Excellent article on Boyle and Packers. They are really high on Tim. They compare him with Rogers!
General manager Brian Gutekunst signed Boyle not because of his statistics but because the rookie can drive the ball down the field and into tight spots with great accuracy. He signed him because the Packers haven't had a first-year quarterback with these kind of mechanics and athletic ability since selecting Rodgers with the 24th pick in the 2005 draft.
“He throws a tight ball, it's a spiral, the ball comes out quickly,” said former NFL quarterback Todd Collins, who at the request of Boyle’s agent, Dan Smith, worked with the rookie this offseason. “There's not a lot of wasted motion in his delivery.
Collins, a second-round pick in 1995, played 16 years in the NFL, including an eight-year stint with the Kansas City Chiefs, where Mike McCarthy was his quarterbacks coach for one season. The following year, Packers quarterbacks coach Frank Cignetti was an offensive assistant on the Chiefs staff.
Since drafting Rodgers, the young quarterbacks the Packers have attempted to develop have been better in the classroom than on the football field. The club has invested time and effort into quarterbacks who are too short or too slow or too weak-armed to have much of a chance in the NFL.
Going back to Graham Harrell and Matt Flynn, the Packers have done more with less and the results have been poor. Long shots such as Scott Tolzien, Matt Blanchard, B.J. Coleman and Joe Callahan lacked key athletic ingredients and fizzle out.
McCarthy and Gutekunst covet athletes now.
They drafted Brett Hundley, a Rodgers-type athlete, in the fifth round in 2015, signed undrafted all-around athlete Taysom Hill last year and traded for strong-armed and mobile DeShone Kizer during the offseason. Boyle represents a do-over with Hill, who was released on the final cutdown and lost on waivers to the New Orleans Saints.
Boyle’s athletic ability, at least when it comes to testing, is comparable with Rodgers. At 6-3½, 232 pounds, he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.75 seconds, registered a vertical jump of 35½ inches, a broad jump of 9 feet, 9 inches, a three-cone time of 7.03 seconds and short shuttle of 4.49 seconds.
By comparison, Rodgers ran the 40 in 4.77, had a vertical of 34 ½ inches, a broad jump of 9 feet, 2 inches, a three-cone of 7.38 seconds and a short shuttle of 4.32.
Just to show he was built to last, Boyle performed the bench press, which most quarterbacks don’t do. He lifted 225 pounds 16 times. Still, it is Rodgers’ flexibility and pocket awareness, not his bench press, that has made him the best player outside the pocket in the NFL. Boyle has been mostly a pocket passer and must learn to use his athletic ability to buy time to survive in McCarthy’s offense.
Pro scout Chad Brinker came back from visiting Eastern Kentucky and made a case for signing Boyle despite his lackluster stats and unsettled time at UConn. In researching the 23-year-old Boyle, the Packers found out he was offered scholarships to Michigan, Florida, Notre Dame, Oregon and Boston College coming out of Xavier High School in Middletown, Conn.
The Packers thought enough of Boyle that they released Callahan. McCarthy has been patient with young quarterbacks and if Boyle makes it into training camp, he will play in exhibition games. Hundley and Kizer will fight it out for the backup job, while Boyle hopes he forces the Packers to wrestle over his status the way they did with Hill.
“I think the potential is there; he has the physical tools,” Collins said. “I believe he can mentally study and be able to handle all the offenses. He doesn't have any mechanical flaws that I think are going to consistently make him misfire or give him accuracy problems.
“It's just going to be a matter of ‘Can you make the plays under pressure with live competition against NFL-quality talent?’”
Young QB Tim Boyle gives Packers a do-over for Taysom Hill
