Can Vernon Adams Be 2016 NFL Draft's Hidden Gem at Quarterback?

Vernon Adams has a lot of things going against him, but the former Oregon quarterback is basically invisible on media draft boards. If you scroll through any big boards, it's rare to find Adams as a top-10 passer in the class, if he's even ranked at all. Currently, NFL Draft Scout, the entity that produces CBS Sports' draft content, has the Duck ranked as its 14th quarterback, and he's listed as a seventh-round to free-agent grade, about the consensus in the community.

Here's the problem: Adams has proven he can play at multiple levels. Most just missed his opportunities.

He started his career at Eastern Washington, an FCS powerhouse that was in the running for a national championship in all three of Adams' years as a starter. He scored 123 touchdowns for the Eagles, winning the Big Sky Conference three times.

As a late graduate, he was allowed to transfer to the University of Oregon in the summer just before his senior season would kick off. The Ducks were looking for a new quarterback, as there was a vacancy left behind when Marcus Mariota declared early for the 2015 NFL draft, where he was selected second overall by the Tennessee Titans.

Adams' first game in Eugene was against his former team. His entire Oregon career needs context, and it starts here. If you search through Adams' box scores, you'll say that he started his run at Nike U slowly, but in all reality, he was injured. One of his former teammates took a cheap shot at the quarterback while he attempted to slide, resulting in Adams leaving the game with a scary head injury and the EWU player, John Kreifels, leaving with an ejection. Kreifels was also suspended for the Eagles' following game.

According to Chip Patterson of CBS Sports, Kreifels also taunted fans as he was escorted out of Autzen Stadium. The hostility between Eastern Washington football and Adams was a big storyline heading into the game, as the Eagles head coach, Beau Baldwin, banned Adams from working out in the school's facilities in the winter, despite the fact that the quarterback was still enrolled at the school deep into August.

It felt like Kreifels' hit was a dirty, malicious statement from the program. That statement stuck with Adams, who dealt with a broken finger from the game. After the Ducks' perceived "warm-up," they were slated to face their toughest opponent of the season: the Big Ten's Michigan State, the previous year's Cotton Bowl champions, who returned their senior quarterback Connor Cook.

Oregon needed a quarterback so badly that it waited months on the result of a transfer's August math exam to pin down its starter. The Ducks needed Adams to play if they had any shot to win, and he did. Injured.

Limited, Adams threw 39 passes for 22 completions, 309 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions for a 121.2 passer rating in a 31-28 loss. He was visibly not himself. The next game on Oregon's schedule was against the non-Power Five Georgia State, a Sun Belt opponent. After playing through a broken index finger against Michigan State, Adams sat out the match against the Panthers.

Oregon won 61-28, outscoring Georgia State 33-7 at the half, but it had another challenge awaiting it for the start of Pac-12 play a week later: Utah. The Utes defense was loaded, even leading them to the third slot in the AP poll heading into their USC matchup in late October. Once again, Adams was put in a tough predicament: Should he play knowing he was injured or sit out a potentially-Pac-12 North-deciding game to reach full health quicker?

When you watch Adams play football, it's like watching controlled chaos. It's hard to come away with a word for him other than "gamer." His style reminds you of the backyard scrambling type of play that Brett Favre, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers and Johnny Manziel all possess. It's obvious that he plays on emotion and that he loves the sport of football. The "gamer" did what he knew best and suited up for his second battle in Autzen against Utah.

In seven passes against the Utes, Adams completed two, including a touchdown, for 26 yards. He was then pulled by the coaching staff. It was obvious that the decision to play him was rushed. Utah won 62-20, and the Ducks quickly caught themselves at 2-2 with an 0-1 record in the Pac-12, to a North rival nonetheless, after ending their 2014 season in the national championship game.

Adams missed the next two games, against Colorado, a 41-24 win, and Washington State, a 45-38 overtime loss. The last time Oregon lost to Washington State prior to 2015 was in 2006. The last time the Cougars won in Eugene was 2003, when Adams was a 10-year-old.

A 1-2 Pac-12 record felt like the sky falling for a program accustomed to double-digit-win seasons in recent years. Especially when considering who it lost against. Utah was the new kid on the block, coming by way of expansion, and Washington State was a program viewed as a doormat for the conference, at least since Mike Price's players had graduated out of the school.

That two-game breather that Adams was awarded gave him time to heal, though, and that changed Oregon's season. From that point on, he completed 125 of his 188 passing attempts for 2,062 yards, 22 touchdowns and just four interceptions in the remaining seven games for the Ducks. Under his healthy wing, the team never lost another regular-season game, putting his FBS vs. FBS record at 6-0 in that circumstance.

He was efficient enough during that stretch that he was able to rank second in passer rating in the FBS for the entire season, mostly off of the strength of his healthy six-game regular-season performance. If you question how much he as an individual meant to Oregon's success in 2015, look no further than its bowl game as proof.

