NFL analysts do their best to try and find the right pro comparison for NFL Draft prospects. But for one analyst, a certain quarterback is so hard to gauge that he can’t tell if they’re the next Lamar Jackson or the next Johnny Manziel.
On the latest episode of The Number One College Football Show, analyst RJ Young said that LSU quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels will either be Jackson or Manziel over time. He explained that he has no clue which version of Daniels an NFL team is going to be: The one that won the Heisman in 2023, or the one who was mediocre for several years before that.
“Given what we know about (Daniels), he’s either Lamar Jackson or Johnny Manziel,” Young said.
“If you are drafting Jayden Daniels, the question you have to ask yourself is which dude am I getting? Am I getting the dude that we saw for four years or the dude we saw last year?”
While it’s a fair question to ask which version of Daniels is the real one, there’s a pretty chasmic difference in the two quarterbacks that Young listed off.
Jackson is a two-time MVP and on pace to go down in history as the greatest mobile quarterback of all-time.
Manziel, on the other hand, is one of the biggest busts in NFL history and played in just 14 games before being exiled from football entirely.
Surely there’s some kind of middle ground between Jackson and Manziel for Jayden Daniels. Right?