J.J. McCarthy is one of the most polarizing prospects in recent memory ahead of the 2024 NFL Draft, and he hasn’t ever been an easy quarterback to get a handle on.
Ahead of Thursday’s first round, where McCarthy is slated to be picked, On3’s Charles Power and Cody Bellaire joined Andy Staples via his Andy Staples On3 show on YouTube, where the duo debated McCarthy’s merits. First, Power harkened back to McCarthy’s time as a recruit, and how it was a similar conversation.
“JJ McCarthy. It’s, it’s so funny thinking back to just, he was a polarizing guy, really, from the beginning to right now,” Power explained. “I think, I don’t know if I’ve like struggled with a prospect from like, high school to college, more than JJ McCarthy. So just to kind of rewind it back, we were coming out with our early rankings for the cycle, post sophomore year, and I thought the JJ McCarthy had the best sophomore year of any quarterback in 2021. Yeah. He led his team to a state title. Showed good arm talent. Very productive. Could run around and make plays. Tough. I think he played a state championship game with like, a broken hands. So I think I want to say we had him ranked as like, maybe the top quarterback in the country, as a sophomore. And it was really interesting. Like a lot of the feedback we got was like, I can’t believe y’all have this guy that’s high. He’s not at the top of college boards. He’s small. Notre Dame, thinking back to then, Notre Dame was another program that I think he would have liked to go to, or certainly had a lot of interest in. And they took Tyler Buchner, who had not played varsity snap, maybe played one varsity snap. So he’s one that I think, initially, the recruiting media was higher on him to college coaches.
“He had an interesting like, kind of the rest of his high school career. Really good sophomore year was probably his best season, but played pretty well as a junior and then of course, like Illinois, canceled football there. His what would’ve been his senior year, because of COVID. So he transferred on to IMG, and I think he was it was it was a tougher adjustment. He didn’t throw any interceptions, and he kind of managed the game. But there were certainly times just from me watching those games where he was where he was swimming a little bit. And just from a rankings perspective, I think looking back I mean, I definitely regret, I probably banged him a little too hard for that. But, I think were some signs of questions that he has going into just the draft process. I mean, he’s just a relative unknown with the amount of passing attempts and just how little he was leaned on at Michigan. But I just think of the total arc of the JJ McCarthy experience, and he was a guy who, really from sophomore year, opinions were split. So I think he’s a guy that if you like him, you can certainly find a reason to like him. And if he’s not your flavor, you can certainly find reasons for pause.”
JJ McCarthy or Jayden Daniels as the No. 2 QB in the NFL Draft?
Continuing, Staples was wondering if McCarthy could unseat Jayden Daniels and be selected at pick No. 2, as the odds are shifting in McCarthy’s favor.
“So on Monday, I’m looking and seeing that there’s odds now that he’s going to be the second person off the board on Thursday night,” Staples responded. “It’s like, Cody, I don’t know where it came from on the NFL side, but like hearing Charles talked about it, it makes more sense. I kind of wonder if our NFL front office is having these same debates that college ones did.”
Evidently, it all comes down to which quarterback teams will prefer between the two, at least that’s what Bellaire believes.
“Absolutely. I mean, 100%. I think to Charles’s point, he lays it out perfectly, in the sense that it’s a flavors deal, right? Different offenses want to do different things,” Bellaire added. “And I think the debate right, I think Andy, to your point, I think it was Jayden Daniels was sort of the favorite at two, and now it’s sort of slid back to JJ McCarthy. Jayden Daniels brings a totally different flavor with his game compared to JJ McCarthy. It’s just simply to your point, Andy, it’s about what teams want to do. And when you go through this whole process, and I think off-field wise, I think Jayden is going to give you a lot of good answers, and give you a lot of the answers that you want to hear. I think JJ is going to do a lot of the same things. But when you turn that tape on, it’s completely different players.
“When you’re talking about Jayden Daniels, whose offense was throwing the ball however many times a game. He carried the ball however many times a game. To Charles’s point, JJ’s still sort of an unknown. So I think what teams are doing, they’re looking at the tools that JJ McCarthy brings with his arm, and his ability to process, and I think they’re comparing that to Jayden Daniels. And for some people, they’re projecting JJ’s ceiling to be higher than maybe Jayden Daniels’ ceiling. And those are conversations that are happening amongst all 32 teams.”
Alas, we’ll find out Thursday, as the debates will end when the Washington Commanders are on the clock. It’ll be fascinating to see whether it’s J.J. McCarthy, Jayden Daniels or even Drake Maye under center for them in 2024.
The post Why ‘polarizing’ Michigan QB JJ McCarthy is a serious candidate at No. 2 overall appeared first on On3.