More than a week after the Senior Bowl, reviews are still rolling in, with many analysts still picking out winners and losers from the college all-star games. To recap, Jake Locker was off-and-on in Senior Bowl practices before completing 6-10 passes in the game itself on Saturday. Those practices, however, are what mattered in the eyes of scouts, and Locker didn’t do much to endear himself to NFL teams from a physical standpoint. Because of that, he’s seen his stock fall in the mock drafts, even sliding all the way out of the first round in many.
National Football Post’s Wes Bunting reviewed all the college football all-star games on Tuesday and his evaluation of Locker wasn’t glowing. He concluded that it’s tough to see a team spending a first-round pick on the former Washington quarterback, with his neck-up ability the biggest sticking point.
However, when watching him throughout the week of practice I just can’t understand how you can take a guy with so many inconsistencies in his game in the first round. He never seemed to have a great grasp on the offense as he rarely seemed in control and really struggled to quickly decipher information vs. strictly cover one and cover three looks. He’s got it physically, but from the shoulders up it’s a different story and his week in Mobile was just a further exclamation point on everything I saw on tape from the guy this past season.
Bunting was the analyst that called Locker a “reps quarterback” at the Senior Bowl, saying it would take a serious amount of development and practice work for him to succeed at the NFL-level. While many analysts had a tough time nailing down where Locker would land before, there’s been a near-unanimous agreement now that he’s simply not a first rounder.
Of course, all that could change in the next two months with the combine, interviews and individual workouts. If the Senior Bowl was any indication, though, Locker has some serious work to do.
For more on the draft, check out our 2011 NFL mock draft StoryStream.