With five minutes left in the first half of the Alamo Bowl against TCU, Adams left with a head injury. Oregon entered the half with a 31-0 lead, and the game was over. It was a wrap. That was the time to finish up on the chores around your house or finally go see the new Star Wars movie. Jeff Lockie, Adams' backup, was going against Bram Kohlhausen, Trevone Boykin's backup, in a five-score game.

The week of the bowl game, Boykin was arrested in San Antonio for participating in a bar fight that also included an officer. The drop-off between Adams and Lockie juxtaposed to Boykin and Kohlhausen was stressed in the second half, though. The Horned Frogs not only answered for the 31-0 deficit they faced starting the final 30 minutes of regulation, but they would pull through with a 47-41 win in triple-overtime in sports movie fashion.

Again, context is important. Most people saw very few snapshots of Oregon's season. They saw the major Oregon-Michigan State game, which Adams was hurt for. They also saw the late-night Oregon-Utah upset, which Adams was hurt for. They saw the bowl game, which Adams was hurt in.

Unless you were a West Coaster entrenched in the Pac-12 race, you probably missed his performances against USC and Stanford, when he completed 30 of 37 passes, combined for 612 yards, eight touchdowns and just one interception. Even the USC game was 31-14 at the half, background noise for the national fan who did manage to stumble upon it.

You're probably looking at all of this and saying, "But NFL teams will dig deep into film and catch all of this nuance," right? Only with opportunity. There are two major events for prospects during the draft process. The first is their all-star game, if they're a senior, and the second is their combine-pro day combo.

The Senior Bowl is the premier all-star game for college prospects. It's also held in Mobile, Alabama, and tends to lean on Southern quarterbacks in terms of the roster. For example, Jake Coker, who was Alabama's quarterback for the majority of 2015, was at this year's Senior Bowl after just one year of production. Coker wasn't invited to the NFL Scouting Combine, which features 18 quarterback prospects, including two FCS throwers.

Adams wasn't invited to the Senior Bowl, despite the fact that the event went from inviting six passers to the game historically to eight in 2015. Of those eight, four came from Alabama's native Southeastern Conference, if you include Jeff Driskel, who prior to his time at Louisiana Tech was the starter at Florida.

Another factor that comes into play is the timing of the invites. The first wave of Senior Bowl requests come in-season. It wasn't until the Stanford game, in mid-November, that Adams' healthy potential was seen against a blue-chip defense. I do not blame the Senior Bowl's staff for overlooking a late-blooming West Coast quarterback when there were options that could bring in ticket-buying fans from a driving distance. It just reiterates the narrative of Adam's senior season: perspective.

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Here's that 93 TD pass by #Oregon Vernon Adams to #Purdue's Danny Anthrop. #ShrineGame pic.twitter.com/2WAlud2aKF

— Eric Galko (@OptimumScouting) January 23, 2016"

Adams took the opportunity to play at the East-West Shrine Game in St. Petersburg, Florida, which is viewed as the second-best all-star game in the draft schedule. There, he was named the MVP of the game after throwing three touchdowns, including a 93-yarder, in which he used his legs to buy time to get the ball off, his best trait.

On the field, it was high praise for Adams all week. His weigh-in results were the only negative talk about him at the Shrine Game. He measured under 6'0" and with smaller than 9" hands, two historically important predictors of quarterback play at the next level. They aren't death sentences, though. Russell Wilson and Johnny Manziel both stand under the 6'0" mark and started for teams in 2015, and Tony Romo's small hands haven't hurt him much other than as a holder.

If you watch Adams play, it's hard to say that he shouldn't be in the running with the second tier of passers in this draft class. If nothing else, he should be viewed as an early Day 3 selection in a league that has franchises chugging sand to quench their thirst at the quarterback position. Instead, because of the level of effort it takes to grasp onto Adams' senior season, many in the media are pretending he just doesn't exist.

On a trait-by-trait basis, Adams and Manziel are the same player on the field. They're short, possess decent, but not great, arms, are very mobile, have play-making ability and make defensive ends who break their containment assignment look foolish. All of it. Some intelligent team will realize that the only difference between them from a football perspective is a late hit and a Heisman Trophy.

Narratives matter, even in a "the eye in the sky doesn't lie" tape-grinding scouting world. It's how players like Tim Tebow land as first-round picks in the first place.

The combine is this week and will feature another weigh-in, where some media members will shrug off Adams' potential due to his height and hand size again, since they haven't heard much about the prospect. He'll just be one of the 300-plus prospects in Indianapolis to them.

Adams' hands were under 9" when he was winning conference titles at Eastern Washington. They were under 9" when he was dunking on USC and Stanford at Oregon. They were even under 9" when he destroyed the competition at the Shrine Game.

Don't look for another reason to look past the mobile passer. He's proven himself, if you're willing to dig deep enough and accept the situations he was put in during his senior season.