2012 NFL Draft: Andrew Luck Scouting Report

Andrew Luck, Stanford 
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 235
Round: First round (Top 5)

One of the smartest QB’s you will ever see come out of college. In the four years I have really been looking at the draft, he is hands down the best I have seen.

He was valedictorian of his high school, had full rides to Northwestern, Rice and others based totally on his grades, not even football. He also has the pedigree to be a QB (see Manning family, the Palmer's, etc.) as his father was a QB in the NFL at one point and is now the AD at West Virginia.

Now that I’m done with all the little background stuff, this is what I want to tell you, this kid can straight ball. I have see him throw every route in the tree in a perfect spiral, hitting the perfect spot on the WR in the hands in stride except a post-corner which people hardly ever throw now anyways.

He’s got a huge arm and really good accuracy to go with it. Footwork is the best in class by far, it really shows that he has been practicing it since he arrived at Palo Alto. Even when he’s on the run, it always seems like he has his eyes downfield and his footwork is never a problem.

He has speed, enough to escape the pocket in pro’s but nothing like Mike Vick or anything like that. Sometimes he takes too much of a hit to get the first down, needs to learn risk/reward rather than risk his body on a 2nd-and-1.

Has a very quick release which makes him deadly when he’s throwing slants and screen passes. The quick release also works really well with play-actions.

He checks down to his RB’s a lot, not sure if that is by design or if that’s because he doesn’t see anything he can confidently throw to, but he can’t be doing that all the time in the NFL. When he doesn’t check down it seems like he just keeps his eye on one receiver and doesn’t even scan the field.

That is what I hope he improves on the most. The only other real big thing I am critical about with Luck is that he throws around half of his interceptions on the right corner route. That scares me if he’s my QB.

Even though he can’t throw that route too well he has the best fade I have ever seen in the NCAA. He has been well coached and plays in a fairly pro-style offense. His HC, OC and QB coaches have helped produce NFL talents like Rich Gannon, Chad Pennington, Kyle Orton and Jay Cutler.

The way football is played in Palo Alto is under center which isn’t too common in college anymore. That being said I don’t think it’s that much of a deal since it’s like 50/50 in the NFL now anyway, but it’s good that Luck has proven that he can do it in both sets.

He should be able to start day one of the NFL. He is the only QB so far I have said this about.

At Stanford he pretty much ran a pro playbook, they even had to have the linemen wear QB wrists so they could fit all the plays. Imagine this, a QB wristband could hold up to 50 plays on a card, there are three to five cards on each wristband.

So for most schools, that’s about 150 to 250 plays. Now imagine that you had about two or three times that. That’s what Andrew Luck brings to the table.