Mark Sanchez NFL Draft Prospect
Top Five College Football Players
Mark Sanchez, QB, USC 6’3” 225lbs. – Unproven was the stigma attached to the Southern California starter by the college football pundits preseason claiming that he was nothing more than a highly recruited benchwarmer. Ditto for Matt Cassel until his number was called this season in New England and similarly with the departure of John David Booty, Sanchez has made the most of his opportunity in working with Coach Pete Carroll. A high football IQ and learning under the tutelage of some of the best instructors that the game has to offer in a pro system make Sanchez worthy of his high ranking. His arm strength is phenomenal and may only be surpassed by his GPS-like accuracy. Both of these attributes have been proven to be top notch as he has displayed in nearly every game this season, so perhaps the only lingering question with him is of course the experience level but also his ability to focus play after play with the horrible half of football in Corvalis still lingering over his head from earlier this fall. Sanchez can stroke the ball with a perfect rotation and has tremendous accuracy for someone taking snaps with the second team for two years until this past fall. His arm strength may be second to Stafford in this class, but he will take the backseat to few at the next level as he can fling it with the best of them. As often happens teams make moves to improve their franchises quickly and Sanchez may not have that type of impact to offer, but with a team looking to gradually advance his position on the depth chart while molding him into an NFL signal caller Sanchez could flourish. With the way the draft stands to date, the needs of most teams in the top eight or nine picks aren’t really at the quarterback position. Sanchez could make Detroit take a second look at consider him first overall, but with an unproven resume it is more likely that he ends up in the latter half of the top ten and a Bay Area transition seems to fit best as the Niners could groom him for a year behind their current guys on the depth chart and get him ready to take over the reigns in 2010. Perhaps the thing that separates Sanchez in the quarterback class is his ridiculous Rose Bowl performance in shredding a top ten Penn State defense for four straight quarters making them look mediocre. With many of those Penn State player ending up on NFL rosters next fall, maybe scouts will realize that Sanchez is the real deal and certainly has what it takes to hold one of the thirty-two starting positions in the NFL. NFL COMPARISON: ELI MANNING
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