Over the Summer I had a discussion with an aspiring NFL draft talent evaluator. His breakdown of Easton Stick was as good as anything that I've seen on our quarterback but I disagreed with a few of the points that he made. The one that I am planning to address the most specifically this season is to pay close attention to the running of our quarterback. As a prospect being able to run can be an asset but being a running quarterback in the NFL lead to many injuries that "pocket passers" may not experience. I can count on one hand the number of running quarterbacks that have succeeded for many years without serious injury over the last 20 years in the NFL. Sure Stick could be the exception but I'm not ready to count on that and don't think you should count on that either. Think as you wish, but that's my recommendation.
The challenge I'm going to give myself is to go game by game, watching whether his runs seem to be a part of the designed offense or because it's still a basic instinct & primary facet of his game. At the end of the season maybe it will help shed some more light on our quarterback as a pro prospect.
Easton was once again great overall. I realize that fixating on a couple plays that were less than stellar is knit picking & I really don't want to do be that finicky. So I'll just be blunt about it & hope that my thoughts come through clearly. The last two of his three rushes were fine but I would much rather him not take the unnecessary hits that he took on them. He wasn't hurt, which is great, & the plays went as positives (thus the dual designation) but against NFL caliber players, taking unnecessary hits is the surest way to be injured. My objective with this is to evaluate him as a runner with consideration of the future so he even though there was no negative result today & he only carried the ball three times it wasn't his best running performance.
The rest of his performance was tremendous! I'll get to that and more in the Pick Six later, for now though, hopefully my point makes sense!