lukerguy
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LCF stands for Lewin Career Forecast. This is a quarterback projection system created by Football Outsiders to predict the success of future QBs in the league. It does not consider height in it's projections. Before the draft, Wilson rated as the highest in the history of LCF- much higher than Luck and 100 points higher than RG3. In the article they call him the asterisk. It is clear that the reason for this is because they didn't think it was possible for a 3rd round QB to actually be better than two of the most highly touted QB prospects in history. In fact, they didn't even include him on the main chart of the article.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/nfl-draft/2012/lewin-career-forecast-2012
I would check out the whole article, but here's what they had to say about "The Asterisk". I don't know about you but I sort of like that nickname. He's one in a million. He's the exception to the rule. He's the Asterisk.
[align=]Player Year LCF
Russell Wilson 2012 2650
Robert Griffi 2012 2530
Philip Rivers 2004 2476
Drew Brees 2001 2190
Colt McCoy 2010 2092
Carson Palmer 2003 1973
Peyton Manning 1998 1784
Andrew Luck 2012 1749
Chad Pennington 2000 1678
Brady Quinn 2007 1518
Jason Campbell 2005 1506[/align]
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/nfl-draft/2012/lewin-career-forecast-2012
I would check out the whole article, but here's what they had to say about "The Asterisk". I don't know about you but I sort of like that nickname. He's one in a million. He's the exception to the rule. He's the Asterisk.
[align=]Player Year LCF
Russell Wilson 2012 2650
Robert Griffi 2012 2530
Philip Rivers 2004 2476
Drew Brees 2001 2190
Colt McCoy 2010 2092
Carson Palmer 2003 1973
Peyton Manning 1998 1784
Andrew Luck 2012 1749
Chad Pennington 2000 1678
Brady Quinn 2007 1518
Jason Campbell 2005 1506[/align]
The Asterisk
Russell Wilson, Wisconsin: 2,650 DYAR
Important stats: 48 games started, 60.7% completion rate, senior passer rating rose 64.1 points.
I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the ridiculous projection that the Lewin Career Forecast spits out for Russell Wilson. Yes, that projection is even higher than the one for Robert Griffin. No, it doesn't particularly mean that Wilson is a sleeper prospect. There are a few things going on here that the LCF is just not designed to account for.
First and foremost, the change in Wilson's passer rating between his junior and senior years is insane. Remember that earlier I noted that Griffin had a larger senior year passer rating increase than any quarterback in our data set? Well, Wilson's senior year passer rating increase is 40 percent larger than Griffin's. But does it matter when the quarterback is playing in a completely different offense for a completely different school in his last year of college eligibility? At Wisconsin, Wilson got to pick apart defenses that were concentrating on stopping Montee Ball. At North Carolina State, I doubt opponents were quaking in their boots at the thought of Mustafa Greene and Dean Haynes. It goes without saying that there isn't another quarterback in the LCF data set who transferred between his junior and senior years.
There's also the issue of height, another data point where there's nobody in our data set that can be compared to Wilson. At first, it seems strange that LCF doesn't include a variable to discount short quarterbacks, but when you look at the data set that went into creating LCF the reasons are pretty clear. There's no penalty for being 5-foot-11, like Wilson is, because there are no quarterbacks in the data set who are shorter than 6-foot-0. There's no penalty for being only 6-foot-0 because the two quarterbacks who are 6-foot-0 are Drew Brees and Michael Vick.
Quarterbacks who are Wilson's height simply don't get drafted in the first three rounds of the draft, period. The FO master database only includes three quarterbacks who are below six feet tall: Seneca Wallace, Joe Hamilton, and Flutie. That's a fourth-round pick, a seventh-round pick, and an 11th round pick from 25 years ago. Even if we go all the way back to 1991, the only quarterbacks taken in the first six rounds at 6-foot-0 or shorter were Vick, Brees, Wallace, Joe Germaine (fourth round, 1999), and Troy Smith (fifth round, 2007).
Wilson too will probably be drafted on the third day of the draft, round four or later, which would render his absurdly high LCF moot.