2014 NFL Draft Profiles: Quarterback Chase Rettig

Chase Rettig #11 - Quarterback

Combine Numbers

40 Yard Dash - 4.97
Vert. Jump - 34.0 inches
Broad Jump - 112 inches
20 Yard Shuttle - 4.44 sec

Strengths

Rettig is brutally efficient in his pass selection; the throws he can make, he can make with razor sharp percentages.  He completed over 60% of his throws last year with 17 touchdowns, the same number from his junior season despite for almost half the yardage less.  He is very good at sensing pressure and avoiding it; he threw just 39 interceptions in over 1,200 collegiate passing attempts.  I think you'll find a lot of quarterbacks who are worse at scrambling, and he's shown at times he can take off with the ball.  In this regard, he reminds me a lot like Chad Pennington, who is the NFL's all-time leader in completion percentage among QBs with 1,500 pass attempts and finished his career with a 90.1 QB rating.

Rettig has the ability to throw downfield, and he's completed passes over 40 yards.  While it didn't happen with regularity during his senior year, that was more by design than it was ability.

Weaknesses

The biggest knock against Rettig is his ability to check off receivers.  Of his 162 compete passes, nearly half went to Alex Amidon and no other receiver had more than 10 receptions.  While some of that is the talent level around him, he couldn't deliver a ball to those receivers either.  He has great awareness on what's happening around him, but he lacks the other side of awareness to read defenses.  If he can't read a collegiate defense, the complex defenses designed with the fast, speedy, athletic super athletes of the pro ranks extrapolate to him being ineffective.  An inability to read a defense and a tendency to lock onto a receiver in the NFL is a sure fire way to lose games and get receivers killed.

One other knock against Rettig is that he could never win when he had the reigns to an offense.  The one year BC let him chuck it all over the field, they went 2-10, and almost every analyst can point to another reason why BC was able to become bowl eligible.

Teams that have had Rettig in for private workouts

Atlanta Falcons
New England Patriots

Team that would be the best fit

Rettig would actually be a great fit for the Cincinnati Bengals.  Last year, the Bengals ran a watered down version of the Jay Gruden offense.  It utilized a power running game and relied heavily on short yardage passing gains.  It was ultra conservative and was designed for the quarterback to manage the game but not actually lose it.  Sound familiar?

Projected draft round

7th/UDFA