Why Teddy Bridgewater's fall is confusing

This year's presumed draft day rock falling from the top of Quarterback Mountain is Teddy Bridgewater, and it's been that way for some time. Color me confused, as little about that makes sense, and now the Teddy smear campaign is reaching to claim he's weak in vaguely defined, barely existing areas.

Last night Mike Mayock appeared on NFL Network’s “Path to the Draft”, and the czar of draft film evaluating dropped a few observations and sourced musings which add to the confusion.

Let’s start with this:

"First and foremost, you want to say the tape is most important. We talk about that all the time, but at the quarterback position, you have to see the guy throw live. We all know that that pro day was below average for a top-level quarterback. I talked to a lot of teams, and I'm hearing a heck of a lot more second-round grades than first-round grades.”

Pro Days aren’t irrelevant. Not at all, and they’re an important step in the draft yellow brick road. But it’s the level of that importance which is creating the problem here.

Mayock has also previously said a prospect’s game tape should be 85 percent of what we draw our conclusion from. Bridgewater hasn’t played in a football game since December 28, a time long ago when stockings were still hung with care. When you watch his tape, you see brilliance.

You see a quarterback going through his progressions to make the proper read. You see a quarterback fitting a ball into tight spaces. You see a quarterback making a variety of throws, from short check downs after correctly seeing a deep option wasn’t safe, to longer, sailing balls caught in stride. You see a quarterback who has the pocket presence to avoid a rush, and then the athleticism to still square up, and complete passes on the run.

You see a quarterback whose balls successfully found the target on 71 percent of his throws this past season. Most of all, you see a quarterback who should be the first at his position off the board next week, or at worst he should be given serious and long consideration for that title.

That’s the 85 percent. But the other 15 percent is frightening, according to Mayock.

"What I'm hearing is two things. Number one, when we saw him throw live we didn't see arm strength and didn't see accuracy. Number two, when you draft a quarterback in the first round you expect him to be the face of your franchise, you expect him to embrace the moment. I think people had some concerns about whether or not this young man is ready to step up and be the face of a franchise."

It’s important to note that while Bridgewater’s Pro Day was indeed less than stellar, the level of his suck is debatable. He misfired six times, which is three more incompletions than Johnny Manziel chucked during his day of drool.

Because of that there was an immediate rush to write great headlines referencing a bridge, and Bridgewater’s bridge falling. Great times were had, despite some well respected observers (namely, Gil Brandt and Norv Turner) saying his performance, while not spectacular, wasn’t nearly as awful as it was being portrayed.

Mayock saying teams have to see a quarterback throw live to complete their evaluation is confusing, since they all almost certainly did that months before his Pro Day, and in a real game situation. Teams pay scouts (shocking, I know) to travel the country and watch football, and any team even remotely considering a first-round quarterback surely had a set of eyes at one or more of Bridgewater’s Louisville games in 2013.

Regardless, the 15 percent seems to be winning over the 85 percent in the draft, which has created a polarizing separation between how tape analysts view Bridgewater’s professional potential (with many calling him the most “pro ready” quarterback in this draft), and how NFL front offices evidently see it.

Maybe the root of that divide is Mayock’s comment about being the “face of the franchise”. There’s no concrete definition for what, exactly, that means. It references leadership I suppose, another immeasurable quality, and a criticism which lacks credence.

It’s a default, last grasp at something when little else is available to criticize. Loosely, the face of the franchise comment when said by any front office personnel translates like this: “I don’t trust Bridgewater because he’ll make me nervous about my job, but I don’t know why”.