Many believed Stetson Bennett wouldn’t carve out an NFL career prior to the 2022 campaign. That narrative shifted.
The former walk-on led the Georgia Bulldogs to a second National Championship. He elevated his game and changed a lot of people’s opinions on his way to New York as a Heisman finalist.
ESPN’s Mel Kiper said that Bennett could be drafted as high as the third round. The story is a Hollywood film, and after an incredible season, a third-round selection didn’t seem that far-fetched.
Stetson Bennett showed a different version of himself this past season than we’ve ever seen. He doesn’t have the strongest arm, elusive mobility, or any other elite tangible asset. But he had enough to get the job done for the Dawgs, displaying elite intangibles like leadership.
However, since the confetti fell, Bennett hasn’t done himself many favors. He was arrested for public intoxication and didn’t exactly ‘wow’ at the NFL Combine. When the media questioned the arrest, he fumbled around the standard PR answer, saying “you know” more than a dozen times. It’s more than just that, though, apparently.
Jeremy Fowler of ESPN doesn’t believe the third round is in Bennett’s future. In fact, he pegs the Georgia Bulldogs product as an early Day 3 pick at the earliest with legitimate concerns he could go undrafted.
Based solely upon on-field play, Bennett might be as high as the sixth-best quarterback in the draft. Evaluators consider him a good processor who has above-average physical tools and is a playmaker without whom Georgia doesn’t win back-to-back titles. “Plays big in big games, quick-twitch, aggressive — sometimes that hurts him but he has confidence, which is what you want,” an NFL coordinator said.
Bennett’s size (5-11, 192 pounds) is bound to be a concern for some teams. And many interviewed have non-football concerns about Bennett, who was arrested for public intoxication on Jan. 29 and did not receive universally high marks on combine interviews. Said an NFC exec: “To me, he’s clearly better than those other guys [in this tier]. He does some good stuff. But he might go undrafted. His pre-draft has not been good and there are questions about whether he’ll be the pro that you need out of a backup QB.”
Vegas odds are backing up the sentiment. FanDuel sees Bennett going undrafted as the most likely outcome, sitting at +195 odds, followed by the 6th and 7th rounds at +300 odds. As Fowler notes, it doesn’t seem physical at all. The concern is the intangibles, which are warranted. All-time great, two-time National Champion quarterback Stetson Bennett could go very well undrafted.
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Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire
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