Marcus Mariota's Draft Stock Already Set in Stone After Years in Limelight

This week is one of the three most important in the draft process. In Indianapolis, which hosts the combine, players will be poked and prodded, interviewed, measured in various ways and be told to run drills that evaluate their athleticism on an even field.

For Oregon's Marcus Mariota, none of this matters.

There are a few positions in sports where players don't need to be considered "athletes." In football, most would think about specialists first. Punters, kickers and long snappers all perform fairly stationary roles, which means the athletic testing they do matters very little in the long run of their careers. Next up, though, are quarterbacks. They play the most important position in the sport—and potentially in the world—due to the emphasis the rules and advancing offenses have placed on it.

As the passer on offense, you rely more on mental consistency and advancement than anything else, and while the famous Wonderlic test measures intelligence, it doesn't test on-field wit. For example, Aaron Rodgers scored in the top five percent in quarterbacks on the Wonderlic during his combine after declaring a year early from the University of California, per Mock Draftable. One might correlate Wonderlic with NFL success at the position because of that, but you'd be wrong to do so.

Mock Draftable refined the numbers to find the 10 quarterbacks over the past 15 or so years who compared the most to Rodgers based on his numbers in Indianapolis. Those players were Jesse Palmer, Ingle Martin, Kellen Clemens, J.P. Losman, Drew Stanton, Travis Lulay, Jared Zabransky, Omar Jacobs, Matthew Stafford and Greg McElroy.

Palmer and McElroy were two SEC quarterbacks who famously now broadcast on ESPN after short stints at the NFL level. Clemens and Losman were selected high in the draft but never panned out. Lulay and Zabransky had quick careers as practice-squad players before moving to Canada to continue playing football.

Even Martin, who was selected by the same Green Bay organization that drafted Rodgers one year before him, was off his original team after just one season. The same team went after a "similar" quarterback prospect, swung twice, hit a home run with one and completely struck out the other.

It wouldn't seem like there's any correlation between combine stars and consistent greatness after college. Stafford is doing fine for himself after being the top pick, but he hasn't broken into that upper echelon of throwers at any point in Detroit.

Stanton, who is on his fourth team since being drafted in the second round in 2007, spent some time as a starter with the Arizona Cardinals when Carson Palmer went down with his second traumatic knee injury in his time in the league.

If you're looking for players in the same mold as Rodgers and the second-best name you can point to is a top-50 selection on his fourth team in eight years who can give you quality reps off the bench, it's clear the model of judgment is built for the results you want. 

This all comes back to Mariota. As a true freshman, he redshirted on a team that won the Rose Bowl under Darron Thomas, who mysteriously declared a year early for the NFL draft and went undrafted. He never got a sniff on even a camp roster in the NFL.

This opened up the door for a potential four-year stretch in which Mariota could start. First, he had to battle Bryan Bennett, who was a year older and had live reps under his belt as a reserve player and injury replacement for Thomas in 2011, throwing for six touchdowns and zero interceptions that year.

John Canzano of The Oregonian stated at the time: "Insiders at Oregon insist that Thomas was not guaranteed to come back as the starter for the 2012 season." As late as August 29, 2012, people were still arguing that Bennett should get the nod over the Hawaiian, which seems crazy in retrospect. 

Mariota got the gig and finished in second in "total quarterback rating," which is calculated by ESPN. Ahead of him? First-round selection and former Oregon commit Johnny Manziel. In 2013, he finished second in the NCAA again, this time behind Jameis Winston, that year's Heisman winner and the other prospect people seem to be putting up against Mariota in the running for the top selection of this season's draft.

Finally, in 2014, he netted the top spot during his own Heisman year. After reaching that peak, he moved on to the professional game.

Mariota has had a successful college career. He and Bennett were good enough to potentially push out Oregon's senior quarterback, who owned various air records already in his two years in Eugene and guided the team to a BCS National Championship appearance and the school's first Rose Bowl win since the 1916 season. That, in itself, is an incredible statement.

After Mariota took the starting job in 2012, Bennett elected to transfer to Southeastern Louisiana, where he led the school to the first two FCS playoff appearances in its history. He's thought enough of a prospect to even be a draftable player this season, as he was at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, in January.

Just to sniff the field, Mariota had to overcome two established obstacles, a tough task for a 3-star freshman. From there, it was a wrap.

Lovie Smith, the head coach of the Buccaneers, who hold the top pick in this year's draft and are in dire need of a passer—they recently released Josh McCown, their 2014 starter—had nice words to say about the high-flying quarterback this week, according to ESPN's Pat Yasinskas.

"

In Marcus' case, yeah, he ran an offense that most teams in the league don't run. But I see him scrambling around, I see him making decisions, I see him—for the most part—making most of the throws that he'll be making in the league.

If you look in our league right now, there are different quarterbacks. There are some mobile quarterbacks. There are some more drop-back pocket quarterbacks. There are guys having success doing it a lot of different ways.

"

The most significant portion of this quote was Smith stating he already saw him make NFL-level throws.

So with three years of film to study and no real proper way to measure success in Indianapolis, what's the point of him even being there? There are the semantics of performance in drills, but as we've seen, these numbers don't mean much in the long run. You want to see if he has the drive to compete head-to-head with anyone, sure, but what's the competition if he's throwing in a shirt and shorts?

We've even seen that one go the other way recently, when Teddy Bridgewater elected not to throw at the combine but threw at his pro day. He ended up free falling after a poor performance with his own receivers in Louisville. The outcome? He had what has to be thought of as the top rookie season at the position since Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson's. Plus, the Minnesota Vikings were able to take his talent in the last first round, where good quarterbacks are less likely to be found.

Luck, Griffin, Wilson, Bridgewater and Mariota all saw extended time for three or more years at the college level. The offseason process only seems to let teams get in their own way. While Luck and Griffin were drafted top two in the 2012 class, Bridgewater had his fall and Wilson had his own due to his lack of height.

Luckily for Mariota, he's already come in at more than enough size, at just under 6'4" and 222 pounds, per Rotoworld. He's also doing well in his interviews at the combine. 

"

I continue to hear glowing reviews from NFL contacts on Marcus Mariota's performance in the meeting rooms. He's "wowing" them #NFLCombine

— Dane Brugler (@dpbrugler) February 20, 2015"

CBS Sports and NFL Draft Scout's Dane Brugler tweeted that insider info on Thursday, but then added another note to his reporting.

"

Mariota was expected to interview well, that's no surprise. But not every NFL team is easy to impress. He's impressing them...and then some.

— Dane Brugler (@dpbrugler) February 20, 2015"

"Mariota was expected to interview well, that's no surprise." That's no surprise is the best way to describe this whole process. College scouts are in and out of schools every day and have met these prospects or people around these prospects multiple times at this point. On film, their athleticism is a reflection of measurables.

None of this is new. Mariota is still the quarterback who finished in the top two for his three seasons in ESPN's best advanced-passing metric. Watching him on television in Under Armour just gives the general public another chance to hop on the hype wagon if they've been snoozing for the past couple of years.