NFL Combine 2012: Are College Quarterbacks Getting Dumber?

The NFL's annual meat market will reopen for business on Wednesday. Player personnel departments from the league's 32 teams are set to descend upon Lucas Oil Stadium for the NFL Combine, a week of measuring and objectifying the hottest talent coming out of the college ranks. It's like SI's swimsuit issue, but with dudes.

Coverage of the NFL draft process is—and I'm being polite here—overdone. Most of us have watched these prospects on Saturdays for the last couple years, or longer.

In only so many ways can we analyze a list of names for three months, and with that dearth of conversation fodder comes the assembly line of shovel-ready narratives attachable to whatever potential first-rounders seem fit to shoulder them. The jury is still out on whether or not the label of "spread quarterback" belongs in that bucket.

College quarterbacks may not be dumber than in years past, but the jump in human capital that many NFL coaches require of their signal-callers seems to be higher. As the pro game has embraced the forward pass more than ever before, it seems that the renowned micromanagement of its coaches is increasingly happening in the quarterback's jurisdiction. They just have to know more.

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The poster child for the college quarterback's transition to the NFL, fairly or unfairly, would have to be Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow.

At no time was the debate of a "spread peg fitting into a pro hole" louder than in the days leading up to the 2010 NFL draft. Tebow, arguably the finest college football player in that game's history, was mercilessly dissected for three months, with projections of his selection scattered all across the board. Only 24 other players were taken before Denver traded up to get Tebow.

The adjustment was not a smooth one. Tebow was criticized, even ridiculed for his inability to operate a pro-style offense, complete with passing drops from center and multiple progressions.

The best dig came from his own head coach, when John Fox told the world that if his quarterback had to run a big boy's offense, "He'd be screwed." But it was the virgin from Florida that would do the screwing, as the Tebow-led Broncos rattled off seven midseason wins en route to a division title. 

Spread quarterbacks could become project cases for NFL coaching staffs. But talented spread quarterbacks will come at a price—not only will organizations have to burn first-round picks to get those players, but their team will also miss out on the chance to draft more conventional talent at other positions. 

The exception to that rule might be Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. The pre-draft discussion surrounding the Auburn product wasn't quite second-verse-same-as-the-first, but Newton had a passing acumen and an abbreviated delivery that Tebow did not.

It helped. Newton threw for more than 400 yards in his first pro game and never looked back.

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The added wrinkle gained from a spread quarterback—using him to run the ball on designed keeper plays—is most evident in the red zone. The idea of doubling one's quarterback as a the team's primary goal-line option is a dangerous one.

As the novelty from such a tactic begins to fade, defenses will land more shots on the offense's most valuable player, producing turnovers and injuries that would wipe out the cost of doing such business.

The jury is still out on whether this trend will stick in the NFL. Tebow's development as a quarterback is far from over. He's still working on that throwing motion. And while Newton did produce eye-popping stats for a rookie (and an alternate bid for himself to the Pro Bowl), he couldn't keep his team in the hunt for the NFC South title.

Blaine Gabbert's circumstances during his rookie season last fall (last-minute decision to start over David Garrard, Del Rio's firing) were as daunting as any other adjustments that the Missouri product was forced to make to the pro game.

That's not to say that getting a head start on a pro offense is a guarantee for success. USC ran a pro system under Pete Carroll, and that program's latest offerings have seen their own struggles on Sundays.

Matt Leinart pissed away his first opportunity in Arizona, and then was injured last season in a relief appearance as a Houston Texan. Mark Sanchez has been perfectly average in New York for his three seasons as a Jet. Matt Cassel, who never started a game in college while sitting behind Leinart, has eclipsed both of them as a pro, winning the AFC West with the Chiefs in 2009 and making the Pro Bowl in 2010, the only one of Carroll's trio to do so. 

The NFL's franchises, perhaps more so than any other set of businesses on earth, adjust to what works as quickly as they can discover it. Whether the spread quarterback stepping off campus and directly under center is a recipe for success is still undetermined.

Some guys will figure it out and some won't, and even if a guy doesn't, he could still be a transcendent pop icon and lead your team to a winning streak anyway. There are no firm rules for these kinds of things.