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Penix Continues to Have Joel Klatt As a Big Believer in His Talents

The analyst ranked the UW quarterback among his top five going into the draft.
Dan Raley|
Penix Continues to Have Joel Klatt As a Big Believer in His Talents
Penix Continues to Have Joel Klatt As a Big Believer in His Talents

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Washington Huskies

Michael Penix Jr. isn't mobile enough as a quarterback, hasn't mastered the touch pass over the middle, and is, dare we say, injury-prone. 

Those are just some of the built-in excuses continually popping up for not drafting the University of Washington quarterback in the first round of the NFL Draft.

Some insist they have five quarterbacks they would take before Penix in April's annual talent grab, listing all sorts of real and imagined reasons.

Joel Klatt is not one of them. As he was throughout the college football season, the FOX Sports analyst, podcaster and former Colorado quarterback remains sold on what the 6-foot-3, 213-pound left-hander as a football talent.

"He's older, he's mature, he hasn't been injured in two years," Klatt said on his Wednesday podcast. "He throws the ball with great leverage and post runs, and that's exactly what you need in the NFL to be a really good player."

Klatt listed his top five quarterbacks for the draft and ranked Penix No. 4, behind USC's Caleb Williams, North Carolina's Drake Maye and LSU's Jayden Daniels, and just ahead of Michigan's J.J. McCarthy.

He noted how Penix rightfully throws the ball with leverage, which is away from the coverage, by putting his receiver between the ball and the defender on every play, rather than the other way around, which is a common quarterback mistake.

As for Penix's supposed lack of mobility, Klatt had an answer for that, too.

"He might not be a threat with his legs, but think about his ability to manipulate the pocket and move in the pocket and then create," he said. "We saw that against Texas. His performance against Texas in the national semifinal is a case study in how you have to play in the NFL level in the playoffs. This guy was pressured 16 times and didn't take a sack."

Klatt said in weighing everyone's pros and cons in what he describes as a deep quarterback draft, maybe the most impressive since 1983, he considered jumping Penix over Daniels before keeping the Heisman Trophy winner in the No. 3 spot. 

The analyst raved about Penix before the season, during the season and leading up to the Heisman Trophy voting. He voted for Penix, too, and here's why.

"He does one thing through the roof well — like incredible," Klatt said of Penix. "And it's the one thing that you see quarterbacks have to do the most in playoff situations, and that's control the game with leverage throws from the pocket. 

"From the heat of the moment, can you do that? Michael Penix does that as well as any of these players."

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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