The NFL Draft prognosticators have already started to put together their rankings of players for the 2011 draft, and the general consensus is that Washington’s Jake Locker is the top quarterback. Following him is Stanford’s Andrew Luck and then Arkansas’ Ryan Mallett.
But there is a chance for Mallett to turn some heads this season and shoot his name up the draft board. NFL Network analyst Charles Davis, who appeared Monday on the TJ Carpenter Show on 92.1 FM in Northwest Arkansas, had high praise for the soon-to-be junior Razorback.
“Jake Locker from Washington is kind of the acknowledged top dog right now,” Davis said. “I would not put Ryan Mallett behind him at this point. I think very highly of Ryan Mallett’s talents.”
Mallett, who was eligible to forgo his junior season and enter the NFL Draft this April, decided to return for the 2011 season. If he hadn’t, the discussion in last month for many franchises would have been whether to take Notre Dame’s Jimmy Clausen or Mallett, Davis said.
The good thing for Mallett, though, is that he seems to have made the right choice if that was the case. Clausen was the 48th pick of the draft last month.
“I love Ryan Mallett. I like the way he goes about his business,” Davis said. “He plays with extreme confidence and it’s kind of funny. Jimmy Clausen got nailed for that. I don’t think Ryan Mallett will get the same tag, unless he’s making all these pronouncements he just doesn’t need to do.”
Davis called Mallett, who transferred from Michigan in 2008, and Arkansas Coach Bobby Petrino a “match made in heaven.”
“Just the idea of Ryan staying at Michigan and trying to run spread option just boggles the mind,” he said. “Because you can do it and you can do it different than Pat White did it at West Virginia, but it wouldn’t have been ideally suited for his talents. This kid is a big-time gun slinger who needs to be in the pocket slinging it.”
The folks at The Ticket were kind enough to provide audio from the interview:
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By the way, here’s a shameless plug: you can catch me on the TJ Carpenter Show every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 4:35 p.m.
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