Background:
On Duke's official football site, Anthony Boone is listed as a 6'0", 230-pound quarterback. NFLDraftScout.com, the website which produces CBS's NFL draft content, co-signs the measurements, listing Boone as 6000, or six feet flat, and 230 pounds.
CBS Sports' early 2015 quarterback rankings list Anthony Boone as the 12th quarterback in the upcoming senior class, with players such as Hutson Mason, Cole Stoudt, and Andrew Manley ahead of him. Why isolate those names out of that list? Because none of them have started even a half of a season for the squad they're currently on.
What to Expect:
In total, Boone has had 606 touches in his three years of seeing the field at Duke. There's an expectation that he sees the ball even more in 2014, though. After fighting off an early season collar bone injury, he still had to split time with another quarterback, Brandon Connette, in 2013, his first year as the starter.
Brandon Connette is also a senior, but has transferred to Fresno State for family reasons, as his mother is fighting cancer in California. Connette saw the field when Boone was out, at times would come in for entire drives, and saw a majority of the red zone work. He left Duke with 31 rushing touchdowns and 16 passing touchdowns on his resume.
With Connette no longer in the mix, Boone's statistics are figured to rise, as long as he stays healthy. Getting the red zone snaps will help rise that 10 touchdown mark he had passing in 2013.
As far as Boone's tools are concerned, he's got a strong arm, and he can use his legs to get some yardage, but I don't think any NFL team will think about building their offense around him running the option.
He's short, which does seem to correlate to a higher amount of deflected passes, but is not as big of an issue as we're lead to believe. His biggest issue at this point is knowing when to throw the ball away. When he's on the run, he'll keep his eyes up, but he needs to learn when chuck the ball to the sideline. Often later in the season, when he vastly improved and seemed to be recovered from his collar bone injury, his mistakes would come by escaping the pressure, rolling to his right, and firing a ball off-balanced which a defender would get a hand on.
At the end of the day, Boone is an NFL prospect, but needs to stay healthy and improve on the little things. If he improves as much as he did from the beginning of 2013 to the end of the season, he'll be taken in the 2015 NFL draft. With David Cutcliffe, the quarterback guru who coached first rounders Heath Shuler, Peyton Manning, and Eli Manning in college, coaching up Boone, it's within the realm of possibility.
Current Grade: 5th-PFA
Games Viewed: Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, Texas A&M, Florida State (ACC Championship), North Carolina, Miami, and Wake Forest
Passing Chart:
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