believe we have conducted some zoom meetings with Lance but we didn't go to his pro day. I also am pretty sure we had Lance on zoom before the trade to 3. I don't know if we had conducted any zoom meetings with Fields or Jones to date, and if any of that transpired before the trade to 3.
