Kellen Mond Scouting Report
- Watched: South Carolina (2019), Vanderbilt (2020), Alabama (2020), Florida (2020)
- Pros:
- Similar physical tools to Zach Wilson (which is pretty good) and can similarly change arm angles as needed.
- Once he plants his feet to throw, he gets it out really quick.
- I wouldn’t say he’s an anticipatory passer, but he does a really nice job of timing his throws when he’s on schedule, often throwing it before his WRs have turned their heads or just as they’re about to make their cut.
- When he has a clean throwing lane and can throw it on a rope, he shows good ball placement.
- Pretty good top speed and some nice vision and patience to set up blockers on designed runs.
- Ran a lot of pro concepts under Jimbo Fisher.
- Cons:
- Shies away from throwing the deep ball and it’s an adventure whenever he does throw it.
- If he has to put touch on his throw, his ball placement drops off significantly.
- When he misses, it’s generally high and not particularly close.
- Does a nice job getting the ball out before pressure gets home, but often struggles to identify the hot read.
- Waits too long to move within the pocket and misses opportunities to buy time and create a clean throwing platform.
- He did seem to improve on this his senior year, but he isn’t really comfortable sitting in the pocket/holding the ball very long.
- Inconsistent getting through progressions/moving defenders with his eyes.
- General:
- Receivers struggled in pretty much every aspect of football and his offensive line was swiss cheese most of the time; difficult to project how he might look in a better environment.
- Almost all of his snaps were out of shotgun or pistol formations.
- Overall Take:
- Pro-readiness: 7th (out of 8)
- Potential: 5th
- Overall: 5th
- Number Grade (out of 100): 79
- With 44 starts in his college career, nobody in this draft class is more experienced than Kellen Mond. Most of those starts have also come under Jimbo Fisher’s pro-style offense, giving him a lot of time to get comfortable with the sorts of plays he’d be expected to run in the NFL. Having said that, I think he’s going to need time to work on a bunch of his weaknesses; notably, throwing with touch, improving his pocket presence, and dissecting blitzes more efficiently. Those first two in particular are reasons he probably needs to sit for a year or two if he’ll ever fulfill his potential. I think pairing him with a coach that likes to hold their QB’s hands pre-snap and wants to attack the short and intermediate areas of the field would be a good fit for him; a team like the Rams makes sense to me (though I would imagine they’ll be using their limited draft picks to try to build a Super Bowl contender rather than a QB that they can groom). Ultimately, I like the bag of physical tools that he has to work with, and they usually don’t come packaged with a guy that gets the ball to his WRs on time. I also think there’s at least a chance that being surrounded by a more functional team could unlock some untapped potential in him. On the downside, I’m a bit skeptical that he’ll ever rein in his deep ball and accurately layer balls in around coverage, and if that doesn’t happen, he probably will be stuck as a backup QB.
- NFL Comparisons:
- Most Likely Comp: Geno Smith
- Peak Comp: Colin Kaepernick