The NFL draft QB prospect who already knows the Rams playbook

Could Devin Leary be a day 3 target for Sean McVay’s Rams?

Playing at Kentucky has been sort of a blessing and curse for quarterbacks recently. It was a blessing for Will Levis in 2021, when he was linked up with offensive coordinator Liam Coen, then a curse in 2022 after Coen and top receiver Wan’Dale Robinson departed for the NFL, and perhaps both a blessing and curse for transfer Devin Leary in 2023.

On one hand, Leary wasn’t bestowed the best supporting cast and didn’t have quite the rebound year he hoped for after transferring from NC State. On the other, Leary got an opportunity to work with Coen after the OC had returned to Kentucky following a single season stint as Sean McVay’s offensive coordinator with the L.A. Rams.

Could it be a blessing that Devin Leary already has a good idea of McVay’s playbook when the 2024 quarterback prospect is waiting to hear his name in the draft?

It is not all the time that TST’s resident draft expert Ferragamo15 and I have the same opinions on prospects, and after all I am just a novice fan who goes off a gut feeling and he writes 2,000-word scouting reports, but I have enjoyed watching Leary since before he even became the starter at NC State. In his recent scouting report on Leary, Ferragamo15 notes that Leary might be the ideal QB prospect for the Rams…and I would have to agree.

There is no better coach than Sean McVay to try to turn Devin Leary into the next Kirk Cousins. There is no QB in the draft better suited to be our QB3 in 2024 than Leary. Cousins wasn’t supposed to become the starter, he was supposed to be RGIII’s backup. I don’t think that Leary is the successor to Stafford for the Rams but if you are looking for a potential “Brock Purdy QB steal” in this year’s draft, there is such a prospect. It is Devin Leary.

Not on day one and not on day two, but when the Rams get to day three of the 2024 NFL Draft, will they look at their quarterback depth chart and realize that they really want an insurance option behind both Matthew Stafford and Jimmy Garoppolo? An option who, unlike Stetson Bennett, might be available and capable of being on a 53-man roster?

Garoppolo is no stranger to a seventh round “nobody” quarterback who “could never amount to anything” taking the starting job and changing the future of the position. It won’t happen often, but a “Brock Purdy” will happen again. Could that be Leary?

Devin Leary college career

A four-star recruit in the 2018 class who was the ninth-ranked “pro-style” QB behind the likes of top-ranked Trevor Lawrence but ahead of Michael Penix Jr (15th) and Levis (30th), Leary chose to attend NC State. He had an uninspiring freshman debut in 2019, completing 48% of his passes with 8 touchdowns and 5 interceptions, but was the Wolfpack’s leading passer for head coach Dave Doeren, who once helped orchestrate the career of shocking Heisman finalist Jordan Lynch at Northern Illinois

Doeren went from NIU to NC State in 2013, right after the careers of Russell Wilson and Mike Glennon, then helped transfer Jacoby Brissett turn into a third round pick. Brissett was followed by Ryan Finley, a fourth round pick in 2019 who had transferred from Boise State. Then it became Leary’s job.

In 2020, Leary suffered a broken leg that cut his season short at four games. He had another injury in 2022, missing six games with a torn pectoral muscle. If not for these two injuries, similar to Penix, Leary’s college career and draft prospects may look much different.

It was before the 2021 season, when Leary had only played in 12 games, that I felt he could be one of the sleepers in the country. I don’t know anything, but I watched all of the college quarterbacks from the 2020 season that summer and few stood out as much as Leary for whatever reason. His arm, his poise, whatever it is. I’m not a scout, but I was interested to see what he could with a full season.

That year, Leary broke out with 35 touchdowns and only 5 interceptions in Doeren’s offense, better numbers than any of the NFL draft picks and undrafted signees that I’ve already mentioned, including Brissett.

I would recommend reading Ferragamo’s scouting report over what I have to say about him and he’ll tell you that below the numbers that Leary wasn’t very good, which I will not dispute. I can only say that I liked watching him play the quarterback position and his stats were great.

Leary opted to return to college in 2022, but he missed half of the season and lost all of the draft momentum he had the year before. Instead, Leary transferred to Kentucky, as they would have an opening following the departure of Levis to the draft and would be getting back Coen as OC.

If Leary didn’t have great stats — his 56% completions was his lowest since 2019, his 7.3 adjusted yards per attempt and 12 interceptions leave a lot to be desired — he may still have made up for it with what he learned from the coaching staff and in his long college career at two different schools.

Devin Leary’s combine standout

You will hear more than one scout say that Devin Leary had the best throwing session of any quarterback at the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine. Leary told the media that he wished he had played better at Kentucky, but that he was still confident in his abilities and onlookers said he also had a strong showing at the East-West Shrine Game.

BNB Football called Leary the best performer at the combine throwing session in a group that included Penix and Bo Nix:

The only quarterback who I thought had a really strong day was Devin Leary. He barely ever missed, with a ton a perfect throws that looked like he had worked with the receivers all year.

Alec Nederveld of Mike Farrell Sports gave Leary’s performance a B+ and said his “footwork and mechanics were shockingly good.”

Former NFL QB Chase Daniel, who now does QB scouting reports on YouTube and with The Athletic, did the eyeball emoji THREE TIMES for Leary. If three eyeball emojis doesn’t say it, nothing will and you’ll never be convinced. That’s six total eyes!

Where will Leary be drafted?

In this class you can never tell, especially with QBs who will not go in the first two rounds, but Devin Leary go be anything from a third to a seventh. I thought that Sam Howell should have been at least a third round pick and he went in the fifth. Some people thought Purdy should have been drafted much earlier than the final pick of the 2022 draft. And by the way, Leary is almost the exact same size, same hands, same arm length as both Howell and Purdy for whatever that’s worth. So size is not an issue.

If you ignore the top-six quarterbacks, or expected top-six, you start looking at a group with Spencer Rattler, Jordan Travis, Joe Milton, Michael Pratt, Sam Hartman (another QB who I saw in the 2020 summer who I liked, even if he does not become an NFL starter) and Leary, among others. It really just comes down to fit with the teams and when those teams are prepared to take a quarterback over a player at a position that has a much higher chance of becoming a starter for them.

Any QB drafted after round two will have low odds of becoming a starter. For every Kirk Cousins, there should be at least five QBs who never start. For every Purdy, there should be at least 10 QBs who never start.

However, the NFL has done such a BAD job of evaluating quarterbacks recently that I think the chances have never been better that a day three pick could be a steal at the position. Aidan O’Connell was not a very good starting QB last year, neither was Dorian Thompson-Robinson, but both could have futures in the NFL. Futures not really expected of them last year.

Whether it is Leary or Milton or Hartman or Phil Jurkovec, and so on, there is a QB in this class who you think is ridiculously bad and “never gonna make it” who will be at least serviceable and make it. Whether that’s at a Gardner Minshew level or a Purdy or a Cousins or a Josh Dobbs or a Dak Prescott or a Jake Browning.

Will Leary be the next? Is it too late for Stetson Bennett?

At least in the case of Leary and McVay’s style of offense, there’s already a familiarity there. That may already give him a leg up over Bennett.