Since leading Clemson to a National Championship victory in his true freshman season, Trevor Lawrence has been all-but certain to be the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. But as the time finally nears for the 21-year-old to make that projection a reality, at least some in NFL circles don't appear as high on Lawrence as the public.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media spoke to anonymous executives, scouts and coaches around the sport about some of the top quarterback prospects in this year's class. Some of the feedback he got on Lawrence was noteworthy in that it wasn't as glowing as you may expect:
"Trevor Lawrence is a really good player," an NFC coordinator said. "I don't know if he's a generational talent like people are saying." Said an AFC quarterbacks coach: "If you didn't take him and you're Jacksonville, and it turned out that he was a perennial Pro Bowler, then you'll never live it down. They have to take him. I think the intangibles are there. He can throw the ball. But he does not have unique, rare playmaking ability. If I'm comparing last year to this year, Joe Burrow (who was drafted first overall by the Bengals) is picked over Trevor Lawrence 100 times out of 100."
As Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk noted, teams are especially inclined to mislead reporters around this time of the year, hoping that stock falls on players they want to draft and vice versa. The thing is, Lawrence is different because it's all-but certain that he's going to be selected by the Jacksonville Jaguars with the No. 1 pick. So while organizations may be not entirely truthful in their assessments of players like Justin Fields or Trey Lance, they don't have much of a motivation not to give an honest assessment of Lawrence.
But while this may come off as a diss of Lawrence, it's perhaps just indicative how highly the league thinks of Burrow, especially before he tore his ACL in his rookie season. Even if that's the case, though, it's quite the turn of events. Lawrence was all-but assured to be the No. 1 pick after his true freshman season. Burrow, almost three full years older than Lawrence, didn't become a legitimate candidate to be the No. 1 pick until his fifth year in college. For there to be NFL organizations more keen on Burrow than Lawrence now, it's pretty incredible.
For what it's worth, a college scouting director told Pelissero that anyone having second thoughts on Lawrence as a prospect is "over-scouting," adding that he's going to become a player that "can win you Super Bowls."
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