Sportsfrog.com

Earlier this week, swamper sancarloskid asked a very good question in the swamp’s mock draft thread:

I’m shocked that the scouts apparently rank Trent Edwards of Stanford highly.
He lost 90% of the games he started. Missed games due to injury regularly, and never got many accolades from the local press here.

That’s more than just a fair question, it’s a pressing question for NFL teams evaluating Edwards.

In the 44 games that the Cardinal played while Edwards was at Stanford, Trent played in 35. He was injured 10 different times over those four years and in addition to missing those 11 games he was also forced to leave 5 more because of injury. Stanford’s record over Edwards’ four year career was 14-31, which included an awful 1-11 season his senior year (where he missed the last 5 games because of a foot injury).

But losing hasn’t always been a part of Edwards’ quarterback career. He was one of the top overall high school recruits in 2001 and the top one or two QB recruit that year. In his final two HS seasons, he led his team to a 26-0 combined record.

Once at Stanford, Edwards was sacked once every 10.3 pass attempts over his 35 game career. That stat is pretty meaningless on its own, but on a large enough scale and used relative to other quarterbacks it can be compared for some perspective.

So for comparison, Trent Green has been sacked once every 14.33 pass attempts over his NFL career. Drew Beldsoe: 1 for 14.38. David Carr: 1 for every 8.31 attempts. So what we’re looking at is some rough evidence to help prove what is widely considered to already be true: Stanford had a hard time protecting quarterbacks.

They also had a hard time getting open for Edwards. And at his pro day, Trent threw passes not to teammates, but to receivers brought in by Roger Theder’s camp. And in rainy conditions, he completed 57 of 60 passes in front of Bill Walsh, Mike Martz, Rick Neusheisel, and others.

Trent’s best season at Stanford was his junior season, where he played in all 11 games and completed 62.7% of his passes while throwing 17 TDs and only 7 INTs.

He is a pocket passer with good size (6′4, 220) and good agility both inside and outside of the pocket. His throwing motion is a little awkward - he short-arms the ball a bit - but he gets it out quickly and has above average to good velocity. His motion will limit how effective he is in throwing the ball deep down the field, but in the short and intermediate areas he’s right on.

Edwards projects to be a mid to late second round pick who needs some NFL seasoning before he’s ready to play. The biggest question mark for Trent is probably his troubling medical history. Otherwise, he has all the tools to be a good NFL prospect.