Each week this offseason, we’ll be focusing on one position and how the Panthers may choose to address their needs; whether they’re in the market for an upgrade at starter or just a reliable backup, every player on the 53-man roster is going to be important in 2018.
This is Quarterback Week.
While quarterback isn’t one of the larger needs for the Panthers this offseason, there is still a large amount of uncertainty behind Cam Newton. It would be a surprise to see the Panthers go after a quarterback in the first rounds, but once the draft moves towards the end of the second day the Panthers may well consider taking a quarterback to develop behind Newton while acting as his backup.
Enter Kurt Benkert.
The Hook
Barring a few notable exceptions, any quarterback taken in the middle rounds is likely to be one a team hopes to develop rather than a pro-ready starter. In order to merit this developmental time, however, teams want to see a potential upside down the road; in the case of Benkert, that upside is his deep ball.
On the play above, Benkert stumbles, sets himself and then fires the ball sixty yards downfield, dropping it over two defenders to hit the receiver in stride. This is a throw than any quarterback in the NFL would be proud of; what will really have offensive coordinators salivating is that Benkert shows the ability to make these deep throws while on the run, first rolling right:
And now rolling left:
What is so encouraging about these throws is that they aren’t just a result of a large arm, but the combination of power and touch. There are other prospects with equally strong arms, but Benkert separates himself from most with the consistency with which he is able to judge the depth needed. This touch is evident on some of Benkert’s shorter passes as well. On the following wheel route, he shows the ability to hit the receiver in stride without leading him into the safety over the top,
While the next throw is incomplete, the pass is actually very well weighted and had the receiver broken cleanly to the sideline, the pass is eminently catchable. It cannot be overstated how valuable such touch is at the NFL level with most throws requiring a degree of weighting in order to be completed. To have the ability to pair that touch with the power that Benkert has is genuinely a rare combination. So what about that power?
When it comes to arm power for quarterbacks, it can be seen as either the distance they are able to throw, as seen above, or in the speed with which the ball travels underneath. This ball velocity was a trademark of Favre in his early days, and while Benkert isn’t of that caliber, he can certainly put some juice on the ball. On the next play, Benkert makes a throw to the far side of the field against drop-back zone, and while this isn’t a hugely complicated throw, the velocity he shows here will be important at the next level when it comes to the short corners of the field.
The other time when Benkert’s velocity shows up is when he is able to make line-drive throws over the middle of the field. On both of the following plays, Benkert again exhibits that excellent velocity while maintaining a reasonable degree of accuracy:
An arm like this is certainly enough to excite coaches and scouts; the potential as a pure thrower of the ball is certainly there. However, what has Benkert lower down some draft boards is whether he has the mental skills to master an offense as well as the passing nuances to go with his arm talent. But as hooks go, the ability to make throws like this will certainly get teams looking deeper:
The Mental Aspect
It is not quite fair to say that the other parts of Benkert’s game are weaknesses; it’s more that they are simply less clearly excellent than his pure arm strength. This starts with his ability to run an NFL offense. Having played in a fairly simplistic system at Virginia, it is all but impossible to tell from tape how well he would fare in an NFL system; it is almost certainly true that Benkert will need some time to learn and master an NFL offense, as do most quarterback prospects, but he did at least seem to have control of Virginia’s admittedly simplistic offense.
Most of the offense ran on half-field reads, where the play is designed for him to read one half of the field as the main concept, with the backside routes being a fallback option. On the following play, Benkert is able to correctly read the coverage on the far side and hits the running back on the swing for a decent gain:
This is not a hugely impressive play in many ways, but it at least shows some signs of progressing through an organized read system. He does, occasionally, progress to the weakside combination; on the following play, he demonstrates an ability to work through progressions that are at least something like an NFL play:
There is, at times, a lot of superstition about NFL offenses and their complexities; in reality, they are not as complicated as they are sometimes made out to be. It is true that some players never manage to grasp the required concepts and there are, of course, levels of understanding. But many who are able to master college reads on a consistent basis do stand a chance of picking up an NFL offense; there is no guarantee that Benkert will be able to do so, but there is at least reason to have optimism in this regard.
The Details
The other area that Benkert will need to improve on to some degree is his accuracy. While Benkert is generally quite accurate, there are times when he could make better use of his arm strength then he currently does. As described in an earlier piece looking at Josh Rosen (LINK), accuracy is more than simply getting the ball somewhere near the receiver, but often involves placing it so that only the receiver can get there. Benkert does show this level of accuracy at times, as in the following throw against tight man coverage:
This throw is as good as anything at the NFL level, the only issue here is consistency. A promising sign is that Benkert is able to control the direction of his throws quite well, only his over-emphasis on power can at times lead to passes either flying high or low. On the following throw he drags the throw low which, while catchable, makes it harder on the receiver than it has to be and causes him to slow down.
When Benkert takes some of the velocity off his throws and allows his natural touch to lead receivers in stride, he shows the ability to be very accurate, such as on the play below:
He is even able to maintain this control while under duress:
It is not unusual for prospects to take a while to realize that throwing the ball as hard as possible on every single play isn’t always the right thing to do, but if Benkert can be content to sometimes throw at 90% of his true power in order to be more accurate, there is enough on tape to suggest that he has it in him.
A final bonus with Benkert is his mobility. He is hardly Cam Newton or Michael Vick but he has the mobility to get outside the pocket if the play breaks down and can either extend the play or run for the first down. It is also nice to see that once he does scramble, he is still looking to throw and only runs when forced to, as on the plays below:
Kurt Benkert is currently expected to be an early day three pick, and while he is the kind of prospect who could rise up draft boards a la Davis Webb last year, there is a chance he is still available in the middle rounds. If this is the case, he would offer the Panthers exceptional value as a developmental quarterback to bring along behind Cam Newton as a backup in the short term and a trade asset down the line. As with any quarterback prospect, the Panthers would be foolish to draft him without thoroughly examining him in a classroom, but based on what he showed on tape at Virginia he does have the mental ability to develop into an NFL caliber quarterback from the neck up; from the neck down, there is an awful lot to like about his game.
Senior Bowl Measurements
Height: 6’025″
Weight: 214
Hand Size: 9 5/8
Arm Length: 31 1/8
Wing Span: 74 1/4
Best Case: Carson Wentz
Worst Case: Jamarcus Russell
Bottom Line: Super arm-talented quarterback from a smaller school who has every chance to become a star if he can master the mental sides of the game.
Grade: B+
