I urge any of you guys who think the same way that I do to write letters to Tony Sparano, Jeff Ireland, or Stephen Ross. They need to know that we want them to take Mallett, and a letter is a good way to tell them.
Anyway, I wanted to show you guys this incredible argument that I found in a Sun Sentinel blog post written by Mike Berardino. Mike didn't actually write it, though. It was written by a Joe W. Here is the segment written by Joe, and I encourage you guys to go to the actual post that I have linked in this paragraph to support Joe.
"I did a little QB research project today that I thought I'd share. Here’s what I did:
1.) I took the top 10 NFL QB's for each year for the past 5 years (2010-2006) based on QB Rating.
2.) I then determined which players appeared in the top 10 the most times. There were 8 QB's that showed up 3 or more times in the past 5 years that are still playing football (Kurt Warner retired).
3.) I then went back and researched what their final 2 years of college stats were.
4.) I compared those stats to the current 2011 college crop of QB prospects to try and get an idea of what prospects compare favorably, i.e. what guys have the best chance of being the future greats of the NFL based on their last 2 years of college production.
Results: The 8 QB's that have been in the Top 10 the most for the past 5 years averaged the following in their final 2 years of college: Comp: 64.5% Yards: 6,513 Y/A: 8.00 yards per attempt TD's: 50 total TD's the final 2 years of college TD/Int Ratio of 2.47.
There was one player that came close to all these averages: Andy Dalton: 64%, 5600 yds, 50 TD's 3.57 TD/Int ratio. He's also started the most games out of all the QB's (49), which I believe has also been proven to be correlated to NFL success.
The only other guy that compares favorably is Ryan Mallett (7500 yds, 62 TD's, 3.26 TD/Int ratio), but his completion % (60.3%) was lower than the average.
However, when looking at the Top 8 QB's the ones that had the lower completion % in the final 2 years of college, Peyton Manning (62%), Drew Brees (61%), also had the top total TD's, 57 and 51 respectively. Guys like Ben Roethlisberger and Tony Romo had high completion % (66%, 65%, respectively) and total TD's (59 TD, 55 TD, respectively), but they also didn't play in a major Division 1 conference like Manning/Brees and the others.
When looking at Mallett's JR/SR stats compared to the other top 8 NFL QB's three things stand out:
1.) His 62 total TD's the past 2 years in college are better than any of the Top 8 QB's. The most JR/SR total TD’s belonged to Big Ben (59 TD's), but again, he didn't play in a big time conference. The number two player was Peyton Manning with 57. And since he played in the SEC, the production of Mallett is all the more impressive.
2.) Mallett's 9.21 YPA number is greater than any of the Top 8 NFL QB's. This again reinforces what I saw on film that Mallett is prone to push the ball downfield and create big plays vs. the standard dink and dunk. However, he's admitted that mentality is what caused his poor JR completion numbers (56%) and he focused on that in his senior year. That focus helped his completion jump to 65% while his Yards per Attempt also increased from 9.0 to 9.4. Again, impressive.
3.) Mallett's 7500 passing yds were only exceeded by Big Ben (7725) and Drew Brees (7577), but since Big Ben played in the MAC his production gets discounted a bit.
So, in summary on Mallett, in his final 2 years of college he threw for more TD's, more yards and had a higher yards per attempt than any of the top 10 QB's currently playing in the NFL. I’d say that's about as favorable comparison as you're going to get. It's equally impressive that he produced these numbers in the SEC, the toughest conference in college football, and not some lesser conference (TCU-Mountain West Conference), which is what you generally find with many other college QB's who have put up gaudy stats.
One final note, if Cam Newton played 2 years he might have been at the beginning of this report. His 66% completion %, 30 TD's, 10.2 yards per attempt and 4.3 TD/Int ratio were all close to the top of the 2010 stats. However, the question will always be if he was a one year wonder or could have sustained this level of play for another year.
P.S. – For all the talk of mobility and 40 times with QB's, in 2010 Cam Newton was sacked 23 times and Mallett, all 5.4 in the 40, was only sacked 25 times against the same competition."
Once again, I didn't write the above work. That was all credit to Joe W. Here is a link to the post again. I encourage you guys to go and read it:
http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports_seasonticket/2011/03/joe-w-and-the-case-for-drafting-ryan-mallett-for-the-miami-dolphins.html/comment-page-1#comment-219053
And, if by chance you ever read this Joe, please email me at paul@dolphinshout.com. I would love for you to be a writer for Dolphin Shout.
Now, let me know what you guys think. Does this make you think any better about Mallett?
Thanks for reading.
