Just days before the NFL scouting combine, Chiefs general manager John Dorsey is sure of one thing — his team’s No. 1 overall pick will not be spent on a quarterback.
“There is no quarterback where personnel guys can definitely say, ‘He’s a first-round pick,’” Dorsey told the Kansas City Star. “There were so many inconsistencies in the collective group. There was not one guy that stood up and said, ‘I’m the guy in the position this year.’ There really wasn’t one clear-cut guy.”
ESPN’s Mel Kiper explained the flaws he’s observed so far in each of the top-ranked quarterbacks in this year’s draft.
“The year didn’t go the way Matt Barkley and the USC Trojans hoped,” Kiper said. “He began the year No. 1 on my big board. You saw what happened with USC. They lost four games with Barkley at quarterback and lost a couple more when he was hurt. They didn’t have a signature win all year.
“Geno Smith started out great. It looked like after Barkley struggled you could lock Geno Smith in. Then he has a disappointing second half of the season, so there are issues in terms of what type of starting quarterback he can be.
“Things didn’t fall into place at Arkansas, and that affected Tyler Wilson. The wheels came off for all the quarterbacks at some point [last] year. Things just didn’t fall right to allow them to maximize their ability. That’s why the teams are right now in the predicament they are, trying to figure this whole quarterback thing out and not overdraft or push a guy up when he’s not deserving.”
Currently, Kiper doesn’t have one quarterback ranked among his top 25, and in his current big board, Kiper doesn’t have a single quarterback going in the first round.
Dorsey said he expects at least two quarterbacks to be drafted in the first round because of the strong need for signal callers throughout the league. The lack of an elite talent does not mean that Dorsey and new head coach Andy Reid won’t stop evaluating quarterbacks in the coming weeks.
“I think Andy is a really good evaluator of quarterbacks,” Dorsey said. “I want him and I to go to as many quarterback workouts as possible and actually set our own up.”
