http://mmqb.si.com/2015/06/18/mmqb-1...2016-nfl-draft
Good write up on cook
As with Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota last year, QB-hungry NFL teams will keep a close eye on Michigan State’s pro-ready quarterback, the early front-runner to be the first QB taken in the 2016 draft
Andrew Hancock for SI
Editor’s note: This is part of our summer series, The MMQB 100, counting down the most influential people for the 2015 season.
Pat Narduzzi pointed to the numbers on his tablet. The Michigan State defensive coordinator wasn’t about to rip his team’s offense to a writer with a recorder running, so on that spring day in 2013 he let the digits on his screen say what he couldn’t. Robust three-and-out statistics and other stingy measurables painted the picture of the Spartans’ otherworldly (and unappreciated) 2012 defense. But Michigan State was coming off a 7-6 season because the offense had provided next to nothing. If the Spartans were going to hoist trophies, they needed the offense to improve enough to deserve a spot alongside that defense. But that offense was missing something—or, more specifically, someone.
It turns out that Narduzzi (who left Sparty for the head coaching job at Pitt last December) had already helped find that someone. While recruiting the Cleveland area in 2009, Narduzzi had come across a tall, skinny quarterback at Walsh Jesuit in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Narduzzi alerted the Spartans’ offensive staffers, who agreed Connor Cook deserved a closer look. In February 2010, Michigan State became the first school to offer Cook a scholarship. It didn’t take much for the Spartans to fend off Akron and Miami (Ohio) to get Cook signed in 2011, though when he arrived in East Lansing that summer, he looked at starter Kirk Cousins and backup Andrew Maxwell and worried he might not see the field until 2015. “You see a guy like Kirk who was just so accurate, who had a quick release,” Cook said. “Every throw was a perfect spiral. I looked at him and I was like, Man, I’ve got a lot of improving to do.”
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That unheralded recruit probably will leave Michigan State as the best quarterback in school history, and he might also be the best quarterback in the 2016 draft. Though Penn State’s Christian Hackenberg has the prototypical measurables (6-4, 236) and skill set, and though Ohio State’s Cardale Jones boasts great size (6-5, 250) and a huge arm and showed a knack for delivering on the biggest stage, Cook is the most NFL-ready of the three. He doesn’t play in the kind of spread system that leads to video game statistics, but Michigan State’s pro-style offense more closely resembles what NFL teams will ask him to run. He has the size (6-4, 220) NFL teams covet, the arm to make every throw they want and the wheels to keep plays alive when his protection breaks down. Most importantly, since Cook took over as the starter early in the 2013 season, the Michigan State offense has clicked. The Spartans have been contenders ever since.
The 2012 Spartans had some legitimate excuses for their poor production on offense. Cousins was gone, and any quarterback would have struggled to live up to the standard he set. A rash of offensive line injuries didn’t help, either. Still, the Spartans had Le’Veon Bell at tailback and should have been able to produce more. In 2013, Cook—who had come off the bench to lead the game-winning drive in a Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl victory over TCU in the final game of his redshirt freshman year—entered the season opener splitting snaps with 2012 starter Andrew Maxwell. Bell was gone, but the offensive line was finally healthy. Still, in the season opener against Western Michigan, Michigan State’s best offense might have been stuffing the Broncos for three plays and convincing the officials to let Western Michigan skip the punt and keep the ball for another set of downs. Michigan State’s quarterbacks completed 17 of 37 passes for 116 yards in a 26-13 win. The Spartans’ defense, with an interception return for a touchdown and a fumble return for another, outscored both offenses. In Cook’s first career start the following week, Michigan State scored 21 in a win against South Florida. Not bad, except lowly McNeese State had hung 53 on the Bulls the previous week.
Cook’s comfort in a rout of FCS opponent Youngstown State gave Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio confidence that the sophomore was ready to take over permanently. The Spartans lost at Notre Dame, but Dantonio stuck with Cook. Every week after that, the Spartans’ offense improved incrementally. Cook didn’t try to do everything himself, but he made throws with a confidence that can’t be coached. He rarely hesitated. He didn’t shy away from tight windows, but he also didn’t try to jam every pass into one. Receivers who had struggled with dropped passes since Cousins left were suddenly making circus catches in front of a packed house at Nebraska. Bell’s replacement, Jeremy Langford, made defenses respect play-action fakes, and then Cook made them pay by hitting his targets. Cook’s first 300-yard passing performance came in the Big Ten title game, a win over previously undefeated Ohio State team. He repeated the feat in the next game against another elite defense: 332 and two touchdowns in a Rose Bowl win over Stanford.
