An In-Depth Look at Green Bay Packers' Most Intriguing Selection: Brett Hundley

There's been a lot of talk about the Packers' recent draft class. The back-to-back picks at the top of the weekend were hybrid cornerback-safety types in Damarious Randall of Arizona State and Quinten Rollins of Miami (Ohio).

In the third round, Green Bay took Ty Montgomery of Stanford, a college receiver who should really only see time early as a specialist, and to start off Day 3, the team took Jake Ryan of Michigan to fill their inside linebacker need.

The pick being talked about the most, the one which caused the most buzz on draft day and since, was their fifth-round pick, though.

To all of our surprise, general manager Ted Thompson waited until the middle of Day 3 to make his first trade of the draft. Thompson is known for moving assets around, but he waited until the New England Patriots offered the No. 147 selection for the Packers' No. 166, their fifth-rounder, and No. 247, their seventh-rounder.

With that pick, Green Bay took one of the top quarterbacks in the draft: Brett Hundley of UCLA.

Measurements

A lot of measurements are thrown out for more athletic positions, but I'm not sure certain numbers, such as arm length and vertical jump, matter for a quarterback. Numbers only mean so much if you don't have data to put those numbers into perspective, too. Luckily Mock Draftable tracks the percentiles for combine measurements at each position, dating back to 1999.

Quarterback Measurements

Height: 6'3" (44th percentile)

Hand Size: 10½" (96th percentile)

Athletic Measurements

40-Yard Dash: 4.63 (86th percentile)

20-Yard Shuttle: 3.98 (99th percentile)

3-Cone: 6.93 (81st percentile)

Overall, he's a great athlete for the position and has huge hands. If you switch his position to running back, some of his top comparisons are Todd Gurley and Melvin Gordon, who were the top two backs selected in the 2015 draft. If you switch his position to wide receiver, some of his top comparisons are Josh Gordon, Keenan Allen and Riley Cooper, who all have had success in the league.

Background

As a high school recruit out of Chandler High School in Arizona, Hundley was ranked as a 4-star recruit by Rivals and a 5-star recruit by Scout. According to Rivals, he also graduated in December, a half-year before the majority of his classmates, with a 3.9 GPA.

He made the decision to attend UCLA during September of his senior at Chandler. The decision came down to the Bruins and the University of Washington.

Hundley saw early success at Los Angeles, but as NFL talent left the roster offensively, and wasn't replaced, his draft hype started to die down. He redshirted in 2011 but was the team's starting passer as a redshirt freshman in 2012.

Coming into 2013 with a 66.5 percent completion percentage and a passer rating of 147.7, Hundley was looked at as a potential franchise passer. John Middlekauff of Comcast SportsNet, a former NFL scout with the Philadelphia Eagles, contemplated openly if he or Marcus Mariota, this class' second overall pick, were better in September of their sophomore seasons.

Dan Kadar of Mocking the Draft threw out another name in the Mariota and Hundley conversation: Johnny Manziel, who went 22nd overall to the Cleveland Browns in the 2014 draft. To say the least, Hundley was once thought of as a potentially elite prospects by some of the biggest names in the draft media world.

Scouting Report

The immediate trait you note when watching Hundley play football is his athleticism, which shows up in his combine testing. If he wasn't so tall, he might have the upside to play running back at the NFL level, as he shows the vision to navigate through space.

One issue with his game is that he too often relies on that ability, though. In the college game, offenses are more open due to the wider hashes in the sport. In the NFL, he won't be able to make the same type of plays in constricted space against much better athletes in more aggressive schemes.

He drops his eyes against pressure and turns into a runner too quickly, taking a late in the down deep pass off the table. That was one reason why Jake Locker, a first-round pick of the Tennessee Titans, failed at the position and was labeled as a "bust."

He has a good arm, but you rarely see the ball placement to suggest that he can be a day-one starter at the next level. That might develop down the line under head coach Mike McCarthy, who refined a raw Aaron Rodgers into the league's MVP and made Matt Flynn a respectable passer for stretches.

His largest flaw, though, is that everything comes slow with him. His reads are late, and getting inside a passer to make him tick faster is a tougher task than getting his feet and shoulders in line to up his accuracy.

Some of his reads were flat-out wrong decisions, too. The biggest example of this is a play, which doesn't translate to McCarthy's offense, but it should still be noted. Often UCLA would run a packaged play that had the ball either thrown to a motioning running back on a swing route or run by Hundley down the middle of the offensive line.

If a linebacker ran out of "the box" to follow the motioning back, it was a key to Hundley that the defense was in man, and without that man in the box, Hundley should take the ball and run, as the numbers were on his side.

If the linebacker stayed, though, the defense was in a zone defense, and the running back would be wide-open to catch a pass in the backfield and turn up the field, where his receivers were blocking downfield.

There were at least a half-dozen times on that play alone where he would ignore his keys, running the ball into the teeth of the defense when the linebacker didn't follow the back. The result? Often either a tackle for loss or Hundley falling at the line of scrimmage near the wall of defenders.

At the NFL level, you're only going to get what the defense gives you. There's no room for heroes who want to create outside the structure of their scheme. Hundley needs to stop ignoring keys.

Leadership

Some question Hundley's desire after he turned down a Senior Bowl invite. Despite the fact that he was a redshirt junior, he graduated from UCLA with a degree and had an open invitation to the event. I'm not sure that this was a move to avoid competition, though, as it was probably a move to vacuum seal his draft stock, as the senior quarterback class was underwhelming as a whole.

In his sophomore and junior seasons with the Bruins, he was a team captain. He also made the Athletic Director's Honor Roll twice. On top of that, he displayed leadership off the field as Eric Galko of Optimum Scouting wrote in September 2013.

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Off the field, he's an economics major who is a part of the de facto collegiate student-athlete union, the National College Players Association. Most draft prospects, let alone quarterback prospects, won't declare after their redshirt sophomore seasons, but after Hundley called the NCAA a “cartel”, it's not over the top to entertain the idea.

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Fit with Team

The Green Bay Packers have struggled with special teams for some time now and had a Super Bowl bid burnt because of the unit. If a player makes the 53-man roster, I would guess from this point on, they should be able to contribute on "teams." That lowers the chances of a third quarterback making the roster.

In a head-to-head battle, I think Hundley could beat Scott Tolzien to take the gig behind Rodgers. Down the line, he might be more than that, though. There's an outside chance that he can develop into a passer whom another team might trade draft assets for. If Thompson can turn Hundley as a fifth-round pick into a second-round pick in three years, I think everyone would consider this selection a win.