Mac Jones

As Mac Jones continues to generate buzz about potentially going as high as No. 3 in next week's NFL draft, league executives are raving about his football mind.

"He's as smart as advertised. I'd say borderline genius when it comes to football," one executive told Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated.

Jones parlayed one full season as Alabama's starting quarterback into becoming arguably the fastest-rising prospect in the 2021 draft class. Viewed by most as the fifth-ranked quarterback at the beginning of the draft process, Jones has quickly worked his way up boards and has been rumored as the favorite for the 49ers after they traded up to No. 3.

If Jones winds up in San Francisco, his smarts may be the biggest factor. Head coach Kyle Shanahan has perhaps the NFL's best schematic offensive mind, and his offense could soar with someone with Jones' acumen under center.

Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy raved about Jones' ability to quickly pick up new offensive terminology during a March appearance on SportsCenter:

"The usual two talking points with Mac Jones ... it was great to see him up close, and that's his intelligence and his accuracy. So you talk about those two things, what's going to make Mac a really good NFL starting quarterback is his ability to process information and take an NFL playbook, which he did in Mobile. That's difficult for a lot of quarterbacks, to come down here and spit out the verbiage, do all the things they need to do.

"But Mac is an old-school gym rat. We caught him a couple nights in the convention center studying tape after midnight, and the important thing is that carried over onto the field. He got on the field, he knew where to go with the ball and, most importantly, he put it where he needed to put it. I think those are the things that are going to make Mac a really good NFL starting quarterback."

Jones threw for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns against four interceptions in 2020, completing 77.4 percent of his passes. While Jones was surrounded by copious 5-star talent, including Heisman winner DeVonta Smith, he was an unquestioned on-field leader and blasted nearly every Alabama single-season passing record.

That should be enough to easily land him in the top 10 come next Thursday.

The San Francisco 49ers will have plenty of options on the board with the No. 3 pick of the 2021 NFL draft, but Michael Lombardi of The Athletic told The Wrap Saturday that Justin Fields will not be the pick:

"If it's not Mac Jones, it's Trey Lance," Lombardi added.

San Francisco is likely to take a quarterback after making the trade up from No. 12 to No. 3, giving up two future first-round picks in the process. Assuming the Jacksonville Jaguars take Trevor Lawrence with the first pick and the New York Jets select Zach Wilson at No. 2, it presumably leaves the 49ers with a choice between Fields, Jones and Lance in the top tier.

Bleacher Report's Scouting Department lists Fields as the No. 2 overall player in the class behind only Lawrence, while Jones is considered the fifth-best quarterback and No. 44 in the overall rankings.

Jones put up impressive numbers during the 2020 season, leading Alabama to a perfect 13-0 record and a national championship. He finished with 4,500 passing yards with 41 touchdowns and four interceptions. He has also been praised for his accuracy as well as intangibles. 

The pocket passer does have limited athleticism compared to Fields, however, a player who had 867 rushing yards and 15 rushing touchdowns during his past two seasons at Ohio State. With 63 passing touchdowns and just nine interceptions in this stretch, Fields has proved he can throw the ball with high efficiency as well.

Lance is another dual-threat weapon, although he comes with more question marks after appearing in just one game this year before opting out. He has made 17 career starts for North Dakota State, likely creating a slower transition to the NFL.

It will likely come down to personal preference for 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch when the team is on the clock.

The San Francisco 49ers have already done it this year, and there's speculation that quarterback-starved teams like the New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears or Washington Football Team could try to do the same.

I'm referring to the classic trade-up for a potential franchise quarterback.

Such deals are often incredibly costly—San Francisco parted with two extra first-round picks and a third-round selection merely to move up nine spots atop this month's draft—and they rarely pay off.

In fact, most first-round trade-ups for quarterbacks turn out to be crippling mistakes.

In the last 12 drafts, 16 of the 37 quarterbacks picked in the first round were selected following trade-ups. Ten of those 16 were top-10 selections. Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen have been success stories for the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills, respectively, but the same can't be said for Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Mitchell Trubisky, Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Robert Griffin III, Blaine Gabbert and Mark Sanchez. 

