Ohio State QB Cardale Jones: Early NFL Draft Scouting

It’s incredibly early for 2016 NFL Draft scouting, but it’s never to early to look at college football players, and today we’re looking at Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones. What could be wrong about that?

Because of the health situations of Braxton Miller and J.T. Barrett, Jones took all the reps as the starting quarterback of Ohio State this Spring, though he’s pretty much fully expected to be the starter when the season opens.

J.T. Barrett is still a sophomore, and Braxton Miller could transfer somewhere else and play, but this team looks like it’s Cardale’s to lead, despite the phenomenal (near Heisman worthy) season Barrett had a year ago.

If you go back to last season, you’ll know that I’m one of the people who thought it would be a good idea for Jones to leave Ohio State early and enter the 2015 NFL Draft after four games. He started in the Buckeyes’ postseason run where they took down all three Heisman Trophy candidates, and ultimately the Heisman winner with a monster performance against Oregon in the National Championship game.

Here’s his Big Ten Championship performance against Wisconsin.

And the follow up performance in the first playoff game against Alabama.

And here’s the National Title game against Oregon.

Observations

• For just having a small sample size to work with, Jones does a good job of stepping up in the pocket and using decent footwork. In general, you see good pocket presence from Jones.
• Jones has really good escape ability, as does any QB that was under center for Ohio State the last few years. He doesn’t run as fast as Braxton Miller or J.T. Barrett, but he gained some really tough yards on broken pass plays, and made guys miss in the open field.
• He has excellent size for the QB position at 6-5, 250 pounds. He’s built like and sort of plays like Ben Roethlisberger.
• Jones has incredible arm strength. Just look at how easily he flicks the ball downfield at times in these game tapes. There are obviously mis-fires, but his arm strength is probably unrivaled in college football. He can sling the ball down the field with relative ease, but he doesn’t just fire it as hard as he can every throw, which brings me to my next note…
• Jones does a great job putting touch on the ball when it’s needed. There is a throw in the National Title game at 1:34 where he puts really nice touch on an out route, but he also has plenty of power behind it because it’s a deep out to the sideline. This is just a straight up professional throw, a reason why some (like me) thought it would be wise for him to leave school early and head to the NFL.
• There were plenty of times where Jones looked off on his throws, pulled the ball down too early and ran instead of progressing through more reads. His body won’t be able to handle that kind of beating at the next level.
• I would compare his skill set and potential to that of Cam Newton/Ben Roethlisberger. He’s a big, strong-armed, athletic QB who will occasionally overthrow, but he has a swagger and confidence on the field that he is going to make plays, and he does.
• There’s going to be a learning curve for Jones. He’s not a finished product by any means, but the tools he has to work with scream Heisman candidate and future high NFL Draft Pick.