You have to take reactions from Pro Day workouts with a grain of salt. Workouts done in shorts on air can be deceiving so you have to trust what you see on tape rather than have a kneejerk reaction if a guy doesn’t meet expectations during their workout.
After performing well at the NFL Combine, scouts were underwhelmed by how Oregon’s Marcus Mariota performed during his Pro Day.
“I thought it was OK,” Mariota said after his workout. “There were some missed throws here or there. It’s a little different than a game.”
Mariota threw 65 passes at Oregon’s pro day, which was held indoors at the Ducks’ indoor facility in Eugene, and threw seven incompletions. The workout was a bit of a mixed bag because of a handful underthrows.
“The feedback was it’s not a great workout,” NFL Media analyst Daniel Jeremiah said during NFL Network’s broadcast of the workout. “It is what it is.
“He threw the ball better at the combine in my opinion. It was a little bit underwhelming.”
Mariota is widely considered to be the No. 2 quarterback available in the draft and is highly regarded for his accuracy and running ability. However, there are concerns about whether he can transition from Oregon’s spread offense to the NFL. Mariota designed the entire script for Thursday’s workout and was assisted on the field by newBrowns quarterbacks coach Kevin O’Connell, who was training Mariota before accepting the job in Cleveland.
On the NFL Network broadcast, Jeremiah and former general manager Charley Casserly remarked how rare it was to see a quarterback prospect huddle, call a play, and then run it as part of their script. Mariota did this on every snap in order to help alleviate concerns about him not calling a play in a huddle since high school. To that end, Mariota also used a variety of three-, five- and seven-step drops; he did not take any shotgun snaps.
Last year Teddy Bridgewater was heavily criticized for having a bad Pro Day and this year it seems like Marcus Mariota is going to be the guy whose stock takes a hit for not having a good workout. As a I said before you need to take these kind of reports with a grain of salt. Jamarcus Russell was said to have the best Pro Day workout folks had ever seen, and we see how his career turned out.