If you've paid attention to the draftier portions of ESPN's bowl coverage over the last two weeks, you may have noticed that the longstanding trinity of coveted, draft-eligible quarterbacks assured of going in the first round in April – Stanford's Andrew Luck, Arkansas' Ryan Mallett and Washington's Jake Locker – had been joined by a new interloper: Missouri's Blaine Gabbert, who fits right into the club as another big, prototypical pocket slinger who's well accustomed to scouts drooling over his potential. With his stock rising and an apparent first-round projection in hand, Gabbert made the leap official today, bowing out of Columbia after two … well, let's say solid years as a starter. It's not hard to see what intrigues teams physically: Gabbert still has the ideal size, arm, quick release, etc. that made him the No. 1 pocket passer in the nation in the incoming recruiting class of 2008. Productivity-wise, it's a little dicier. He's passed for 6,779 yards and 40 touchdowns over the last two years in Mizzou's pass-happy spread attack, and this year led the Tigers to their third 10-win season in three years – only the fourth in school history.
As a junior, though, he significantly regressed from his sophomore numbers in terms of yards, touchdowns and efficiency, where he finished eighth in the conference. Without a deep threat on the order of 2009 star Danario Alexander, Gabbert's yards-per-attempt average dropped from 8.1 to 6.7, and the number of big-play completions (covering 25 yards or more) plummeted from a conference-best 36 in '09 to 23 in 2010. He was 0-2 as a starter against Nebraska, dropped games as a heavy favorite to Baylor and Texas Tech, didn't take the Tigers to the Big 12 Championship Game, etc.
His final game, last week's 27-24 Insight Bowl loss to Iowa, is a microcosm for Gabbert's career. For most of the night, he was sharp, ripping up the Hawkeye secondary for a season-high (for Gabbert and the Hawkeye secondary) 434 yards passing. But the enduring memory from the game was the awful fourth quarter interception Gabbert served up to Iowa's Micah Hyde, who took it all the way back for what turned out to be the game-winning touchdown. Enough Missouri fans had seen enough of their hyped quarterback that leading receiver T.J. Moe felt compelled to defend his friend from the haters on Twitter this afternoon.
The 2011 projections are probably going to side with Moe. With Gabbert in the fold as a senior, Missouri might have been a darkhorse to unseat presumptive favorite Oklahoma in the first ten-team Big 12 race in the fall, thanks to an offense that only loses one other starter, all-conference center Tim Barnes, and returns everyone else who touched the ball in 2010. Instead, they'll likely hand the reins to sophomore James Franklin, another big, once-hyped recruit who saw some Wildcat duty and a handful of garbage-time passes as a true freshman. And the cycle begins anew.
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See a full list of underclassmen who have declared for the draft.
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
John Draper Doug Dubach Ryan Dungey Vic Eastwood Daryl Ecklund
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