Last night while on the Twitter, I was reading a conversation between Alfie and Jeremy Nettles about the quarterbacks in the 2013 draft and it reminded me of a quarterback analytic that seemed to bear out more often than not, the Rule of 26*-27-60. The rule states that there is a greater likelihood for NFL success if a quarterback has a 26 on the Wonderlic, 27 college starts and 60% completion percentage. I recalled reading an article by John P Lopez on CNNSI a few years ago that broke it down:

*Obviously, as the Combine has yet to take place, we have no idea what the Wonderlic scores are, and quite frankly, I'm not going to speculate. The Wonderlic has gotten a lot of criticism as it seems to indicate that a player is stupid if he doesn't hit a certain score. I don't agree. So, the 2 measurables that are available are starts and completion percentage. I am of the school of thought that with the number of colleges that utilize Spread formations and read option and all that jazz, the 60% number has gone the way of the high school three point line. I think 65% is a more realistic number. What can I say, I'm a tough grader.

Lopez broke down the quarterbacks in the 2010 draft as follows:

I'll be damned, Sam Bradford is the only QB who meets the criteria and, funny enough, he is the only one of those quarterbacks who is still starting for his team! Well... dig deeper, and again from the article, there are exceptions to the rule such as Kevin Kolb, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Kyle Orton, who all met the criteria; and Ben Roethlisberger and Joe Flacco who did not meet the criteria.

So, where am I going with this? Let's take a look at the top 9 quarterbacks as ranked by nfl.com in this draft and one who interests me, Alex Carder from Western Michigan, so we have 10 quarterbacks as a sample size:

What does this tell us? Well, from what I see, the quarterbacks seem to be getting better, and this is due in large part I feel to these guys getting solid pro style coaching in high school and college. The Wing T, Tripe Option, Veer, Student Body Left and Right are things of the past with many high schools. Also, in my opinion, the stat places a high value on maturity. Obviously, the only way to really meet the criteria is to be a 3 year starter and have a brain. Decision making on the field is a plus as well. But, as stated earlier, with the emergence of spread offenses in the college game, those completion percentages are going to hover in the 60% range for many qbs. It will be interesting to see how the Wonderlics pan out so that we can separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Six quarterbacks meet the 27-60 measure, but only Geno Smith meets my 27-65 measure. Thing is, Geno is far from the traditional dink and dunker that many college "system" quarterbacks have become.

Does this mean Geno Smith is a sure thing?

Also, in looking over this topic, I notice that many SB Nation sites have explored this topic as well. If there are any similarities, it is not intentional.

So, what say you? Any thoughts on this? Care to debunk it? I'm all ears.