2024 NFL Draft Scouting Reports: Spencer Rattler, Drake Maye, Michael Penix Jr.

This is what we’ve been waiting for, fantasy football enthusiasts. The NFL Draft is under way, and we finally get to see where the rookie prospects are going to launch their professional careers. And NFL Draft landing spots allow us to start to zero in on fantasy football and dynasty rookie draft pick values.

As the players are selected, let’s dive into what our NFL Draft expert, Thor Nystrom, has to say for each pick made. Here you can find all of Thor’s 2024 NFL Draft Rankings and player comparisons. Below we’ll dive into a few notable names expected to be selected this week.

Fantasy Football Rookie Draft Outlook

Thor’s NFL Draft Profile & Player Comp

4. Drake Maye (North Carolina)

6043/223 | RAS: N/A
Player comparison: Mashup of Carson Palmer and Carson Wentz (“Carson Pentz”)

Maye is a big, strapping pocket passer with a howitzer arm.

When Maye has his base under him and he steps into his throws, he’s extremely, extremely accurate. You particularly appreciate the downfield touch, fitting balls into very small spots way down the field on time.

Maye’s supreme arm talent has imbedded a fearlessness in him, a conviction that any ball that leaves his hand will get there. If you had to bet your life on one quarterback spinning a heat-ring spiral into a microscopic window 15 yards downfield, you would choose Maye. Over the last two seasons, Maye had a sterling 93.3 PFF grade on 110 attempts over the middle. Not only is he experienced at these sorts of throws, but he’s proven.

Maye’s rushing utility has been overblown; that won’t translate to the NFL level. He’s an extremely tough kid who will chip in on short-yardage and goal-line situations in the NFL and not embarrass himself when keeping on the rare read-option, but that’s about it.

You want Maye in the pocket. He needs that sturdy platform under him. Anything the defense can do to effect that increases the odds of an inaccurate throw or a wonky decision. Maye is good at manipulating the pocket early in the rep to keep himself out of harm’s way and keep a throwing runway in front of him. That also allows him to climb the pocket to fire a dart a few beats later if a speed rusher is beginning to breach a tackle’s outside shoulder.

When Maye has a halo around him when he starts throwing, he’s stepping into it and firing a pill. This is when he looks like a potential NFL star. He’s a fastball thrower with a 100-mph heater in the intermediate range. From an NFL perspective, this is one of the most encouraging parts of his eval.

But I noticed in Maye’s tape a propensity to speed through his throwing motion and/or forget his feet under the threat of a collapsing pocket. This habit may have, in some parts, formed from Maye’s lack of acceleration and lateral agility, which make it non-viable to attempt to escape sticky situations on foot.

The wrench that speeding up his motion threw into his mechanics had a tendency to cause Maye to lose complete control of the balls he was throwing, leading to errancy. Maye completed only 43.3% of his 90 passes under pressure last season for a 7/5 TD/INT rate. He was sacked 28 times. Collegiate coordinators knew that the way you make Maye mortal was to turn up the heat on him. Of the top nine quarterbacks on this list, Maye was the only one whose accuracy percentage was under 71% while blitzed (66.4%).

In these situations, Maye’s mechanical foibles are exacerbated by processing glitches. He sees the field very well in clean pockets, but his vision can constrict under pressure. This is especially true when he gets a coverage look he wasn’t expecting after the snap. He speeds up very quickly, leading to YOLO decisions.

In 2022, Maye lit the College Football world on fire with a 9-1 start. Things took a turn when UNC hosted 4-6 Georgia Tech on Nov. 19. The Yellow Jackets, down to a rotation of their QB3 and QB4, roared back from a 17-0 deficit to upset UNC 21-17 by harassing and frustrating Maye into a discombobulated mess. Maye failed to record a TD and threw for a season-low 202 yards while posting 16th-percentile EPA/pass. He was sacked six times, three by Keion White, with his YPA plummeting to 5.0 on pressures.

The next week, UNC was once again upset at home, this time by 7-4 NC State. NCSU also made Maye look human – 29-for-49 for 233 yards and a 1/1 TD/INT – but they did it very differently. Instead of ramping up the heat, NC State dropped eight players into coverage. Maye spent the day in a state of confusion. Multiple times, he simply did not see a wide-open receiver in the back of the end zone.

The Tar Heels went on to lose their next two games, finishing on a four-game skid. Then, Maye regressed a bit statistically in 2023 when moving out of former OC Phil Longo’s quarterback-friendly system with heavy doses of downfield shots into a more conventional attack.

When things are going well, and Maye is afforded clean pockets, watch him cook. His accuracy, touch, and velocity all consistently impress when he has that sturdy base under him. His arm will force teams to play two-deep safeties, which he can turn around and make them pay for by exploiting the space he’s given in the intermediate range.

A third-year prospect, Maye is young, with only two years of starting experience. Whether he turns into an NFL star will come down to whether he can improve his processing under pressure and against exotic coverage looks. He’s not a perfect prospect, and his risk profile is a bit higher than has been depicted. Still, the ceiling is there to become a perennial Pro Bowler if things break right.

