Christian Hackenberg Must Revert to Old Ways to Be Next Year's No. 1 Pick

Football isn't baseball. You can't use advanced stats to get a good grasp of how an individual performs when there are 22 moving players who impact counting numbers.

For example, the first overall pick of this past draft class was Jameis Winston, who threw 25 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. When you juxtapose that with Marcus Mariota's touchdown total of 42 and four interceptions, it would appear that Mariota would be a much better player.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers must have felt differently, though, and for good reason. Winston's 2014 statistics didn't take into account his pro-style offense or his 2013 output, which was 40 touchdowns and 10 interceptions as a redshirt freshman.

A player who seems to emulate Winston's on-field narrative is Christian Hackenberg, who will be a true junior quarterback for the Penn State Nittany Lions in 2015. Like the first overall pick, Hackenberg was an elite high school prospect who landed with an established power in the college football world, winning the starting job in his advanced offense as a freshman.

He also had a large split between his freshman and sophomore years. In 2013, he threw 20 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, but in 2014, he threw three more interceptions than touchdowns (15 and 12), which is terrible on paper, considering how wide-open offenses now are at the college level.

As mentioned before, though, none of these counting numbers matter without context.

When looking at the difference between Hackenberg's two seasons, a coaching change is one of the top variances. During his first year in Happy Valley, Hackenberg was coached by Bill O'Brien, a Bill Belichick disciple who is now the head coach of the Houston Texans.

O'Brien's traditional system allowed for Hackenberg to maximize his potential with touch and timing in underneath coverage. A year later, James Franklin, who was previously the Vanderbilt Commodores' head coach, installed a shotgun spread offense that forced Hackenberg to work outside of the structure he once was successful in.

In his 2013 film, you see some flaws with the young passer's game, but there also is a lot to like. Sure, he's a pretty heavy-footed athlete, but so are Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, and he's a pocket passer at heart. He throws deep balls with a little too much air under the pass, but he's going to be a player who wins at the NFL level with short and intermediate touch passes.

In a lot of ways, he looked like a Matt Ryan type of prospect. Ryan's best asset is his great ability to throw a singular deep route: the post route. Anticipating the break well, Ryan is able to gain tremendous yardage on said route while not being a "plus arm" deep thrower. According to Pro Football Focus, Ryan had a success percentage of 69.4 percent on post routes, the highest in the league.

At this point, it's hard to say that Hackenberg displays the mastery of a deep breaking route like Ryan has, but, mentally, they seem to have the same grasp of the game. He may be limited by pure talent in that aspect, but throws under 20 yards will be where he provides an NFL team with a potential franchise quarterback.

Everything Hackenberg does is fairly quick. He goes through progressions swiftly and has a compact release that zings the ball out on command. While his feet aren't fast, he does reset them against pressure, which can be a big issue for young quarterbacks.

His best trait, though, was ball placement.

Under O'Brien, the offense was built in a way in which Hackenberg's feet mirrored his progression and his receivers' breaks. In essence, because he knew exactly when and where his teammates were going to be at all times, his ability to get the pigskin into more defined windows went up.

In his new offense, which is largely a scan-and-fire spread scheme, this isn't the case. What you saw changing in his game in 2014 was that he was out of sync with his targets more often. What used to be perfectly timed strikes wound up as miscommunication plays that ended as interceptions.

After the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal, the Penn State football team took a huge blow in talent. If not for the NCAA's sanction, then it was for the two major coaching changes that followed Joe Paterno's tenure.

The once strong Nittany Lions could no longer run a pro-style offense by the time Franklin signed on to be the leader of the program. Instead, Penn State had to succumb to the spread game that has taken over the sport, allowing a team to mask for lesser offensive linemen and quarterbacks with spacing and speed.

The issue is this: Penn State already had one of the best passers in the game, and he's only been hurt by the transition. If an offense doesn't demand good mechanics from a quarterback, then he won't need to fix his flaws. At the NFL level, all 32 franchises will ask that from their throwers, but Penn State no longer does.

On top of that, Hackenberg no longer seems to trust his offensive line.

Donovan Smith was the second selection in the second round in the 2015 NFL draft, but outside of the left tackle, the Penn State line was strapped for talent. In 2013, there were times when Hackenberg looked "scared" of edge pressure, but by 2014, this seemed like a consistent issue.

Playing scared of the pass rush is one of the worst things that a young passer can do. One reason first-round busts like David Carr and Blaine Gabbert failed in the NFL was due to them "seeing ghosts," falling so afraid of edge pressure that they began to distrust their offensive line to the point where they played like they were under pressure on every rep, even against three-man rushes.

Hackenberg may be the next "ruined" quarterback on the list for this category. If he can go back to his 2013 ways, he has a chance. But with a lowly roster expected to replace a top-35 selection, it's hard to imagine his offensive line is going to get better in 2015.

Occasionally, there are still glimpses of brilliance from Hackenberg. He'll look like that "next Andrew Luck" prospect he's been billed as, throwing through pressure to drop a ball in a small slot. It's just not happening at the rate it used to—not the rate it will need to at the NFL level.

Hopefully, the 2015 staff will wise up and begin to place Hackenberg into his ideal situations again. It's OK if the offense is more complicated for him. He's shown that he has capability to get the job done well within that structure.

If he can't be broken down to be built back up, it might be time to give up on the Penn State experiment. Other than the "ruining" by pressure, there are other times during his 2014 film when his talent just went haywire.

Against the Michigan State Spartans, he consistently lost on deep routes against Trae Waynes, the Spartan cornerback who was just drafted 11th overall by the Minnesota Vikings. Attempting to test the team vertically—not one of Hackenberg's strong suits—he was beaten over and over by Waynes, who sat on top of any of Hackenberg's attempts downfield. It wasn't until an end-zone interception that Hackenberg learned his lesson, despite burning his hand on the hot oven door multiple times prior.

It's pretty clear that 2014 just wasn't his year.

The media made a fuss about Winston's touchdown and interception totals, and I can't imagine that if Hackenberg replicates his more interceptions than touchdowns performance, that they're going to let him slide.

On paper, Hackenberg's ideal offense involves plenty of thinking and precision, but his new offense now throws that to the window for spacing. If Hackenberg isn't able to turn back the clocks and perform like his 2013 version, either with the assistance of the coaches molding their scheme around him or by him developing more in their offense, then his shot at going first overall, and even in the first round, could be in jeopardy.