Chris McPherson of PE.com put up a nice piece with quotes from the coaches on the rookies. Here is one I liked:
QB Matt Barkley – Fourth Round, No. 98 Overall
“I’m not keeping track, but I would guess most days Matt is the first person in the building. He’s excited to be here. He’s excited to be in the NFL. I believe that he’s learned a work ethic as far as what it’s going to take to be successful at quarterback in this league and he’s working his tail off to meet that expectation,” said quarterbacks coach Bill Lazor. “He’s a fun guy to be around because he wants it. He’s willing to do what it takes. He’s accurate.
“From the very first day we stepped on the field, he’s shown that he’s accurate. He can throw on the run really well. He makes good decisions. He can, for the first time being in an NFL pocket, make decisions. He looks like he’s done it before. It doesn’t look like it’s his first time and he carries himself the way you want a quarterback to carry himself. He’s probably had great teachers to teach him that and there’s something in him that’s probably innate, that when he walks on the field and tells the players what’s going to happen they believe him.”
“You try to project what he did in college to our game. He was a guy who threw for over 10,000 yards. He helped his team win many, many games. He really did all of the things playing quarterback that you need to see at this level. You’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Why not?'” Shurmur said. “He’s taken to our training extremely well, the way we communicate is very different than the way he did in college. But he’s been able to do very nicely here in the first few weeks.
“It doesn’t really matter what level you’re playing quarterback. Number one, once you have the general skill set necessary – you’ve got to be an outstanding decision-maker, you’ve got to have a sense of timing and then you have to be an accurate passer. We felt like he had all of those traits. It’s just a matter of him learning how we call things, how we function and then put all of those traits to work.”
I guess you could say Bill Lazor likes Barkley.
I do think Barkley can win the starting QB job, but he’ll have to play really well to do that. It won’t be given to him. One thing that complicates matters is that he is a mid-round pick battling 2 other QBs for the job.
RG3 and Andrew Luck were going to start as long as they showed anything. Ryan Tannehill basically needed to not suck to get the job in Miami. He played reasonably well in the preseason and did win the job. Brandon Weeden really only had to beat out Colt McCoy, who the Browns were clearly down on. Russell Wilson only had to beat out Matt Flynn.
Barkley certainly has the right attitude. He expects to compete for the job and has the confidence that he can win the battle and play well. We’ll see.
