INDIANAPOLIS — No prospect this year needs the NFL Scouting Combine more than Christian Hackenberg.
Among the most highly recruited quarterbacks in the country just three years ago, Hackenberg went to Penn State billed as a program savior and future No. 1 overall pick all rolled into one impressive package.
Fast forward to 2016, and Hackenberg finds himself this week struggling to convince NFL teams he’s worthy of a second- or third-round choice in the wake of a top draft analyst describing Hackenberg’s game tape as so bad that it “scares” him.
What happened? According to Hackenberg, the fallout from the Jerry Sandusky child-sex scandal and a coaching change happened rather than the possibility he simply isn’t as good as he was made out to be.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of NFL-type situations as far as adversity,” Hackenberg said Thursday. “Handling a lot of things. Handling a shorter deck. We were playing with 43 guys on scholarship my freshman year.”
Whatever the reason for Hackenberg’s downfall (his completion percentage, passing yards and TD passes all dropped from his freshman year to his junior season), it is real in the minds of NFL scouts and executives.
Despite a big arm and prototype size at 6-feet-4, 234 pounds, Hackenberg isn’t even in the conversation when it comes to the top quarterbacks in this year’s draft. He is lumped in among the current also-rans once scouts stop talking about California’s Jared Goff, North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz and Memphis’ Paxton Lynch.
One particular scene inside Lucas Oil Stadium crystallized Hackenberg’s plight.
While Hackenberg spoke to a group reporters on one side of the room, Texans coach Bill O’Brien — who recruited Hackenberg to Penn State before bolting after one year — addressed the media on the other side and all but damned his former prized recruit with faint praise.
“I think that Christian’s a very talented guy, but there’s a lot of talented quarterbacks in this league,” O’Brien said. “To stand up here and answer whether a guy has starting ability, I mean it is very, very difficult to start at quarterback in this league.”
Houston badly needs a quarterback, and O’Brien might have been just playing coy to hide his hopes of a reunion, but the concerns and questions about Hackenberg are widespread heading into Saturday’s passing drills.
NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock was relentlessly critical of Hackenberg in a conference call with reporters last week, and Mayock’s downbeat assessment was far from an outlier.
Mayock lumped Hackenberg in with one-year Ohio State wonder Cardale Jones, who lost his starting job last season, as physical talents hampered by terrible game film.
“They both scare me because they’re really talented, big arm, big-body kids that you want to believe in, but the tape is really bad,” Mayock said. “So I don’t know how long either of them will take to go from where they are today to what you would need in a functional NFL quarterback.”
Ouch.
Hackenberg defends himself by pointing to the beating he took behind a Penn State offensive line depleted by the Sandusky sanctions, as well as O’Brien replacement James Franklin’s decision to abandon the pro-style scheme that helped Hackenberg thrive as a true freshman in 2013.
Hackenberg, who completed just 53 percent of his passes last season, was so disillusioned by the coaching change that he didn’t even acknowledge Franklin by name while announcing his decision to turn pro.
Hackenberg now must convince the NFL he can be the quarterback so many thought he could be three years ago.
“The most important thing is that I’m trustworthy,” Hackenberg said. “I’ve been through adversity. I’m battle-tested. And I’ve handled it and haven’t flinched and am still willing to work and not hurt from it. I can continue to get better. I think my potential is here and I think I’m on the right path to reach it.”