Carson Beck is the 'most NFL-ready' quarterback in college football

Georgia quarterback Carson Beck has pro pedigree, but there’s one crucial area where he needs to improve to assure his NFL Draft position next spring.

Andy Staples and Clark Brooks broke down the top returning quarterbacks for the 2024 college football season over on the On3 YouTube channel, and of course, included Beck. Staples came out hot with a strong declaration:

“This is the guy that we are assuming is the first quarterback off the board in the next draft. Obviously, that’s kind of a fool’s errand this time of year, that doesn’t always come to pass. But Carson Beck certainly seems like kind of the most NFL-ready of the the quarterbacks in college football right now.”

Brooks then jumped in with some extended analysis on Beck’s play last season, comparing him to a current NFL quarterback who just received a massive payday.

“Yeah, I’m terrible about player comps, but he just really reeks of Jared Goff to me,” said Brooks. “Very sturdy within structure, nice off play action, good frame to see over the line and see downfield, and a his layer ability to where he can throw a fast ball or kind of a soft toss around some other people.”

However, Brooks notes that like Goff, Beck also isn’t tested very often under pressure, and when he is, the results aren’t great.

Within the SEC, if you were to omit the super spread quarterbacks, Georgia has consistently finished in the bottom of the league in true drop-back percentage. So again, that’s just dropping back, no play actions, no screens, no RPOs for three straight years.

“So it’s nothing new with them despite having Mike Bobo now calling plays. When he’s not using that type of stuff, even though he was not pressured hardly at all, he did throw the ball into harm’s way fairly commonly when he was under the gun.”

That’s the current flaw Beck will need to shore up before the 2025 draft, but that’s a long ways off. Currently, Brooks believes Beck does a lot of things well, which he backed up with more advanced stats.

“When you’re just looking at a guy who can check boxes, very few can do so quite like Carson Beck. Even though you say you don’t want to assume he’s gonna be QB1, not to make an ass out of you and me, but when you typically do assume, you’re right about 62% of the time.

“From where I see right now, I do think that Carson Beck is set up to be one of the better quarterbacks in this class, because there’s not a whole lot of people who can do things like him at his size and be as accurate as he is. Because when we’re looking at throws over 10 yards downfield, he was one of the top producers in the SEC last year. On throws over 15 yards downfield, his accuracy and uncatchable pass rate are tops within the conference.”

Staples responded to all that by asking another question: “So what can he do better to kind of solidify his spot?”

Ringing his cowbell once again, Brooks answered:

“Passing against pressure. Against his hardest opponents, 20% of his passes could have been picked off. That is unsustainable, even though he was only pressured on about 19% of his drop backs last year, lowest in the SEC. So I definitely need to see more heightened play against pressure and less mistakes against pressure, and just more, say, consistency in that regard.”