Report: Broncos Met with Ole Miss QB Matt Corral at NFL Combine
The possibility remains that the Denver Broncos could miss out on landing an established veteran quarterback this offseason. At the NFL Combine, both the Seattle Seahawks and Green Bay Packers in recent days have tried to tamp down any notion of a trade as they warn off potential suitors from Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers, respectively.
The veteran QB options are limited for Broncos GM George Paton but thankfully, he still has the No. 9 overall pick in the upcoming NFL draft. With the 2022 quarterback class purportedly lacking a blue-chip, slam-dunk prospect, the Broncos will have to do extensive due diligence and hope for a slice of luck along the way.
As always, the only sure-fire scouting method is hindsight, and consequently, Paton will be paying close attention to everything this year’s crop of talent says and does along the way. The Broncos have met with many of the top signal-callers at the NFL Combine, including Ole Miss' Matt Corral, per 9NEWS' Mike Klis.
Corral is an intriguing option for Paton and he's likely to be available when the Broncos go on the clock at No. 9 overall. Corral has many game-winning intangibles that go well beyond the constant prodding and probing NFL teams put prospects through this time of year.
In some ways, he reminds many scouts of a young Rodgers in the way he approaches and plays the game, and Corral admitted only yesterday that he models his game on the future Hall-of-Famer.
“I try to emulate my game after Aaron Rodgers,” Corral said on Tuesday via Andrew Mason of DNVR. “Just watching the guy play and making it look effortless from the arm angles, from him making the throw from any platform, any angles. That is definitely a guy I want to emulate my game after, for sure.”
Pulling off the Rodgers tribute act has been successful enough in college, but doing it at the pro level is an entirely different proposition. The NFL finds out technique issues with ruthless regularity and brutally exposes them so it may lead teams away from reaching too early for Corral.
Indeed, the former Rebels star was quick to admit he does have has own eccentricities in how he plays the game and conceded that teams might deem them to be critical issues. But, in what was a very Rodgers-like soundbite, the 23-year-old appeared comfortable to carry on regardless — unless changes are forced upon him.
“My feet aren’t necessarily perfect all the time. I throw from weird arm angles,” Corral said. “I get critiqued about it. He gets critiqued about it a little bit. That’s just our style of game. That’s what we do. That’s what we are proud of. It’s probably going to be hard to change, unless someone really needs me to change it, then I will. But that’s just who I am as a quarterback, and that’s just who he is.”
Such freewheeling comments can often backfire and burn a prospect when teams come to psychoanalyze every word and twitch of body language. Despite that kind of past history, the new era of the NFL is much more willing to accept and embrace a wider variety of techniques and QB outlooks, but only if they're convinced it can deliver results.
A QB like Corral presents a conundrum to NFL GMs, Paton included. It'll boil down to which team is willing to risk more and trust its gut feeling when under the most pressure on draft night.
Per Klis, the Broncos also met with Liberty's Malik Willis and Pittsburgh's Kenny Pickett in Indy.
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