Iowa football: Nate Stanley is 22nd rated QB in college football

Opinions on senior Iowa football quarterback Nate Stanley are all over the board. Compared against all starting QBs, Athlon Sports ranks him 22nd.

I’m not kidding when I say the opinions on Iowa football player Nate Stanley are truly all over the board. He’s unintentionally an incredibly polarizing player who has a unique blend of size and arm talent combined with a nasty habit of making at least one bad play a game and real concerns about his accuracy.

Some NFL Draft pundits have Stanley as their third ranked senior quarterback, while others such as The Draft Network’s Trevor Sikkema don’t understand how Stanley has a scholarship (I’m paraphrasing but that’s well in the lines of what he said on a recent episode of Locked On NFL Draft).

If he can improve his accuracy issues, I personally think there is a real chance he can go in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft. It will help that he will likely be invited to the 2020 Senior Bowl, which has proven to be a launching pad for quarterbacks in past years.

Heading into the 2019 season, Athlon Sports took this whole quarterback ranking situation an extra step when they took the time to rank every single starting quarterback in the nation. Where they put Stanley, I don’t have a lot of arguments with either to be honest.

They have Stanley ranked 22nd in the nation, and they say this about him:

"Stanley enters his third year as the starter with a chance to etch his name into Iowa’s record book. The Wisconsin native set a new school record with 52 touchdown passes over a two-year span and needs 23 more to pass Chuck Long for the most in a career."

While that isn’t wrong, to an outsider who doesn’t watch the Iowa football team often, it’s not very indicative of what type of quarterback Stanley is. Brian Ferentz has opened up the passing attack a bit, and the running game has been attrocious as of late which certainly helps Stanley get those numbers, but an outsider may wonder why Stanley isn’t higher when reading that description.

Alas, I am here to tell you, this ranking is mostly spot on. They’ve got Stanley ahead of LSU’s Joe Burrow (who is like the college version of Trent Dilfer) and Jake Bentley (who’s got a noodle arm), but they also have him ranked below Florida’s Felipe Franks and Iowa State’s Brock Purdy. Both of those quarterbacks are talented, but can you really say they’re better then Nate Stanley right now?

Outside of those two issues, the high-20s is about right where I would put Stanley at, and if he is able to put together an elite season this year and carry the Iowa football team to the College Football Playoffs, maybe we can bump in up about 15 spots.