Georgia Football: Should Jake Fromm have declared for the NFL Draft?
Ever since the NFL draft concluded last Saturday, there has been a lot of buzz going around about whether some players made the right decision to forgo their senior seasons and enter the draft. One of the hottest names on the topic is former UGA quarterback Jake Fromm.
During his time in college, Fromm put together quite the resume. He threw for 8,236 yards along with 78 touchdowns, both of which rank in top five statistically against all former Georgia quarterbacks. Along with him putting up the stats, Fromm also proved that he's just a winner.
In just three years with Georgia, he won the Eastern division three times, something that hasn't been done since the days of Danny Weuferl at Florida. He won an SEC Championship, the Rose Bowl in the CFP, and the Sugar Bowl this past season.
Though despite the totality of his career is rather impressive, his junior season was not exactly one to remember. At one point during the season, Fromm was on a five-game streak of having a completion percentage below fifty percent. Before his junior season, Fromm only had three games total where he had a completion percentage below fifty.
When Fromm made his decision to enter the NFL draft it caught a lot of people off guard and when the former Georgia quarterback was not picked up until the 5th round conversations started that Fromm had made the wrong decisions.
But was it really?
After the 2019 season, the word was getting around that Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart was looking to make a change at offensive coordinator. A couple of weeks after the season, the University announced the hiring of former Clevland Browns OC Todd Monken. With the addition of Monken, this was the team's third offensive coordinator in as many years and would have also been Fromm's third offensive coordinator, had he decided to stay for another season.
Not only was Fromm going to be adjusting to a new OC but he was also losing three of his starting offensive linemen to the draft as well in Andrew Thomas, Solomon Kindley, and Isaiah Wilson. Not saying the guys behind those three starters aren't capable of holding their own on the field, but losing that much experience up front can be difficult on a quarterback. Not to mention a fourth in Cade Mays who is now in Knoxville playing for the Volunteers.
By the end of his junior season, it was very clear exactly who Fromm was. He is going to read the defense, make adjustments if they were needed, and place the ball where it needed to be and he excelled at all of those things. What he was not going to do was sling the ball 70 yards down the field. Fromm did not have the strongest arm and people knew that heading into the draft.
When discussing what another year at Georgia could have done for Fromm it is uncertain if much would have changed for how he was viewed by NFL scouts. One more season was not going to make him grow three more inches and all of a sudden be able to sling the ball around the field like Matthew Stafford. Fromm is who he is at this point in his career and it is because of his abilities that he now has a chance to become a starting quarterback in the NFL. Perhaps one more season would have allowed Fromm to get drafted earlier but it would not have changed anything about the type of player he is.
Do stories like Joe Burrow going from a projected 4th or 5th rounder to the first overall selection happen? Occasionally. Though it's not that often. Take the 2020 draft class, for example, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert, and Jordan Love were all projected first-round picks prior to the 2019 college football season. Joe Burrow is the exception, not the rule.
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