Cal QB Jared Goff is expected to be among the top picks in this year’s NFL draft … if his hands don’t get in the way.
One of the knocks against Goff had been the size of his hands, and those suspicions were confirmed at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis on Thursday when they were measured at 9 inches, which is right on the cusp of being small for NFL quarterbacks.
“I just heard about that yesterday,” Goff said this week, according to Pro Football Talk. “I’ve been told I have pretty big hands all my life. I’ve never had a problem with that.”
The Browns might, though. New Cleveland coach Hue Jackson, whose team is expected to target a quarterback with the No. 2 pick, said Wednesday that size does indeed matter.
“It matters because we play in a division where all of a sudden there’s rain, there’s snow and it’s different,” Jackson told reporters Wednesday, according to NFL.com.
“I think guys that have big hands can grip the ball better in those environmental situations.”
Carson Wentz, the quarterback out of North Dakota State, is also considered a likely high pick and came in with hands measuring 10 inches. Christian Hackenberg, the Penn State QB, also has 9-inch hands.
The hand-size craze is real as Arkansas signal-caller Brandon Allen did exercises on his hands to increase the size in between the Senior Bowl and Scouting Combine, and it actually worked. Fox Sports reported that Allen was measured 8 1/2 inches at Senior Bowl, but was all the way up to 8 7/8 inches this week.
According to NFL.com, other AFC North signal-callers like Baltimore’s Joe Flacco (9 5/8) and Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton (9 1/2) are over the 9-inch mark, while Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger’s hand size wasn’t made public when he was drafted in 2004.