The video supercut (and numbers) to show the person who claims Lamar Jackson’s just a running quarterback who can’t throw

Lamar Jackson was one of the best college quarterbacks ever. In large part, that was because of Jackson’s legs. He was a devastating runner, carrying the ball for more than 4,000 yards and 50 touchdowns in his three seasons at Louisville.

An annual part of the NFL draft news cycle is quarterbacks who were good at running in college having their passing credentials called into question. That’s been happening to Jackson for a long time. Purportedly serious people think he should play receiver.

We could go deeper, but here’s the extremely brief counterargument:

That’s two whole minutes of film of Jackson throwing long touchdown passes in Bobby Petrino’s Louisville offense. These are not check-downs. They’re gorgeous throws that involve Jackson going through reads and dropping dimes into tight spaces, like this:

You can watch a bunch of NSFW Jackson running highlights here.

Jackson’s career passer rating at Louisville was 142.9, but he was between 146 and 149 in his sophomore and junior seasons, before declaring for the draft. That’s better college pass efficiency than Wyoming’s Josh Allen (137.7) and UCLA’s Josh Rosen (140.1). It’s a whisker behind USC’s Sam Darnold (153.7). Among potential first-round QBs, only Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield (175.4) and Oklahoma State’s Mason Rudolph (159.7) were significantly better college passers than Jackson.

Curiously, none of these other QBs are supposed to move to wide receiver.

Jackson’s finished both 2016 and 2017 in the top 30 nationally in passer rating. (There are 130 FBS teams, and almost all of them played against easier defenses than the ones Jackson encountered in the ACC.) Jackson finished in the top 15 each of the last two years in yards per attempt and the top 16 in total passing yards.

Was Jackson an elite passer in college? No. But he was absolutely one of the better passing QBs in the country, to say nothing of his best-in-show rushing stats.

Jackson also threw a lot more than he ran (1,086 college passing attempts to 655 rushing attempts). That doesn’t tell the entire story of how Louisville used him, because run/pass options sometimes meant defenses dictated Louisville’s calls. College stats also include sacks as rushes. But Petrino trusted Jackson to chuck the ball around.

Jackson’s not a perfect prospect. In 2017, he threw more interceptions (10, though four were in his last game) and took more sacks (29) than anyone would prefer. He’s kind of thin (a listed 6’3, 207 pounds at the end of his college career), which calls into question how he’ll do running between the tackles in a professional offense.

Those are all fair things to worry about. Plenty of amazing college quarterbacks have not had successful pro careers. Jackson has no guarantees, like everybody else.

But to cast him off now as someone who can’t throw enough to hack it in the NFL is dumb. It’s at odds with an overwhelming body of evidence on tape and the stat sheet.