The Iowa football team’s starting quarterback Nate Stanley is a controversial figure when it comes to evaluating his potential. CFN ranks him 11th best.
Nate Stanley makes draft world mad. There are some that love him, and there are some they hate him, and there are some that somewhere in the middle. With the summer months here and Iowa football season two months away from officially starting, there are a lot of preseason polls and rankings coming out, which we’ve been trying to keep up on as much possible.
One site listed Nate Stanley as the 22nd best quarterback in the nation, while another said it was plausible for Nate Stanley to be a sleeper Heisman pick. Most recently though, College Football News listed Nate Stanley as the 11th most likely quarterback to receive All-American honors following the 2019 season.
Here’s my thing, I think 11th is a little too high. I appreciate the enthusiasm and confidence, but I would put Stanley more in the 16-18th range. For example, Justin Fields was not included on this list at all, which is a little ridiculous given his talent and Ohio State’s ability to throw quarterbacks into the fire and succeed.
Stanley is also listed ahead of Shea Patterson, who is arguably a better quarterback on a team with much more national notoriety than the Iowa football team, and where is the love for Washington’s Jacob Eason?
I know he has been on the sideline for a year after he had to sit out due to transfer rules, but as a freshman, at Georgia, he threw for 2,420 yards and 16 touchdowns in a run-heavy offense. The guy is a former five-star recruit playing in an offense that even made Jake Browning look good last year.
I do think Nate Stanley could be an All-American, and I do believe he could even be a Heisman Trophy contender, but he has to improve his game and the Iowa football team has to put together one of their finest seasons in Kirk’s tenure. At this point, however, I think Stanley is ranked a tad too high here.