DeShone Kizer Already Making Case for Franchise QB Status in 2017 NFL Draft

This entire offseason, Deshaun Watson of Clemson, who took the Tigers down to the wire against Alabama in the College Football Playoff last year, was the crown jewel for any fanbase looking to address their quarterback position in the 2017 draft.

After one week of play, though, a new challenger, DeShone Kizer of Notre Dame, has emerged as a potential contender for that "franchise quarterback" label.

The NFL draft is the mechanism that leads to long-term success in the NFL. You can say what you want about how on the surface the event seems haphazard in terms of efficiency, but there's no doubt that the franchises who win championships in the league do so because of their talent relative to the salary cap.

The draft provides low-cost contracts for teams looking to add potentially rare talent from the college ranks, rather than addressing needs through free-agency classes that typically feature mid-level players looking to cash out.

In terms of the quarterback position, the draft couldn't be more important. It holds the top 14 contracts in the league based on average salary, per Spotrac. It also has a nearly $20 million franchise tag number, over $5 million more than any other position, according to CBS Sports.

Now, Kizer is only a 20-year-old redshirt sophomore, but it's not odd to see players, especially quarterbacks, declare early for the draft after just two-and-a-half years from their high school graduation. Last year's first overall pick, Jared Goff of California, did just that, while everyone and their mother expects the same from Watson.

In recent years, there has even been a trend of redshirt sophomores declaring at the position, as both Jameis Winston of Florida State and Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M went pro after just their second seasons of live action at the college level.

On paper, a Week 1 loss to a Big 12 team that went 5-7 in 2015 doesn't seem like a game that would reveal "the next big thing" like Manziel's historical performance against Alabama, but Kizer's effort in Notre Dame's double-overtime loss to the University of Texas on Sunday had as much impact on the 2017 draft as any in the nation this week.

One reason why Kizer's six-touchdown game against the Longhorns may have come as a surprise to casual draftniks is the fact that Kizer didn't officially win the Fighting Irish's starting job this spring. Kizer inherited the team last season after Malik Zaire, now a redshirt junior, broke his ankle in the second game of the season, and after Everett Golson, who took Notre Dame to a national championship game as a freshman, transferred to Florida State.

Zaire had yet to lose the job on the field since Kizer took over, and he's an upperclassman, so it's no surprise that head coach Brian Kelly split time between the two throughout camp, leading to little buzz for Kizer in draft circles heading into Week 1. It's just hard to hitch your wagon to a horse who may not even be in the race.

Zaire only threw five passes, completing two, and ran the ball three times, for zero net yards, against Texas. According to Sporting News (h/t Yahoo Sports), Kelly still is shy about calling Kizer the starter in public, but after looking at the redshirt sophomore's playing time and success relative to his competitor, the writing is on the wall.

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Asked about the quarterback situation — with DeShone Kizer and Malik Zaire — Kelly said, "We still have two very good quarterbacks."

Pressed further on whether he planned to keep the "OR" between the two on the depth chart, Kelly said: "We plan on having two really good quarterbacks the rest of the year. I haven't sat down and talked with either one of them, so before we do that we don't have any plans to make any decisions."

Kelly then finally relented and said, "Yeah, we will make that decision this week."

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Whether Kelly likes it or not, despite the class politics that may be in play, he has a potential first-round quarterback.

The first question that will come up in Kizer's ascension to the top of draft boards will be "Why didn't he win the job outright?" The truth is that Kizer isn't as talented a runner as Zaire, which means more to Kelly, the offensive leader of the program, than it will for NFL franchises.

Kizer isn't immobile, in fact he posted 77 rushing yards and a score in the opening weekend, including long runs off of both option runs and draws. Sometimes, though, those option plays call for a quarterback pounding the ball up the middle, and Zaire, who is listed at 5'11" and change and 225 pounds on NFL Draft Scout, is the quarterback whose body is built more like a fullback between the two.

The "Kizer didn't win a starting job in college, how will he in the NFL?" thought is valid if the two sports were comparable, but there isn't a franchise in the league that will throw out a lesser passer because he's built more like a between-the-tackles runner. Kelly's reasoning for playing Zaire is apples to oranges compared to the NFL game, even for "spread" minds like San Francisco's Chip Kelly.

Once we get past that speed bump of a narrative, we can get to Kizer's on-field play.

What might be the most impressive part of his performance against Texas is that he was able to put up those video-game numbers against a Charlie Strong defense, as pro-style as you're going to get out of the Big 12.

