After Arizona State quarterback Brock Osweiler worked out for scouts on Friday, we passed along the opinion of longtime NFL personnel man Gil Brandt, who said Osweiler now looks like a first-round draft pick.
Another longtime personnel man, Charley Casserly, strongly disagrees -- and says that almost every team he has talked to views Osweiler as a fourth-round prospect.
Asked on NFL Network about Brandt’s first-round assessment, Casserly seemed taken aback by it.
“I’m not sure what that means, to be honest with you,” Casserly said of Brandt’s first-round projection. “I haven’t studied this guy yet but I interviewed nine teams about him. Eight of them had him rated in the fourth round. The workout doesn’t change the rating on the tape. The other team had him rated in the second. Issues about the guy concerning decision making, accuracy, takes too many sacks, questionable instincts. All of those things, to me, are things you see on tape, not in the workout. I’m going to take what those teams said and stick with that.”
NFL Network’s Michael Lombardi agreed with that, noting that Osweiler was only a one-year starter at Arizona State. Lombardi took issue with Brandt’s assessment as well.
“I don’t think you could ever, possibly, consider him a first-round talent,” Lombardi said.
Osweiler surprised a lot of people by entering the NFL draft this year, and the chances of him going in the first round seem remote. Then again, Osweiler has the physical tools (he’s 6-foot-7 and a good enough athlete that he accepted a basketball scholarship to Gonzaga before deciding he’d rather play football), and all it takes is one team to fall in love with him for him to go in the first round.
Most of the time we have a pretty good idea before the draft who the first-round quarterbacks are, but sometimes there are first-round surprises like Jason Campbell, J.P. Losman and Patrick Ramsey. Osweiler going in the first round would be as big a surprise as any of them.