NFL draft prospects face wildly different college competition. Here are 6 schedule-strength takeaways on just the QBs.

Hello, I cover college football and watch way more of it than I watch the NFL. So during NFL draft season, I’m more comfortable discussing what players have already done than what they might do in the future.

One aspect of college football I think a lot of NFL analysts and fans overlook is the huge difference in schedule strengths. Even within FBS alone, the difference between Alabama and UTEP is far greater than the difference between the Eagles and the Browns. (Ask Vegas. A 14-point spread is huge in the NFL, but Bama sometimes covers double that against SEC teams.)

In 2017, I tried a way to sort prospect QBs by the schedules they faced, using opponent-adjusted Defensive S&P+. It finalized and simplified my argument that Deshaun Watson should be the first QB picked.

Here’s pretty much everybody who’s considered a top-10 QB by at least a couple different draft outlets. Included are each QB’s games started and games in which he threw/ran 20 or more times, using Defensive S&P+ for FBS teams and team Sagarin ratings for FCS.

(Lots of last year’s guys faced higher-ranked average defenses, in part because I didn’t include FCS at all that time.)

And here are some thoughts.

Remember which draft prospect QB had the Too Many Turnovers tag last year? Watson. Remember how a look at his schedule difficulty suggested a reason for them? That was the big takeaway from 2017’s version of this post.

I haven’t been in love with the idea of Darnold at No. 1, but it’s a lot less scary once you take into account how much talent he faced. USC only plays FBS teams, one of its three non-con games is always Notre Dame, and Darnold played in two New Year’s Six games and a Pac-12 Championship.

This makes Darnold’s advanced passing analytics, which are topped by only Mayfield’s, look even better. (Now to stop fumbling.)

It’s reasonable to second-guess the numbers put up by skill players in offense-prone conferences.

But don’t act like Mayfield was playing laser tag every Saturday. In 2017, he played well against the SEC champ. In 2016, he faced the Big Ten’s Playoff rep and an Auburn that nearly beat national champ Clemson. In 2015, he faced Clemson itself and beat a nine-win Tennessee in Knoxville.

Plus, it’s not like every Big 12 defense fits the stereotype. TCU and Texas were top 20 in 2017 Defensive S&P+, and Mayfield torched the Horned Frogs twice.

Oh, and here’s the Big Ten champ’s home field:

Mayfield’s my favorite player in this draft, and these numbers help affirm it.

Nobody’s weeping for a USC, Oklahoma, or Ohio State QB having to face a bunch of good defenders, because that QB surely had more highly recruited teammates and more in-demand coaches than most of his opponents.

But Jackson is roughly as tested as those blueblood QBs despite Louisville ranking a tier or two below in team talent. Ohio State ranks No. 2 in recruiting over the last four years. USC’s No. 3, 12 spots ahead of the next Pac-12 team. Louisville is No. 32, sixth in the ACC. Jackson had to face Playoff-bound Clemson teams and another top-10 recruiter, Florida State, every year.

With an average Power 5 QB, USC probably still would’ve won the Pac-12 South. Ohio State went 10-0 during Barrett’s career in games when he was out or barely threw. Now imagine Louisville — with its drops-y receivers, leaky offensive line, and crumbling defense — without Jackson. Lmao.

College fans never settled on where the 11teen-year senior ended up on the Elite/Terrible scale, and Ohio State fans have always seemed even more conflicted than the rest of us.

But he’s almost literally as tested as a college QB could possibly be — 27 starts against above-average defenses! — he avoids big mistakes, he can move a little bit, and his teammates swear by him. I’d be pretty happy to have him as an NFL backup, no matter how wildly the Opinions About J.T. Barrett Pendulum swung throughout his college career.

His competition level was pretty standard for a non-power QB, with few really tough challenges. Based on that, and the fact that he (at least in 2016) had some NFL talent by his side, you’d expect better output, no matter how little you care about stats.

We don’t go into these things trying to trash Allen. We love non-powers, and it’d be awesome if Wyoming truly produced the best player in the country. In this exercise, I found myself hoping to find his schedule stood out among the mid-major QBs, but ... yeah, the Mountain West has had a lot of defenses rank in the 100s.

I have Rosen in my top two or three QBs in this group. But if I had to make that case based only on numbers, I’d look silly. They’re not awesome. And UCLA usually had the raw team talent edge over its opponents.

(And UCLA’s opponents usually had the coaching edge, Rosen was often hurt, he had to start as a freshman, he’s a former five-star with great mechanics, and so forth.)

College observers seem more likely to try and justify his numbers than Allen’s, whereas NFL people seem to do the opposite. Guess we’ll find out whether anybody’s right.