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<\/p>\nThe Russell Wilson era seems to be over with the Denver Broncos, and many a 2024 NFL mock draft has head coach Sean Payton taking a quarterback at No. 12. In the latest NFL.com mock, Lance Zierlein has the team taking Michigan signal-caller J.J. McCarthy, whom the draft analyst describes as Drew Brees but with more athleticism.<\/p>\n
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Latest Broncos Mock Draft Has J.J. McCarthy at No. 12<\/strong> With that in mind, the 2024 NFL Draft is the time to take a first-round QB to become the franchise\u2019s Russell Wilson replacement.<\/p>\n NFL.com\u2019s Lance Zierlein thinks this pick will be Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy due to his similarities with the QB Payton won a Super Bowl with, Hall of Famer Drew Brees.<\/p>\n \u201cNFL evaluators have described McCarthy\u2019s processing as \u2018elite\u2019 in my conversations with them,\u201d Zierlein writes. \u201cDrew Brees was a great processer, but he didn\u2019t have the same athletic ability that McCarthy offers. This just feels like a Sean Payton pick.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to having more athleticism than Brees, McCarthy is also significantly bigger, listed at 6-foot-3, 202 pounds. Brees measured at 6 feet, 209 pounds during his playing career, and anyone who watched the signal-caller knows that height is probably generous.<\/p>\n Another big difference is that McCarthy has the pedigree Brees didn\u2019t. While the Hall of Fame QB went to a mid-level Big 10 school in Purdue, was a second-round pick, and ended up on the New Orleans Saints after the San Diego Chargers decided to draft Philip Rivers to replace him, McCarthy is more of a blue blood.<\/p>\n The Chicago-area native ended up at Michigan \u2014 the class of the Big 10 \u2014 after being ranked as one of the top 22 to 41 recruits and top three pro-style QBs in the country (depending on the recruiting service), according to the Michigan football website. And if he goes No. 12 overall to the Broncos, that will be 20 spots ahead of where Brees went in 2001.<\/p>\n All that said, the things that Brees has that the Michigan passer doesn\u2019t include the second-most passing yards (80,358) and passing touchdowns (572) in NFL history and a Lombardi Trophy he won with the now-Broncos head coach.<\/p>\n Who will be QB4 in the 2024 NFL Draft?<\/strong> The first three will almost certainly be USC\u2019s Caleb Williams, North Carolina\u2019s Drake Maye, and LSU\u2019s Jayden Daniels, probably in that order. After that, there is no real consensus as to who will hear their name called as QB4 in April.<\/p>\n Other than McCarthy, Washington\u2019s Michael Penix Jr. and Oregon\u2019s Bo Nix are the other two signal-callers in the mix here, and there is a wide variance of where they could go. In some mocks, at least one of these three is often in the top 15. In others, they don\u2019t go until Round 2 or later.<\/p>\n In Zierlein\u2019s mock draft, McCarthy is the fourth QB to go.<\/p>\n Does that make sense? Sure. McCarthy is a talented player, and maybe more importantly, he doesn\u2019t have some of the red flags that Penix and Nix have.<\/p>\n Both Penix and Nix transferred in their college career, meaning Nix played for five seasons with Auburn and Oregon while Penix played six between Indiana and Washington. Both are 23 years old, with Nix turning 24 on Feb. 25, and Penix on May 8. This could mean that at least some of their success is because they were experienced grown men playing against teenagers the last few seasons.<\/p>\n On the other hand, McCarthy is still solidly college-aged, just turning 21 on Jan. 20. That gives him more upside than either of his QB4 challengers.<\/p>\n Also, both Nix and Penix have injury concerns to varying degrees. Nix remained relatively healthy in college, although he did have ankle surgery that ended his 2021 campaign at Auburn, according to ESPN.<\/p>\n Penix\u2019s injury history is much worse. The QB has torn both his ACLs while at Indiana, and although he\u2019s been healthy the last two seasons at Washington, there are rumors that his medical evaluation at the NFL combine could be so worrisome that teams will take him off their draft boards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Russell Wilson era seems to be over with the Denver Broncos, and many a 2024 NFL mock draft has head coach Sean Payton taking a quarterback… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAfter paying Sean Payton \u201cin the neighborhood\u201d of $18 million per year, per Peter King in Sports Illustrated, the hope is that the Broncos won\u2019t pick in the top 12 of the NFL draft again in the next decade or so.<\/p>\n
\nFresh off a national championship, J.J. McCarthy is in the mix to be the third quarterback off the board in the 2024 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n