Cook has the offense working in harmony. But he wanted more. It burned as he watched Florida State play Auburn for the national title. Cook thought the Spartans could have hung with either team.
In 2014, as he led the Big Ten in passing yards (247.2 per game), Cook looked ready to make the jump to the NFL. He didn’t have the buzz of Florida State’s Jameis Winston or Oregon’s Marcus Mariota, but there would have been little debate: He would have been the third quarterback off the board. Still, Cook never gave the NFL serious thought. Losses to Oregon and Ohio State—in which Cook threw for a combined 701 yards and Michigan State scored 64 points, but allowed 95—gnawed at him. After a frantic comeback to beat Baylor in the Cotton Bowl (another 300-yard performance in a big game), Cook began preparing to spend his final year of eligibility in East Lansing. “I want to get my degree. That’s important to me. And I had unfinished business,” Cook said. “Last season was a great season. We went 11-2. We won a major bowl. But we didn’t win our conference. That’s the main goal—to win your conference. When you don’t do that, it’s kind of a letdown.”
Cook pauses, then explains his mindset more succinctly: “Not being able to play for a championship kind of sucks.”
So Cook will work this season to play for a title and to refine his game for the next level. “I don’t think anyone is necessarily ready for the NFL,” Cook said. “I think you go there and you adjust. There are things I need to work on, that I can fine-tune this year.” He knows he needs to improve on the 58.1 percent completion rate he posted in 2014. Though Cook doesn’t get to pad his stats with the dump-offs employed by many spread teams, he still missed his share of open receivers last season. For example, Cook wouldn’t have needed that perfect back-shoulder throw to Tony Lippett on fourth-and-10 to keep alive the final drive against Baylor if he didn’t miss open receivers on the previous two plays.
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He doesn’t plan on showcasing his ability as a runner this year. Cook’s father, Chris, told MLive.com that in high school, Cook was timed at 4.5 seconds in the 40-yard dash at a camp at Cincinnati and 4.46 at a camp in Kentucky. Cook is quick to downplay his dual-threat capabilities, though. “If I’m running a 40, I’m decently fast,” he said. “But my game speed needs to improve.”
The tape disagrees with that statement. While Cook won’t be confused with Mariota, he can do serious damage when defenses get too tied up with his receivers and backs. Cook also can deliver something extra at the end of the run. Last year against Michigan, Cook kept on a read option and squirted up the middle for 13 yards. Wolverines safety Delano Hill tried to stop him and got blasted onto his back for his trouble. Don’t expect a repeat performance often in 2015. “I’m trying to keep my body healthy,” Cook said. “I’m not trying to hurt anything or trying to run people over. I only save stuff like that for Michigan, Ohio State or Oregon.”
Regarding another top college quarterback this fall, Penn State’s Hackenberg is tough to project because he spent much of 2014 running for his life behind a banged-up line. Cook, on the other hand, is tough to project because his line has been so good. (Ohio State’s Jones has the same pleasant dilemma, though he also still has to beat out Braxton Miller and J.T. Barrett for the starting job.) Watching Cook fire a rocket on a skinny post to beat Baylor in the final minute, it’s impossible not to notice how beautifully left tackle Jack Conklin, center Jack Allen and the rest of the line slide their protection to pick up the Bears’ blitz. That leads to an obvious question: What happens when Cook faces the kind of pressure he would behind the line of, say, an NFL team that was bad enough to own a top-10 pick? His mobility suggests he could still get the pass away, and his career TD-to-INT ratio (47-to-15) suggests he makes prudent choices with the ball.
Still, the most important stat when assessing Cook might be his 23-3 record as a starter. The NFL is littered with washed-up quarterbacks who won in college only to flop at the next level. But with Cook, it’s a little different. He is primarily responsible for turning around the Spartans’ offense, leading a unit capable of outscoring some of the nation’s most prolific offenses when necessary, and transforming a .500 team into one capable of winning a Big Ten title.
Now Cook is the front-runner to be the first quarterback taken in the 2016 draft. He was the missing piece for the Spartans. He could be the same for an NFL franchise.
