Written by Stephen Oh

Scouts Inc – Clausen Better than Kaepernick and Flacco

“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”

When your business is making sports predictions and forecasting you definitely live in a big, fat, glass house so it’s probably not smart to point out other people’s mistakes when you probably have plenty of bad predictions to attack in your own history. But with the Super Bowl coming up and then the NFL Draft I had to see just how bad draft gurus can really be.

ESPN spent millions of dollars to buy Scouts Inc. No position is more important in sports than Quarterback in the NFL. There is a ton of material (film, interviews, combine, etc.) that scouts can use to grade Quarterbacks. If your business is 99% based on the NFL and 99% of your NFL business is based on your ability to scout players, and QB is the most important position to get right, you would think you would be better at it than some of these numbers would indicate.

Heading into the Super Bowl Joe Flacco has a chance to tie Joe Montana’s post-season TD record while throwing no INTs. Flacco has won playoff games in every year of his career and has the most road playoff wins in history and I believe the Ravens have the best overall record in the league since Flacco was drafted 18th. Colin Kaepernick has taken the NFL by storm after just 9 starts. Many widely respected experts claim he has the highest ceiling of any QB in the league.

The physical tools of both players are incredibly obvious. You don’t need to have played QB at any point in your life to see Flacco is big and has the strongest arm in the league. Kaepernick’s arm strength, size, and speed are unique to say the least. When scouting these players you cannot use physical traits as the reason why they were underrated (see Russell Wilson).

Kaepernick played at Nevada in the Pistol Offense and Flacco played at Delaware. It’s obvious in hindsight that the perceived lack of competition and/or playing in an offense that won’t translate to the NFL was the reason why both players were not rated in the Top 13 of QBs since 2008.

What is unforgiveable when you look at this list is some of the names that are highlighted in red. Blaine Gabbert put up gaudy numbers vs bad teams, but in 2 bowl games vs Navy and Iowa (not exactly SEC quality defenses) he lost twice and threw 4 INTs vs just 2 TDs. The Big 12 was one of the worst defensive conferences where everyone was running the spread. Kaepernick’s performance vs the better teams he faced (Boise State, BYU, etc.) was vastly better than Gabbert’s. It’s not just that Gabbert was rated better than Kaepernick, it is the fact that Scouts had Gabbert as close to perfect with a score of 96 while Kaepernick is at 81 (27th best).

Mark Sanchez and Brian Brohm are #7 and #9 on the list. At a score of 95 and 93 they are rated better than Flacco (and Cam Newton). Sanchez only started one year at USC and is a southern California kid who never played a game in bad weather before going to the NFL. As a Freshman he was accused of rape but his great defense of being blind drunk worked. Scouts’ own analysis says “Sanchez's deep ball tends to float on occasion… Arm strength is adequate but not great.” Questionable decisions off the field and a weak arm… perfect for playing in a pressure cooker like New York City and in the bad weather AFC East, wouldn’t you say? I would think that these weaknesses would merit a lot more than 5 points from perfect. Was he so friggin accurate and such a great leader to merit near perfection? Even Pete Carroll thought he wasn’t ready for the NFL.

Brian Brohm was in the same draft class as Joe Flacco. He was being evaluated right alongside Joe Flacco. The physical edge that Flacco has over Brohm should have been obvious. Brohm played in the Big East which is a weak conference that an elite QB would dominate. Brohm has 12 INTs and in road games vs South Florida, West Virginia, and UConn the guy threw 7 INTs vs just 4 TDs. I also remember Brohm had a pretty weak arm by NFL standards. So a weak armed QB who “sh*t the bed” vs any decent competition is 7 points from being the perfect QB and clearly rated higher than Joe Flacco?

I’m not even going to mention that JIMMY F*CKING CLAUSEN has the same rating as Joe Flacco. I also remember Mel Kiper mock drafting Clausen #1 that year. Yikes. But I won’t bust on Mel Kiper too much since he’s a big fan of the Ravens and Ozzie Newsome. I think Ozzie Newsome should win a Nobel Prize in 20 years when we appreciate how much better he is running an organization. Maybe the Nobel Prize in Economics.

I’ll end this critique of Scouts with a warning about 2013. This is a bad year for QBs. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Do you really think there are 6 Quarterbacks who are better NFL prospects than Russell Wilson??????!!!!