Iowa QB Nate Stanley showing off potential to pro scouts

Iowa Hawkeyes quarterback Nate Stanley showed off his pro-style skills to the entire football world in Iowa’s win over Ohio State…

Tight coverage. Defenders draped all over. Short, intermediate, deep downfield. It didn’t seem to matter the situation for Iowa Hawkeyes quarterback Nate Stanley in the team’s decisive win over Ohio State — he was making every single throw.

Stanley finished a brilliant performance against Ohio State with five touchdown throws, his second game this season with that particular stat line.

It was Stanley’s fourth game with at least three touchdown passes this season, and his sixth game overall with multiple touchdowns. The Iowa football program hasn’t experienced production like this at the quarterback position that I can recall in recent years, even with last year’s starter C.J. Beathard, who became a third round pick of the San Francisco 49ers.

For NFL scouts, the season being put on by Stanley is going to force a return to the film room for further evaluation. Stanley is a true sophomore, so he’s not even draft-eligible until 2019, but the tools he’s showing this season are NFL-caliber, even though at times they have been inconsistent.

Stanley’s arm strength is one of the first things that really stands out about his game. He has the ability to put the ball on a rope anywhere he wants to, but he also has a tendency to overthrow at times.

As a result, we’ve seen Stanley put the ball through impossible windows this season, and we’ve seen him make some really poor throws that have resulted in a completion percentage under 60 percent.

But even with that ‘lower’ completion percentage, Stanley has given the Hawkeyes a balance offensively that we haven’t really seen. They obviously still have the excellent ground-and-pound, traditional offense that we’re accustomed to seeing from Kirk Ferentz, but with the added dynamic of a playmaker like Akrum Wadley, who has really seized his role as a three-down back and embraced the physicality of the Iowa offense despite his size.

Iowa’s ability to run the ball effectively and Stanley’s growing command over the offense combined with his confidence all led to one of the most impressive victories in the Kirk Ferentz era this past weekend.

This throw, above all others, is evidence that Stanley’s got the ‘it’ factor:

Someone forgot to tell Nate Stanley that Sam Hubbard is a feared pass-rusher. #CoolCalmCollected pic.twitter.com/6QqXABEQhS
— Brent Yarina (@BTNBrentYarina) November 6, 2017

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That’s got to be one of the first times I’ve seen a player draped on a quarterback like that, where the quarterback didn’t just panic and get rid of the ball. Stanley thought about it, but realized he wasn’t going to the ground, and just rocket-fired a pass right to his receiver.

Those kinds of plays are exactly what NFL scouts want to see from future employees.

Consider the level Stanley has played against top competition this year also. In four games against ranked teams, Stanley has thrown 12 touchdowns compared to no interceptions, and Iowa came within a last-gasp play by Penn State of winning all of them.

He’s got 22 touchdown passes on the season with only four interceptions total, giving him one of the best ratios in college football. The school record for Iowa for touchdown passes is 26, and Stanley has four games yet to play.

He’s well on his way to a 30-touchdown season, and quite probably to an NFL future if he keeps this up.

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