DeShone Kizer has prototypical size, great football IQ and a rocket launcher for an arm.
So why couldn’t the quarterback lead Notre Dame to a better record than 4-8 this past season?
It’s a question NFL talent evaluators, including those leading the Browns, will continue to explore as the April 27-29 draft approaches.
The Browns could consider Kizer with their second first-round pick, 12th overall, or even with the first selection of the second round, No. 33 overall, if he’s still available then. The team has conducted a private workout with him.
But whoever picks him will need to become comfortable with what happened last season.
“In terms of passes attempted and completions, 2015 was a better season than 2016,” Western Kentucky coach Mike Sanford, who spent the past two seasons as Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, said in a recent phone interview with the Beacon Journal.
“Part of that is going to be due largely to the absence of two outstanding receivers [who went to the NFL] and he worked with a lot in Will Fuller and Chris Brown, and then this past season losing Torii Hunter for the season in Week 1, really for all intents and purposes, had a significant concussion and really never kind of returned to form.”
Wanting answers
NFL teams grilled Kizer, 21, on the dip in wins last month at the NFL Scouting Combine.
For instance, Browns coach Hue Jackson said during the combine Kizer is “very talented,” so he wanted an explanation for the poor record.
“[Teams] had a lot of questions about last season and how a guy who has the size and has the arm strength goes and becomes 4-8,” Kizer said at the combine. “I responded in the way I thought was the honest truth.
“I just didn’t make enough plays. The ball’s in my hand every play. It’s my job at Notre Dame to put us in position to win games, to trust in the guys around me and develop the guys around me to make those plays with me.”
Quarterbacks are expected to elevate their supporting casts and carry teams to victories.
Jackson publicly challenged Cody Kessler to do those exact things last season and later pulled him out of a Thursday night game against the Baltimore Ravens.
That would sound familiar to Kizer because Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly benched him during the Fighting Irish’s 17-10 loss to Stanford on Oct. 15.
“What I love about DeShone is he’s very self-aware,” Sanford said. “He’s his hardest critic on himself. He’s not a guy that thinks he’s above coaching by any stretch of the imagination. He’ll even say that his dad coached him so hard in youth sports all the way leading up through high school that nobody can coach him harder than his father did.
“When that did happen, he made the decision he’s never going to allow that to happen again. He’s not going to allow there to even be a possibility that we could justify benching him.”
Kizer remained the starter, and Notre Dame lost three of its final five games.
Still, it’s dangerous to write off a quarterback just because of his team’s record.
“You’ve got to see what happened,” San Francisco 49ers coach and former Browns offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan said at the NFL owners meetings. “You can’t just look at the stats or the record or the numbers. You’ve got to watch each game, and sometimes guys, it seems on paper or their record, that they had a real bad game, and you go and watch the tape and a guy had a very good game.
“Your success on the football field is dependent on everybody. You can’t just go out there and do it by yourself. It takes 11 guys all the time. It also takes a good system helping guys, and you’ve got to take it all into account.”
Regardless of his teammates, it’s difficult for any quarterback to consistently make plays when he’s plagued by accuracy issues. Turn on the tape of Kizer, 6-foot-4¼ and 233 pounds, and those problems are glaring.
“There’s nothing that pains him more than throwing a ball and not completing an easy throw,” Sanford said. “He takes great pride in [accuracy], and I think he’s growing in that area. He’s a rhythm player, and when you get him into rhythm early, he’s going to be a guy that’s going to make a whole lot of throws for you.”
Work to be done
But when Kizer’s footwork is off, his throws usually are, too. It happened often at Notre Dame last season. It even crept up at the combine and contributed to his disappointing throwing session. He bounced back with a better showing March 23 at his pro day, but there’s clearly work to be done for him to become a reliable passer.
“If a guy’s missing throws, you look into why they’re missing throws,” Shanahan said. “You don’t ever want to change a guy’s throwing motion too much. That’s pretty much how they throw. You don’t want to mess with a guy. But you can always work with their footwork, their timing, keeping their feet under them, how to [get] them to stay a passer and not get in a running position.
“All that stuff goes into account when you’re throwing the ball, and it’s a lot easier to throw the ball when you’re very balanced. And how many times do you get off balance? Those are things you try to help them with.”
Kizer went 8-3 in 2015, his first season as the starter. He completed 62.9 percent of his passes for 2,880 yards and 21 touchdowns with 10 interceptions. He ran 135 times for 525 yards and 10 touchdowns.
In 2016, when Notre Dame went 4-8, he completed 58.7 percent of his passes for 2,925 yards and 26 touchdowns with nine interceptions. He rushed 129 times for 472 yards and nine touchdowns.
“He has an absolute rifle for an arm, and he has good mobility, as well,” ESPN’s Todd McShay said during a recent conference call. “But he’s just so up and down with his consistency and the accuracy and really did not play very well in some clutch situations.
“He didn’t play well in fourth quarters of games, especially the Stanford game. That was alarming. With Kizer, I think he’s probably going to be a late first-round pick, somewhere in that range. But it won’t surprise me if he’s still on the board when we get to day two.”
McShay is among the draft analysts who said Kizer should have stayed at Notre Dame instead of leaving after his lackluster redshirt sophomore season.
“I’m pretty confident in my abilities,” said Kizer, a Toledo native who grew up rooting for his dad’s favorite team, the Philadelphia Eagles. “I think with my size, my ability to read defenses both pre- and post-snap, my ability to understand the game and my leadership I was able to develop at Notre Dame put me in position to achieve my goal of playing in the NFL.”
Sanford believes Kizer will excel at the next level despite his flaws. He points to Kizer’s “no-flinch attitude,” football intelligence the coach compares to that of Indianapolis Colts starter Andrew Luck and a knack for performing in adverse weather.
Kizer played almost exclusively out of the shotgun at Notre Dame, but Sanford said he used “full-field, full-progression reads as opposed to just a half-side read.”
As for Kizer’s accuracy, Sanford is convinced it’ll improve. The arm talent is already there.
“Even if he’s not in rhythm, the thing I love about DeShone is his deep ball is going to be on point, and he’s still going to be able to rip one of the toughest throws in football, which is a 16-yard dig through traffic,” Sanford said. “I think DeShone’s shown time and again he can make those big throws.”
Accuracy isn’t the only common criticism.
At Notre Dame’s pro day, Kelly told NFL Network he’s heard a lot of questions about Kizer’s leadership but thinks he has the right makeup.
Jackson has said he wants a quarterback capable of thriving as the face of a franchise.
“I think he embraces that role, but I don’t think he takes it and runs with it,” Sanford said. “I don’t think he’s a guy that just wants to be the face of the franchise for the sake of being the face of the franchise. I think he’d do a good job with that.”
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Browns blog at www.ohio.com/browns. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ.