2. DeShone Kizer is the falling quarterback. It was only a few months ago that Notre Dame QB DeShone Kizer was viewed—at least publicly—as a potential Top 10 pick with the tools to be a franchise cornerstone. That last part hasn’t changed. The rest has. Word around the league is that Kizer likely will fall through the first round, and be the fourth or even fifth quarterback taken. The reason? Where Mitchell Trubisky, Deshaun Watson, Pat Mahomes and Davis Webb check the boxes on the intangibles, questions arise on the 21-year-old Golden Domer.
“He’s got the size, the arm talent and he’s very bright,” said one AFC head coach. “But there’s a disconnect there. There are diva qualities there, and he seems to get voices in his head, like he’s fighting who he is. And once the cycle starts, he can’t get himself right.”
It was just last week that Kizer’s college coach, Brian Kelly, said that the quarterback probably should’ve stayed in school for his junior year, because he needed to mature on and off the field. While I’m told there was friction between Kelly and Kizer over the past year—Kizer never acted out, but Kelly took until mid-September to give him the job over Malik Zaire—there’s also truth in what the Irish head coach was saying. Even scouts who like Kizer said it was clear that he had trouble reeling things in mentally when trouble struck, and that his mechanics and footwork crumbled way too often. In that sense, it was obvious that Kizer could’ve used more time in college. But there are plenty of evaluators who think it’s a little much to hang the entirety of Notre Dame’s disastrous 4-8 season on Kizer alone.
“From everything I gathered, it was an accumulation of everything,” said one NFC scout. “There was not strong support around him. And playing for Kelly, things went bad fast. Every guy I talked to, seemed to like him, though. … So many bad things happened all at once, they lost so many good players, it made him look bad. He’s not an Alpha as a leader, but his teammates like him.”
In the end, Kizer can do his growing up in the NFL—and most people seem to believe sitting for a couple years would help him, which is part of why teams are struggling placing him as a first-round pick. That said, the physical ability is off the charts. And if a team like Arizona can get him in the second round and stash him behind an established starter, the value may be, too.
