McSorley begins selling himself to teams
INDIANAPOLIS – Like his signature home-run swing touchdown celebration at Penn State, Trace McSorley is hoping to hit it out of the park at the NFL Scouting Combine.
Like a lot of quarterbacks before him, he is hoping to show coaches and general managers that size is not always the true measure of what a player can do on the field.
What’s more, he would like to convince them his disappointing and injury-saddled performance in 2018, when he was considered a Heisman Trophy front-runner before the season, is not indicative of the quarterback he thinks he is.
That process began Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium when McSorley and the other quarterbacks at the combine worked out and went through drills in front of NFL personnel.
“The intangibles are a big part of who I am,” said McSorley, who holds Penn State records for passing yards and passing touchdowns in a season and is the school’s all-time total yardage leader. “But I’m a football player and I’m an athlete and this is a chance for me to go out there and show them I can make all the throws and that I can run really well. People tend to overlook my physical attributes because of the other stuff.”
McSorley, who measured at 6-0½, 202 pounds, is not the smallest quarterback at the combine. That distinction belongs to Oklahoma’s Kyler Murray, the Heisman Trophy winner who could be the first quarterback taken in the NFL draft. Murray measured at 5-10⅛, 207 pounds, with a hand size of 9½ inches, considered tiny by quarterback standards. McSorley’s hand size was even smaller (9⅛).
But another quarterback who wasn’t very tall and had small hands went No. 1 overall last season – and look what Baker Mayfield did with the Cleveland Browns.
“You see guys like Drew Brees who has been doing it for a long time,” McSorley said. “Russell (Wilson), Baker (Mayfield), those guys are making people step back and realize you don’t need to be the prototypical 6-4, 220 pound guy back there.”
In fact, McSorley said his size was never mentioned when he met with coaches and GMs.
“You look at all of them, they’ve got a chip on their shoulder, they’ve all been told at some point that they couldn’t do it because of their height and they just defied that,” McSorley said. “They haven’t let someone else’s opinion affect who they are. Guys like Drew Brees and Russell Wilson, they have those intangibles, too. They elevate the play of their teammates because of how they carry themselves and the type of player and leader they are.”
McSorley did that at Penn State, especially in his first two seasons as a starter when he led the Nittany Lions to a combined 22-5 record and threw for 7,184 yards and 57 touchdowns – a lot of homerun swings. As a junior, he completed 66.5 percent of his passes for 3,570 yards and 28 touchdowns and ran for another 411 yards and 11 touchdowns.
But, after being touted as one of the leading candidates for the Heisman Trophy last year, McSorley never had the same shining success as a senior. Injuries curtailed his production — he threw for only 18 touchdowns while completing just 53.2 percent of his passes — and started to affect the way he played. Penn State finished 9-4 and still played in the Citrus Bowl, but it wasn’t what a lot of people were expecting. Including McSorley.
“It wasn’t going like we wanted it early on,” he said “Then I started to tense up and press and try and make perfect throws. Going back over the film, I saw that I was skipping guys in the progression and looking for the guy that was most open rather than, all right, get the ball to this guy and let him be a playmaker.”
It remains to be seen when or even if McSorley will be drafted. He is projected as a late-round pick at best, though that could change with a good performance at the combine and his pro day.
McSorley is so determined to play quarterback he turned down a request from the NFL to work out with the defensive backs, according to ESPN.
“I’m telling them they’ll be getting a guy who is going to come in every day and give you everything you can get out of him,” McSorley said. “He’s going to work hard every single day. Nobody’s going to outwork me, day in and day out.”