I read this story the other day and found it really amusing, if only because of how much it relates to the Falcons. Pat Yasinskas delivers an interesting article about Pennsylvania being a gold mine for quarterbacks. At first glance, this might seem silly.
However, he's not wrong on his point about the Falcons needing a long-term backup QB. Yes, we all love Rojohombre (if only for his Dave-coined name) but realistically, are we satisfied with what he brings to the table? I like Chris Redman, but I wonder if we could do better. JPW looked alright in small stints last preseason, but that should be taken for what it was - the preseason.
Pat brings up Pat Devlin, Joe Flacco's heir to the Delaware QB spot. Take this how you will, but Devlin grew up in Downington, PA, which is less than 5 miles from Exton. Exton is Matt Ryan's hometown. Furthermore, Downington is less than 10 miles from West Chester, PA, which is Matt Schaub's hometown.
Yeah, silly coincidences, I'm sure, but Ryan and Schaub turned out alright, and were, you know, Falcons. Devlin has drawn Schaub/Ryan comparisons for most of his life and I assume that would be rightfully so. He was highly recruited out of high school, but various events caused him to end up at Delaware.
I pulled up his stats. ESPN didn't have a 2010 compilation of his stats, however after a wee bit of math, he had 22 TDs and only 3 INTs, including playoffs. He had somewhere between 68-72% accuracy as well. Delaware lost to Eastern Washington in the FCS Championship game by one point, so he's no stranger to close games.
A lot of the bigger name QBs will be long gone by the time we even think about giving a backup QB a look in the draft. Devlin seems like an intriguing prospect who I hadn't heard anything about until Pat wrote his article about Devlin. Should we even consider taking a QB in this year's draft, or should we stick with what we have?