Hi all, this is my first attempt at a fanpost and although it is only intended to be a bit of fun, a fair amount of thought has gone into it.

A little bit of background first. This idea came about after a drunken night at the casino went horribly wrong due to watching Moneyball and thinking that I could beat the casino using Math and Statistics - in hindsight, the booze may have played a part as well.

I ended up in a taxi line standing next to this American bloke who turned out to be a Bills fan. After some good natured ribbing in which sadly, I copped more shit about "being a league laughing stock" than a) a Fin fan should have to endure and b) a Bills' fan should be saying to another Football fan, conversation turned to the upcoming draft. The typical Luck vs RGIII discussion lead off, then onto Tannehill, and finally, his view that Weeden would be the next "Eli Manning". What he meant I didn't quite know and before I could get an answer he was being propositioned by a drunk chick in front of him. Our conversation was now over.

In the cold light of the next afternoon when I had finally stopped asking every deity I know of to "put me out of my misery" I started thinking about this strange conversation in the cab line and if there was any merit to comparing the stats of the current QB class to the College stats of current players and seeing if there was any relationship between the two? Unfortunately for the Phinsider readers, the next day was a work day, so I had nothing but time to put this thought to the test.

After pulling the college and pro stats from a decent sample size of Top, middle and bottom quality QB's, the surprising thing is just how similar the stats are. Even with the huge step up in class from the collegiate level to the pros, things like completion percentage, ave yards per attempt and adjusted yards per attempt for the majority of QB's are insanely similar.

To try and get an idea of decision making, i.e. how many bad throws a QB made, I used a very simple (and completely flawed for this purpose) formula of Ints/Incompletions to which showed up again, very similar numbers from College to the Pros.

While there will always be some anomalies with stats and again pointing out that this is only a bit of fun and not the be all and end all of QB evaluation, below is a chart of 17 current QBs and 12 QB prospects from this years draft. Looking at both what the NFL QB's did in college and the NFL, then comparing it to what this draft class has done over their college careers, can we estimate if they will fall into the upper end of NFL QB's? The middle of the road? Or the lower end?

Comparing from these numbers, a college production statistical comparison could be made the following way:

Andrew Luck to Peyton Manning = upper

Robert Griffin to Alex Smith = middle

Ryan Tannehill to Matt Schaub = middle

Brock Osweiler to Philip Rivers = middle/upper

Brandon Weeden to Rex Grossman = lower

Kirk Cousins to Matt Schaub = middle

Nick Foles to Tom Brady = upper, or an anomaly?

Ryan Lindley to Chade Henne = lower

Case Keenum to Colt McCoy = lower

Kellen Moore to Aaron Rodgers = upper

Russell Wilson to Aaron Rodgers = upper

Austin Davis to Alex Smith = middle

So what does this all mean? In reality, probably nothing, In regard to drafting for value, both Moore and Wilson are slated as late round prospects that should present excellent potential value to cost along with my personal favourite (outside of Luck) Osweiler in the 2nd/3rd.

As a final point, please don't think that I am saying that Wilson or Moore and better QB's than Griffin or Tannehill or that Nick Foles will be the next Tom Brady etc, this is purely based on stats produced in college compared to current starting QB's.

Thanks for reading, go Phins!