How good will JaMarcus Russell be at the Pro Level?

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by skinsfan69

Also how in the world can you say he is not a good decision maker????? Perhaps earlier in his career this was the case, when he was young and inexperienced, but certainly not now. Since you are so into stats just look at his. 28tds and 8ints and 67% completion rate. Sorry but those are great stats. 8 ints in 342 attempts is really taking care of the football. Especially in the SEC where the talent level is the highest in the country. And if you looked at his last game he totally outplayed Brady Quinn and for that matter so did Troy Smith in the 06 game. Brady Quinn looked terrible against LSU. He was all over the place with the ball. Now would a smart scout grade Quinn on this performaces in bowl games? Hell no. The guy really proved himself, especially his last two years. Quinn is a great college qb. But Russell also got better every single year. All of his %'s went up in his three years. He had no regression in his three years at LSU. So I'm not sure where your getting your info from about Russell but it's completly 100% wrong.

28 TDs, 8 INTs, and 67% are wonderful numbers. But it was only one year. He would have been a much better prospect if he came back another year and did it again. Quinn made a significant improvement every year through his Junior year, and then came back to improve his game for another season, and this difference will be reflected between Russell and Quinn at the pro level. I promise you.

There are a lot of college numbers that will be decieving. That's why I say its far more important that an NFL prospect take more from his college experience (games started), than he gives (everything else).

Do you disagree with the notion that Russell would have been a significantly better prospect if he stayed at LSU for his senior year season? I mean, it sounds like you are on board with this concept, but you continue to argue in spite of it.

Completion percentage is important. And Russell was certainly better at it than Quinn in college. There are a lot of experience related reasons to expect Quinn to be better than Russell at the next level. Completely aside from starting 17 more games (one and a half freakin seasons), Russell made a lot of boneheaded decisions at the college level. I mean, at times, it almost seemed like he lacked the ability to adjust to certain defensive coverages, and was easily confused. Many LSU fans were frusterated by this.

You can make a solid argument that Russell was a better college QB than Quinn because the college game allows for physical skill to overcome inconsistent mental play. Based on what we already know about what makes a guy successful at the pro level, Quinn>Russell (by a sizable margin) just seems like the gimme of the year. Stastical projections only improve my confidence in this.