Draft grades three years later

I’m someone who didn’t really like Mason Rudolph when he was drafted. I went into a lot of detail on this a few years back, but the summary of my rationale is that I watched a lot of tape of him and rarely saw him make the kinds of throws that are necessary for NFL success. I’m talking about deep outs on the sideline, 15+ yard dig routes, and crossing patterns where it was necessary to hit a guy in stride who is moving laterally. In college Rudolph thrived on the deep ball, bubble screens and fades to Marcel Ateman and Washington, who would physically outmatch the Big 12 corners they faced. I also didn’t like how Rudolph played under adversity. In the rare occasion when he was pressured, he seemed to wilt. It’s easy to be lulled into loving his play when you watch the final regular season game vs. the Browns and see the pretty deep passes, but those passes are only available if your WR beats the coverage or wins contested catches. His WRs gave him what he needed that day, and his success and stats were heavily influenced by those successful deep throws. To be clear, those deep throws were accurate and on time, and that’s a great thing, but a QB needs a whole lot more than a good deep ball to win consistently in the NFL. He did make a couple of accurate throws on the sideline that game, so maybe he’s making progress on his accuracy, but I don’t see enough there to say that he’s better overall than just about any current starter in the league. I think the fact that the Steelers extended him for 1 year at $3 million shows that they consider him to be a backup, and maybe a guy who can be put on the field with middling success for an interim period before putting a rookie or a reformed Haskins on the field full time. I think that’s exactly who he is.

As for James Washington, I think he’s a much better receiver than his playing time and stats indicate. Whenever he’s on the field he executes his assignments and makes key plays when the team needs him, and then for some reason he spends the next game on the bench while DJ and Ebron play volleyball. JW is my candidate to be the next Emanuel Sanders - a guy who doesn’t gel with Ben, and then becomes a star on his next team.