Is Sean Mannion the Quarterback of the Future for St. Louis Rams?

No, he is not. Well, at least not in actuality. Sean Mannion may wear the sash for a little bit, but it doesn't take much to see that there is no substance behind the sizzle of this pick.

In selecting the Oregon State signal-caller, the Rams became the latest in a long line of teams to fall for a quarterback's physical tools rather than his actual ability to run an offense. At 6'6", 229 pounds, with a big arm, Mannion has the skill set for general managers to dream on. 

The problem is that the wake-up call will go poorly if Mannion is relied upon to actually be the quarterback of the future. Imagine Neo escaping from his egg in The Matrix but with less blood. Mannion has clear and defined flaws—especially in dealing with pressure—that should keep him from ever being an NFL starter, let alone a star. And yet, when he was drafted, this was the first thing heard on ESPN:

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Mort on Sean Mannion: "Some people have called him a poor man's Peyton Manning."

— Evan Silva (@evansilva) May 2, 2015"

"Some people" may exist only in the St. Louis war room, because they're the only ones who could justify dropping serious draft capital on Mannion. 

Mannion's statistics cratered in his senior year without Saints wideout Brandin Cooks, who played for Oregon State in the 2013 season. Explaining away his selection over more talented quarterbacks like UCLA's Brett Hundley and Baylor's Bryce Petty was a difficult process, but that doesn't mean media folks didn't try. 

It's true that in a risk-averse NFL, teams are increasingly trying to lower the risk by picking players who they've seen make NFL throws. It's also true that, as Mortensen pointed out on Twitter, Mannion is the son of a high school coach and was deemed quite intelligent by NFL executives. 

Here's the problem with all that: Football isn't played on paper or while talking. It's a game that boils down to repetition, reaction and recognition. Mannion can be the smartest guy in the whole locker room, but that's not going to help him instinctively find the right receiver when two linebackers blitz the A-gap. 

Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio ranked Mannion as just the 10th-best quarterback in the draft, saying he was a quarterback "who might represent how an NFL team gets quarterback evaluation backwards." Then, there's this: 

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The nature of free agency, coaching changes, and impatient owners does not encourage quarterbacking-by-numbers in the NFL. The successful offenses have quarterbacks who can deviate from the script, think on their feet, find openings that they can exploit with their brand of football.

I’m concerned that Mannion lacks that brand of football. He’s patient within the structure of a play to its very limits, but he’s uncomfortable when the design of play fails early and he’s forced to improvise.

There’s a fine line where one could say Mannion makes quick, timely, and aggressive plays under pressure or that he’s hurried, reckless, and unnecessarily flustered. He often targets players that he shouldn't and he puts players in harm's way on routes where he should show more selectivity or care.

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Of all the teams to pick Mannion early, it would be Jeff Fisher's Rams, who believed in Sam Bradford for years and have turned over the quarterback position to Nick Foles at the moment. As the Todd Gurley selection taught us, the Rams are going into this offseason with one plan: to win every game 17-13, as the 1980s told us it should be. 

He reminds me a lot of Josh McCown. While McCown has started for teams in the NFL, it's mostly been out of necessity or—surprise—draft stock-influenced decision-making. 

Mannion is going to get a crack at this thing, because the Rams have invested such a high pick in him that they probably won't be able to get out of this without at least trying him. And it's not like a depth chart headed by Nick Foles, Austin Davis and Case Keenum is brimming with the kind of NFL success that will keep Mannion off the field. 

The Rams are betting that they can teach pocket skills and decision-making rather than height and arm strength. It's a bet that, objectively, has not gone well over the past few years. The last quarterback to rise up a draft board based on a great pro day and tools was Tom Savage, and the Texans were so impressed with him last year that they signed Brian Hoyer just to make sure Savage was buried on the depth chart. 

The most likely scenario—unless Mannion becomes some sort of Manning-esque mastermind at pre-snap reads—is that Fisher gets one look at what he has this season and then drops him quickly to find a better solution. The paradox is that in picking Mannion, Fisher and general manager Les Snead have proved that they aren't the right combo to trust to find that solution.

 

DYAR and DVOA numbers cited are courtesy of Football Outsiders. Learn more about DVOA here.

Rivers McCown is an NFL Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Three-Cone Drill podcast. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.