All eight of those quarterbacks have to be considered busts by the teams that drafted them. None remains with his original team, and only Darnold, Goff and Wentz remain NFL starters. The jury's still arguably out on those three, but they were all traded this offseason by teams that essentially gave up on them.

Darnold and Rosen might have served as cautionary tales in 2018. Since then, six quarterbacks have been drafted with top-25 selections, but none of those picks were made following trade-ups. The only first-round trade-up for a quarterback since the New York Jets missed on Darnold and the Arizona Cardinals missed on Rosen? The Green Bay Packers' move up for Jordan Love late in Round 1 of last year's draft.

How does that 80 percent bust rate for trades into the top 10 for quarterbacks compare to the general bust rate in the top 10? The jury's still out on 2020 top-10 selections Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Herbert, but Burrow, Herbert and top 2019 pick Kyler Murray are off to strong starts.

The only clear-cut bust among the seven quarterbacks drafted by teams that didn't trade up in the past four drafts is Dwayne Haskins, who is already a former member of the Washington Football Team.

In addition to Burrow, Herbert and Murray, top 2018 pick Baker Mayfield appears to be on the right track, and we're still waiting for clarity on Tua and Daniel Jones.

Prior to that, it's complicated and somewhat ugly regardless of whether we're looking at trade-up scenarios.

Including Mayfield, between 2009 and 2018, nine quarterbacks were selected in the top 10 by teams that didn't trade up for them. Five (Mayfield, Andrew Luck, Ryan Tannehill, Cam Newton and Matthew Stafford) should be considered success stories to various degrees, while four (Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Blake Bortles and Jake Locker) absolutely should not.

Now, you're probably thinking Mayfield still has a lot to prove; Luck didn't actually pan out for the Indianapolis Colts as a result of his sudden mid-prime retirement; Tannehill has experienced most of his success since leaving the Miami Dolphins; and neither Newton nor Stafford was consistently successful with the team that drafted him.

Depending on your standards, you could legitimately look at the list of 25 quarterbacks selected within the top 10 in the last dozen drafts and conclude that the only truly successful ones are Mahomes and Allen. 

And that's really the point. While the Chiefs and Bills did trade up for those young superstars, those are outliers. Early-first-round quarterbacks have not regularly panned out in general in the past 10-15 years, which is why trading up for one is especially silly.

What's the alternative if you're a team without a top-10 pick? It's not as though the Bills look like geniuses for trading down and drafting EJ Manuel in the middle of the first round in 2013, and the Minnesota Vikings and Cleveland Browns won't brag about waiting to take Christian Ponder and Brandon Weeden, respectively, outside of the top 10.

There's a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" dynamic at play, but most recently, the Los Angeles Chargers "settled" for the third quarterback to come off the board in the 2020 draft, and Herbert was the Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Here's the key: If you're rolling dice regardless, why pay extra to roll? Precedents indicate that doing so is no more likely to pay off, and if everyone loses, you're out more than everyone else at the craps table.

Why do teams keep making this mistake? For starters, it reeks of hubris. They're convinced they see something others don't in a particular quarterback, or they become so obsessed with a passing prospect that they develop tunnel vision.

But there's plenty of evidence that the best way to build a winner through the draft crapshoot is to acquire as many dice as possible. With all due respect to scouting departments and team executives, it's a numbers game more so than an evaluation game.

The glass-half-empty take is that quarterback evaluations have failed so often that they can no longer be trusted, while the glass-half-full perspective is that it's unlikely one team's scouting department is going to notice something that others don't, at least when it comes to deeply studied first-round quarterbacks.

And yet the 49ers now own the third overall pick, likely because they became so infatuated with Alabama's Mac Jones, Ohio State's Justin Fields or North Dakota State's Trey Lance that they couldn't bear losing one or all of them by standing pat at 12. And another team might join them in the top five if the Atlanta Falcons or Cincinnati Bengals decide to trade down for a king's ransom.

That despite the fact that in modern NFL history, a team has never traded into the top five and landed a quarterback who became its primary starter for more than six years.

In 1983, the Denver Broncos moved up within the top five (four to one) for the rights to John Elway, but they already had a top-five pick, and that deal had more to do with the fact Elway refused to play for the Baltimore Colts. And in 1975, the Falcons made a deal to move up from the third spot to the top slot for Steve Bartkowski. But nobody has ever traded into the top five and walked away with a quarterback who lasted. Mike Phipps (1970), Bert Jones (1973), Sanchez, Goff and Wentz are the closest cases.

