Will Andre's Giants Crush the Cult of Colt?!?

So I already ran a piece comparing Colt Brennan to Chase Daniel, but the new kid on the block felt left-out, and my Mom always told me I should include the new guys who don't know anybody.

Enter Andre Woodson, maybe just a source of information on the Giant offense for week 1, but also maybe the Redskins next young QB (shutup Coughlin, you brought in Nemo in a blatant attempt to dig up some intel). At least according to the Zornstar, we considered taking him instead of Colt, until the G-women scooped him up. Instead of the Cult of Colt, would it have been Andre's Giants, but I digress?

As mentioned before, the 2 key stats from Football Outsiders for projecting college QBs are games started in college and completion %. Here are the numbers:

-38 games started (3 year starter), a career 61.9% passer(791/1278), and age 25 in 2009.

The games started figure is nice to see, but the completion % isn't exactly eye-popping. Woodson's predecessor and succesors don't supply much context either, as he was preceeded by a running QB, Shane Boyd, who only completed 52.5% of his passes Woodson's Freshman year. Last year, the Wildcat QBs collectively mustered a pathetic 54.7%. So Woodson did outperform his comparables, but it is hard to say exactly if that difference is significant. In 2008, Football Outsiders indicated that Woodson was a bit rough around the edges, but would have time to develop on the defending Super Bowl Chumps. This year, FO prophetically stated,

"Woodson still has a great arm, but efforts to change his mechanics and speed up his delivery while improving his accuracy haven't taken. With the existing coaching staff sour on him, Woodson's likely to lose his roster spot to Rhett Bhomar in training camp."

Woodson's profile is actually very similar to that of Chase Daniel: both started for 3 years, outperformed their comparables by about 5% in completion rate, were preceeded by a running QB that makes analysis difficult, and were the QB of the best team in their respective school's history. That said, the 'eyeball scouting' flaws couldn't be more different. Woodson is big and athletic, and suffers from a huge windup, a little like younger JC and a lot like Byron Leftwich. Woodson's other big flaw is that the offense he ran at KU was remarkably simple, but this is also something Chase Daniel is fighting, as the Mizzou offense was completely different from a pro-style offense, which is part of what hurt Jeremy Maclin on draft day.

What does this all mean? The metrics for all of these guys are similar, with the only big differentiator being age; Daniel is 2 years younger than Woodson, and 3 years younger than Colt. Overall, I'd say that given Woodson and Colt have already struggled in the NFL and won't be getting a significant chance to play until they are at least 26 and 27, I don't see either of them amounting to much. Chase Daniel wasn't Johnny Unitas this preseason, but he has a few more years to figure things out, and is already playing on a similar level to the other 2.

Woodson could provide the key to beating the Giants ("....Eli can't stand being called a chubby chaser..."), but is not an improvement over what we already have in Colt, and is a bit of a downgrade, long-term, over Chase Daniel.