2023 NFL Draft: Another Crop of Talented Signal-Callers is on the Way
By Hunter Haas
Highly-Touted Transfers
Spencer Rattler (South Carolina)
Heading into the 2021 college football season, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone that didn’t have Spencer Rattler in their top five rankings for quarterback prospects. And of those, a majority had him even higher, with some ranking him as the No. 1 signal-caller in the draft class.
Then, everything changed. After coming off of a phenomenal 2020 campaign, Rattler and the Sooners stumbled out of the gates in 2021. The numbers themselves don’t tell the story, as Rattler still completed three out of every four passes he attempted. That just goes to show how abysmal the other 25% of the throws were.
Rattler was benched for Caleb Williams in the middle of the Red River Rivalry. Williams led a comeback for the ages, cementing his place ahead of Rattler as QB1. Ironically enough, neither guy is on the Oklahoma roster as we enter the 2022 college football season. Williams moved on to USC with former Sooner head coach Lincoln Riley, while Rattler transferred to South Carolina in an attempt to rebuild his image.
Dating back to high school, two things have been clear with Rattler: he has immense arm talent and he has legitimate issues in terms of character. By all accounts, Rattler has matured a great deal in his college years, and he will have a chance to prove it for the Gamecocks this coming season. The high-end traits are still there and it will be up to Rattler to make the most of this second chance.
Bo Nix (Oregon)
Similar to Rattler, Bo Nix is another former five-star recruit that finds himself on a new campus in 2022. Nix spent his first three seasons at Auburn, starting from the jump as a true freshman. He beat Alabama in the Iron Bowl that year, which prompted former Tigers head coach, Gus Malzahn, to predict a national title for Nix before he left campus.
Alas, this did not come to fruition. Malzahn is the head coach of UCF now, and Nix is slated to start for the Oregon Ducks. I don’t have to explain to you how beneficial the system is in Oregon for a quarterback, and given the things that Nix excels at, the marriage couldn’t be more perfect.
Nix is a wildly inaccurate passer, struggling on timing routes regularly. This was the reason for countless stalled drives for the Auburn offense over the past few years. Nix needs to clean up his footwork and throwing motion if he wants to catch the eye of evaluators at the next level.
He can throw the ball a country mile and is an above-average athlete when he has the ball out in space. Going from playing SEC defenses to playing PAC-12 defenses is enough to project an improvement by itself. That alone won’t be enough for Nix to climb back into early-round discussions, however. He must improve on the technical side or his ceiling in the NFL will be a practice squad quarterback.
Kedon Slovis (Pittsburgh)
The Pittsburgh Panthers were a surprise of sorts in 2021. Heisman-finalist and eventual first-round pick, Kenny Pickett, sparked the impressive campaign with help from Biletnikoff Award winner, Jordan Addison. Following the transfer of Addison to the USC Trojans, the Panthers find themselves in an interesting position heading into 2022.
Speaking of USC, it almost looks like a trade occurred between the two schools this offseason. While Addison made his way to California, Kedon Slovis opted to move to the other side of the country and become the newest member of the Pittsburgh Panther program. Slovis brings three years’ worth of starting experience to a unit that just lost its two leaders.
Slovis burst onto the scene as a true freshman in 2019 but failed to replicate that success throughout his final two seasons with the Trojans. He has always been a precision passer, regularly posting completion percentages north of the 65% mark. Slovis is cerebral as a field general and has a knack for getting through his progressions quickly.
It shouldn’t all be laid at Slovis’ feet, but the team struggled mightily during his tenure, and being quarterback means that criticism comes with the territory. He now slots in as the replacement for Kenny Pickett and will be hoping for a similar ascension up the board. The squad is still extremely talented and the ACC looks to be ripe for the picking. His traits won’t blow you away, but the fact that he checks the boxes everywhere else can’t be ignored.