Strong was the defensive coordinator at the University of Florida for their 2006 and 2008 national championship seasons, when they allowed over 21 points just three times in those two seasons. Kizer was able to diagnose defenses that a decade ago ran through the big bad Southeastern Conference in seconds, finding open holes on the opposite side of the field.

You can tell that Kizer is able to process leverage quickly, which is surprising for a passer who is so young and has had to split reps in practice. You'll often hear that a player has "it," an non-descriptive word that alludes to some type of pattern matching from the eyes and mind of the storyteller.

More times than not, "it" is just a level of calm, self-awareness. A do-your-job mentality. When the Dallas Cowboys' Dak Prescott took what the defense gave him on early downs this preseason, but threw jump balls to his star targets when he was compromised, he showed "it," the awareness to know when it is and isn't your turn to hand the keys over on the offensive side.

College defenses usually have holes in underneath zone coverages that are there to exploit, if you want to throw early, but on a 3rd-and-long, you have to throw a pass beyond the sticks. Talent that flashes when an offense is off schedule is more translatable to the NFL than if you're a USC quarterback playing in a checkdown West Coast Offense with the best athletes on the field, as is evident by every Trojan passer's NFL career post-Carson Palmer.

There were two plays where Kizer really flashed the it-factor against Texas. The first came down three points in the fourth quarter on a 3rd-and-8, when he completed a perfect wheel route down the right sideline in the only spot his back could make a play, and the second was in double-overtime on a 3rd-and-7 in a tie game.

Both were in clutch situations on the road against Cover 1 with five-man protection. The odds were simple: you lose, you more than likely go home. You couldn't go deep down the middle because of the one zone defender, but you also didn't have much time to get it down the sideline, due to the five-on-five match up in the trenches.

Both times, he found the right man based on the situation, looking totally in control in the pocket in a high-pressure, high-variance situation. That was almost an eerie sight, as we haven't seen that since Watson's or Winston's run to their respective championship games. Kizer got one ball perfect and threw one slightly too high, as quarterbacking goes, but his ability to show that cool, collective process is what could make him great at the next level.

His ability to flip that switch from being an on-schedule and an off-schedule quarterback is the best trait you can have as a college signal-caller. He's not aggressive on early downs, but he's not scared of throwing through pressure to move the chains on third down, either.

He also has a knack for playmaking on the move, but as a pass-first mobile quarterback. He'll find that open man freelancing to a pseudo slant route when breaking the pocket in a two-minute drill. In the red zone, he'll pump fake and move around to influence defenders, as they lose track of the front corner of the end zone, where Kizer strikes.

In the pocket, Kizer will throw intermediate passes, the most important region of the field for an NFL quarterback when their offense goes off schedule, that have little room for error. He can also throw into a moving window with three closing defenders around his target, while another one is coming in to take a shot at the passer. 

If you're looking at strictly on-field knocks for Kizer, there are really only two. First, he wastes some movement with his lower body, but that's more of an aesthetic issue than a functional problem.

Second, balls that he throws can tend to die off faster than your usual blue-chip quarterback prospect's, as he spins the ball with enough velocity to make every throw "on a rope," leading to a shallower apex for the ball to decline from.

Kizer is smart, mobile, confident, accurate and strong-armed. Last year, Zaire threw 22 passes for 19 completions in a 38-3 win over Texas, but Kizer's performance in a loss was much more impressive, going to prove that box scores and stats can't tell you much about scouting quarterback prospects.

Right now, Kizer's only consistent flaw is that he can at times throw the ball too hard, trying to get it from point A to point B as quickly as possible. If the biggest issue you have with a college quarterback is getting him to throw balls with a little more air under them, you've found yourself a player.

Now, it was only one game, but that one game building off the quiet momentum that Kizer had to end the 2015 season is enough to get him on the map.

If you're a fan of a team with an unsettled quarterback unit, like the San Francisco 49ers, you should be glued to your television set when Notre Dame kicks off against Michigan State, Stanford, Miami and USC later on this year, all teams which, like Texas, have either quality coaching or legitimate NFL talent on the defensive side of the ball.

Kizer doesn't just have the potential to steal the "quarterback No. 2" spot from the likes of Miami's Brad Kaaya, but to supplant Clemson's Watson as the prize of the 2017 draft. In a year, Kizer can go from having his name brought up in pressers as questionable full-time starter with Notre Dame to earning that same role with an NFL franchise.