In other words, wait. Bide your time. Maybe that won't pan out either, but at least you'll keep your draft capital. And who knows, maybe you'll wind up with an Aaron Rodgers late in Round 1, or a Drew Brees in Round 2, a Russell Wilson in Round 3, a Dak Prescott in Round 4 or even a Tom Brady in Round 6. 

Brad Gagnon has covered the NFL for Bleacher Report since 2012. Follow him on Twitter, @Brad_Gagnon.

Perhaps the biggest mystery of the 2021 NFL draft and one that will surely have a domino effect is who the San Francisco 49ers will take with the No. 3 pick after trading up to get it from the Miami Dolphins.

To hear ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr. tell it, it's probably going to be Alabama's Mac Jones.

"All the buzz I've heard is that 49ers general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan traded up nine spots because they covet Jones," he said. "So to answer the question directly, here's how I'd lay out the percentages as of today: 80% to Jones, 15% to Lance, 5% to Fields."

Kiper's words echo those from Peter King, who predicted the 49ers would take Jones in his Football Morning in America column even though he reported the team has not yet made up its mind just yet.

Despite the predictions from Kiper and King, Vegas believes San Francisco will take Fields.

As Will Brinson of CBS Sports passed along, the Ohio State product checks in as the favorite to go with the No. 3 pick on DraftKings Sportsbook:

B/R NFL Scouting Department ranks Fields as the second-best overall player in the entire draft, let alone quarterback. Jones checks in at No. 41 and the No. 5 quarterback behind Clemson's Trevor Lawrence, Fields, North Dakota State's Trey Lance and BYU's Zach Wilson.

B/R did tab Jones as the most accurate, although Fields was ranked as the one with the best mobility.

If the 49ers do take a quarterback at No. 3, it will signal a willingness to move on from Jimmy Garoppolo as a long-term option. Garoppolo is under contract through the 2022 season, but injuries have prevented him from fully living up to expectations with San Francisco.

The hopes of one of the league's most notable franchises may rest on the shoulders of Jones or Fields on draft day.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady wasn't a highly touted NFL draft prospect coming out of Michigan in 2000, with numerous critics pointing out a perceived lack of physical traits needed to succeed at the next level.

This year, Alabama quarterback and NFL draft prospect Mac Jones sees some similarities between Brady and himself while dodging any direct comparisons to the seven-time Super Bowl champion. Specifically, he noted that while critics pointed out their physical limitations, both have the competitive fire to succeed.

“I don’t like to compare myself to him, I’ve got a long way to go,” Jones told ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit on the upcoming QB21 program (h/t Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk).

“But coming out of college it was, doesn’t have arm strength, can’t throw a spiral, can’t move. I can do that stuff, but it’s more like the intangible stuff...He’s got the fire still, and that’s why he’s so good.”

Jones' potential physical limitations have been pointed out in numerous draft write-ups discussing his weaknesses. Of note, Lance Zierlein of NFL.com wrote that he has a "very thin lower body and struggles to fight off contact." Tony Pauline of Pro Football Network wrote that Jones "lacks great arm talent and cannot drive passes downfield." Those remarks were amid generally positive reports about the ex-Alabama quarterback and projected first-rounder.

He's also received some positive comparisons to Brady, including one from ex-NFL player and 1984 Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie. Flutie's comments came when speaking with NBC Sports Boston's Camera Guys (h/t Justin Leger of NBC Sports Boston) about who could be there for the New England Patriots at No. 15 overall in the 2021 NFL draft.

"Mac Jones could potentially still be available, and Mac impresses me as a Tom Brady type of guy that is cerebral and doesn't make mistakes, and is thinking two steps ahead, and can beat you with strictly his arm. Mac is a lot more athletic I think than people realize he is. He's able to move and buy a little time and do some other things. He's the type of guy that may be available."

Unlike Brady, Jones won't wait until the sixth round to hear his name called, with many pundits (including ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr.) connecting him as high as No. 3 overall to the San Francisco 49ers.

We'll find out what happens shortly with the first round of the NFL draft set to take place on Thursday, April 29.