Washington's Jake Locker Not The Lock Many Made Him Out To Be

It’s easy to kick someone when they’re down, and right now there’s probably no other player in college football that’s fallen down quite as far as Washington quarterback Jake Locker.

The 6'3" 230 lb. senior signal caller, who entered the season ranked by many self appointed draft “experts” and “gurus” as the sure fire first pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, looked completely inept against a strong and stifling Nebraska defense this past Saturday in Seattle.

Locker completed just four of his 20 pass attempts for a measly 71 yards in the 56-21 drubbing. It was a performance that shed light on the fact that Locker is still a long ways away from being able to start an NFL game at the quarterback position.

Now I don’t consider myself to be a Locker fan nor a Locker hater, but I will admit I do always get some slight enjoyment when the consensus golden boy fails to meet expectations. Simply because I find it funny how people can become so infatuated with one human being and pump him up to almost mythical proportions.

It happens every year, especially with college quarterbacks. Although most tend to fall remarkably short of the fanfare and hype.

Maybe all the Lockerettes out there should have looked at the young man’s nine total victories in three seasons as a clue that he might not possess that special something that you want in your starting quarterback—that winning intangible.

It’s why so many people killed Jimmy Clausen last year. They said he had the skills, but he didn’t have the attitude of a winner. Clausen, once considered a top ten talent, dropped all the way down to the mid second round.

The lack of the “it” factor could have been why the NFL draft advisory chose to grade Jake as a second round talent last year even though all the talking heads were praising him every chance they got.

Now let’s make no mistake about it, Locker has all the physical tools you look for in a franchise quarterback. But there’s a long list of guys that have had the tools yet never made any kind of impact in the NFL.

It should be interesting to see how things play out for Jake throughout the rest of his senior season. This was the year he and head coach Steve Sarkisian were supposed to revive this Huskies team and carry them to a bowl game and a winning record, something that hasn't happened at Washington since 2002.

That’s still possible, but if Jake Locker has taught us anything, it’s that everyone needs to slow down the preseason hype machine from now on. Remember at the beginning of last season when folks like Mel Kiper were trying to sell us on Jevan Snead as a top ten pick?

Hmmm, how did that one turn out?

No Locker won’t end up like Snead, he’s still the best senior quarterback prospect at this point, but there are a whole bunch of underclassmen such as Stanford’s Andrew Luck, Ohio State’s Terrelle Pryor and Arkansas’ Ryan Mallett, who are ready to push him down the board if they decide to leave school early.

Only time will us if Jake Locker is really the superstar that many people wanted us to believe in. But maybe that’s the point.

We should let time take it’s course before anointing someone who has failed to prove anything as the “next big thing.”