FROM THE FILM:
His arm is sufficiently strong, but the touch he puts on the football stands out. It's something that wasn't immediately evident during Senior Bowl practice, as he worked to establish timing with a new group of receivers, but from his work at CSU, he consistently led receivers to the football and was able to change speeds to account for the route and the quickness of his intended target.
Grayson will have to learn to throw the football into tighter windows, particularly on short to intermediate routes between the hashmarks and down the seams. The gaps in defenses he often exploited won't be there in the NFL. He has the tools to make this transition, as he was often bold in attacking downfield when the safety was out of position and trying to catch up.
His delivery is a bit unorthodox; he tends to take a split-second longer in his windup than quarterbacks who deliver the football in a conventional manner. But it didn't affect his accuracy; his completion percentage, yardage per attempt and interception rate all improved from 2013 to 2014. And with large hands (10 inches), his fumble risk is lower than that of other quarterbacks.
A nagging hamstring injury prevented him from working out at the Combine and at CSU's Pro Day on March 11. He is expected to do everything at a personal workout March 23.
OF NOTE:
One of the livelier conversation topics regarding quarterbacks in this year's draft class is their capacity to adapt from schemes and philosophies uncommon in the NFL to the ones they will run in future years. For Oregon's Marcus Mariota and Baylor's Bryce Petty, it seems at times to be the only topic.
Although CSU's offense had elements of the spread, the manner in which the program was run on a day-to-day basis by former coach Jim McElwain, now at Florida, eases the transition. McElwain is a former assistant of Nick Saban, whose pro background has long been evident in how he ran programs at Michigan State, LSU and, since 2007, Alabama.
When Grayson worked at the Senior Bowl, the value of that style was evident.
"I think that helped me a lot translating to the verbiage ... going through reads and progressions and things like that," he said after one of the practices in Mobile, Ala. in January. "That helped me get a leap on everybody else."
But there wasn't much huddling at CSU; Grayson made nearly all of his calls at the line of scrimmage. Grayson believed that the Rams didn't huddle "more than 10 times" throughout the 2014 season.
COMBINE MEASUREMENTS:
Height:6-foot-2
Weight:213 pounds
Arm:30 inches (15th among 15 Combine QBs)
Hand:10 inches (T-3rd among 15 Combine QBs)
PROJECTION:Rounds 2-3.
