Robert Griffin, Baylor: 2,530 DYAR
Important stats: 40 games started, 67.0% completion rate, senior passer rating rose 45.3 points, 161 carries for 644 yards.
Andrew Luck, Stanford: 1,749 DYAR
Important stats: 37 games started, 66.4% completion rate, senior passer rating dropped -0.5 points, 47 carries for 150 yards.
Robert Griffin comes out with the strongest LCF projection of any quarterback we've measured. Here are the top ten quarterbacks by LCF projection since 1998:
Player
Year
LCF
Robert Griffin
2012
2530
Philip Rivers
2004
2476
Drew Brees
2001
2190
Colt McCoy
2010
2092
Carson Palmer
2003
1973
Peyton Manning
1998
1784
Andrew Luck
2012
1749
Chad Pennington
2000
1678
Brady Quinn
2007
1518
Jason Campbell
2005
1506
Griffin and Luck are basically LCF's dream candidates. They're both longtime starters with tons of college experience. Both have strong completion rates. Both get good yardage when scrambling. The biggest difference between the two according to LCF is what happened in their senior year. Luck, who was stellar as a junior, saw his passer rating stay constant. Griffin, on the other hand, improved significantly. The 45.3-point rise in his passer rating as a senior is largest senior improvement in our database (surpassing Jason Campbell, who rose 40.3 points) and the second-largest senior change in our database (behind only Rex Grossman, whose passer rating as a senior dropped 49.3 points). Statistically, Griffin's senior year was better than Luck's, his junior year not as good. This could indicate that Griffin is still improving, still learning, and still getting better, with more room to grow in the pros. Of course, it also could indicate that Griffin's 2011 season was a little fluky, and one of the arguments I've read against Griffin as a can't-miss prospect is that most scouts didn't have him as a first-round pick before his senior season. With all due respect to those scouts, it was pretty obvious within the first two or three games of the year that they were wrong. And even if Griffin's passer rating as a senior had stayed the same as his passer rating as a junior, Griffin would still have this year's highest LCF projection at 1,994.
Again, this little statistical exercise is not definitive proof that the Colts should draft Griffin over Luck. What's important here is that both quarterbacks come out as top prospects, and unlike with Colt McCoy, the scouting reports match the statistical projection.
One last note: The argument against "Luck and Griffin are about as close to can't miss as quarterback prospects can be" is not "well, people said the same thing about Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf." We know more now than we did then. Leaf started only 24 games and completed just 55.4 percent of his passes in college. His LCF projection is at -407. If Football Outsiders had been around in 1998, we would have been arguing that Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf weren't even in the same universe as prospects.