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5. Michael Penix Jr. (Washington)

6022/216 | RAS: N/A
Player comparison: Lefty Geno Smith

Michael Penix Jr. is a pocket-passing lefty with a live-wire arm. The ball detonates out of his hand. Penix Jr. has the arm talent to fit the ball into tight windows.

Though he has an unorthodox motion, Penix Jr. can get the ball out quickly, and he doesn’t take sacks. Normally throwing from a three-quarters arm slot, Penix Jr.’s arm elasticity allows him to dispense from different angles if needed. In clean pockets, he was one of the nation’s most dangerous surgeons the past few years, calmly carving up defenses.

However, his evaluation also raises multiple red flags. Penix Jr. is a see-it-throw-it passer whose game craters when he is pressured and moved off his spot. Disrupting the Huskies’ timing and forcing Penix Jr. to move off his spot was the only reliable way to slow Washington’s offense the past few seasons. However, even mediocre teams could do it if the pass rush was up to the task.

Penix Jr.’s accuracy wavers when he doesn’t have his platform beneath him. His 69.2% completion percentage dropped to 54.9% on throws where his feet weren’t set and 45.8% while scrambling. For this reason, Penix Jr. is not a good fit for teams that seek mobility out of their quarterbacks, or who have a lot of bootleg concepts in their playbook.

He is not a poor athlete. But Penix Jr. has a funky, non-repeatable motion with a ton of arm action that lives on the razor’s edge. I wish he’d use his lower half more while throwing to generate even more power, but that’s more of a nitpick. What he uses that lower-body for is the sturdy base to shoot pills out from his unorthodox upper-body delivery. This is an essential link in his throwing chain, and, as we’ve seen, he cannot afford for it to be compromised.

Penix Jr.’s best odds of succeeding in the NFL are with a sturdy offensive line in front of him. Because even though Penix Jr. doesn’t take many sacks, – an admirable quality – he can be frazzled into mistakes when his first read isn’t there and heat is in his face. Washington’s offense often gave Penix Jr. a pre-delineated first read to go to, and many times, he took it. You’d see instances of ball-patting and indecision when it wasn’t there. Penix Jr. wanted to confirm a receiver was open before throwing, oftentimes leading to being a beat behind.

Lastly, Penix Jr.’s accuracy comes and goes. While he has some of the prettiest throws in the class, he also has a propensity to overshoot targets. That goes back to the arm action in his delivery and the lack of repeatable, natural mechanics.

Penix Jr. got great news at the NFL Combine when reports surfaced that his medicals had been cleared. This was essential following four straight season-ending injuries earlier in his career at Indiana.

Penix Jr. has proven he can run an offense. He has a no-doubt NFL-caliber arm, and he won at Indiana – one of the hardest places to win in America – prior to nearly taking Washington to the mountain top. The red flags in his on-field eval make him a second-rounder for me. This would follow the path of the player I comp him to, (a right-handed) Geno Smith.

Check out more NFL Draft profiles and player comps from Thor in our 2024 NFL Draft Guide

6. Spencer Rattler (South Carolina)

6002/211 | RAS: 4.13
Player comparison: Jeff Blake

Spencer Rattler is a short, aggressive pocket passer with a snappy arm. The NFL will appreciate his willingness to go through progressions and his poise with heat in his face. Rattler enters this draft process with all the pedigree and experience you’d want. He took 2,676 snaps over his five seasons and has proven that he can run multiple systems, playing with good and bad supporting casts.

Following the 2020 season, Rattler would have been the highest-ranked quarterback in this class. The No. 11 overall prospect in his recruiting class the year before, Rattler became the first hand-picked high school prospect to start for former Oklahoma HC Lincoln Riley (following Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts). As a redshirt freshman in 2020, Rattler ranked No. 4 in the FBS with a 92.5 PFF grade. He was a magician, leading the FBS in PFF big-time throws when under pressure and passing grade out of structure.

But the next year, Rattler got the hook for Riley’s newest five-star recruit – a kid named Caleb Williams. Rattler transferred to South Carolina for the 2022 season. He prefers to play out of the shotgun with the field spread and likes to move around to give himself better vantage points to throw.

This was not a good fit behind South Carolina’s poor offensive line that ranked outside the top 100 in PFF pass-blocking grade both years. Suddenly, the rope Rattler’s high-wire game walked across was in a wind tunnel each snap. He struggled to adapt his game to that during the first 10 games of the season.

But the light came back on for the last three, with Rattler lighting up Tennessee, Clemson and Notre Dame for 10 TD and 1,044 passing yards. Though he had very little help in 2023 outside of WR Xavier Legette, Rattler showed that he had made progress as an in-structure quarterback.

Rattler excels at testing NFL money zones, 10+ yards down the field between the hashes. On throws 10-19 yards down the field last year, he posted a 90.9 PFF grade. On throws 20+ yards downfield, he posted an 88.8 PFF grade.

Rattler remains frustratingly inconsistent due to his live-by-the-sword-die-by-the-sword aggression. On days he doesn’t see the field well and runs cold, he can be rotten. On days he’s feeling it, watch out. He has enough pocket-passing skill to hang around the league as a backup quarterback for a long time. But if things click for him, he also has starter upside.