Explaining rise in J.J. McCarthy’s draft stock since the end of college football
Trevor Sikkema, the lead NFL Draft analyst for Pro Football Focus, joined Andy Staples On3 on Monday to speak on J.J. McCarthy.
Entering this week’s NFL Draft, Andy Staples is bullish on McCarthy, after watching him play at Michigan over the last couple of seasons. Even though McCarthy was the definition of a winner, he’s wondering if he has the correct NFL traits to justify his top five pick projection at the moment.
“So another reason why I love talking to you Trevor is because you watch college football. Unlike a lot of the folks who study NFL Draft. You know, they may be looking at cut ups. They may be looking at scheme fits for NFL teams, but you actually watch college football as it’s happening,” Staples prefaced the conversation. “And so you’re the perfect person to help explain to me the JJ McCarthy stuff. I like JJ McCarthy. I think he’s a good quarterback. I think he did a good job in Michigan. They didn’t ask him to do that much but when he needed to do stuff, he came through the final drive of regulation of the Rose Bowl, for example.
“But if you said at the Rose Bowl, this guy’s top five pick. I don’t know, really? Are we sure about that? But that seems to be where everybody has it.”
Evidently, Sikkema believes McCarthy’s premium status at the moment is due to the “QB-tax” that teams are willing to pay, but he relented that the Michigan signal caller did improve from 2022 to 2023.
“So the reason why I think we’re here with JJ McCarthy is it’s kind of a multi-layered answer. Right. One of them is because this time of the year, I would say late February into March and then especially in April, we’re doing mock drafts, for what we think is going to happen. That’s why there has been such a swing from December to January mocks, when McCarthy was sort of a second round pick, maybe late first round pick. And that’s kind of the range that I have and when it comes to an overall grade,” Sikkema responded. “I’ve got McCarthy with a late first, early second round grade. But when you think that there is even a small chance that a quarterback can be a Super Bowl caliber quarterback for you, you’re gonna pay the quarterback tax to draft them, and the quarterback tax is often a top 10 pick, and it just kind of is what it is.”
“I really didn’t like his 2022 tape. I’m gonna be honest with you. Like the first year that he was a starter, I thought he was a long way away from being an NFL quarterback. He really didn’t feel pressure really well, didn’t have a good feel for the pocket, and didn’t know when to hang tough, didn’t know when to escape and extend the plays, was late getting to his different progressions, was really fooled by defenses with how they were rotating their safeties and their linebackers. The same pressures that they would show pre snap versus what they would drop to in the post snap, like he was really confused. And just, you could tell, he was really inexperienced in those areas. All of that stuff got better in 2023, and it did.”
Continuing, Sikkema added that when McCarthy had the opportunity to step up and come through for his team, he did, and that can’t be discounted when evaluating his play.
“He wasn’t asked to throw for 300, 400 yards every single game. Like you mentioned, I’m a fan of college football. I watch a lot of college football. I watched how Michigan operated and Michigan had the best offensive line in the country. They had great wide receivers. They had a really good run game. They had a fantastic defense. They did not need McCarthy to throw for 400 yards a game They didn’t, and so they didn’t ask him to do it,” Sikkema added. “They instead played pretty risk averse football and did exactly what they needed to do to set up a very efficient offense. But in those moments, and you mentioned them there, where they said to McCarthy, ‘Hey, go make a play.’ Right, third and long. Go make a play. Last drive in the Rose Bowl. ‘Hey, go win it for us.’ He did step up in those moments. They weren’t as numerous as it was for other teams to put more on their quarterback’s plate. But how do we really fault him too much for, okay, maybe didn’t have the volume of opportunities, but when he got that opportunity, most often he really stepped up to the plate. So I think that goes into evaluating.
“How much he improved from 2022 to 2023. How he’s just 20 years old. He’s going to be 21 as a rookie. You’ve gotta believe that everything is still maturing for him and he’s gonna get stronger. He’s gonna get bigger. He’s gonna learn the game better. He’s going to speed up this process. We already saw it speed up from year to year in 2022 to 2023. I think the last kind of factor here is why are we seeing him in top 10 in mocks? Well, in February we learn more about what NFL teams think, as opposed to maybe what draft evaluators think. That’s when teams really start to turn the page, and they start to really dig into this draft class, and the people that talk to agents from within the buildings talk more in February and March, and so we learned a lot more about where the league might be when it comes to how high these guys could go. So that’s ultimately the way that I would answer the JJ McCarthy rise and how we got here.”
Alas, it’s going to be fascinating to see where J.J. McCarthy ends up in the 2024 NFL Draft. Whether he’s a top five pick or not, the former Michigan quarterback will have the opportunity to prove the naysayers wrong in the NFL.