NFL Media’s Trevor Sikkema Talks Arch Manning, Mendoza & More

Trevor Sikkema watches the film and reads the analytics, so Bobby Bones wanted to know how much of it still comes down to the gut.

More than you would think, and it moves.

"Sometimes it's 35 percent, sometimes it's 5 percent," Sikkema said. It weighs heaviest in draft evaluation, where you can do all the efficiency work and still find yourself watching a player move, seeing how confident he is, and concluding the best is ahead of him.

Bones offered his own gut call from back in the day, JaMarcus Russell, and Sikkema advised him to have the producers lower the volume on that one.

On Dillon Gabriel, Sikkema's position has not changed, and it was never about Cleveland.

Gabriel wins with anticipation and accuracy, not physical tools, and Sikkema argues those traits do not surface until a quarterback is deeply comfortable in his environment. That is exactly why Gabriel got better as his college career went on and was at his best as a veteran.

"To me, Dillon Gabriel was always going to kind of start his career as a backup," he said. A preferred backup, a genuine QB2.

The hope is that Gabriel sticks around into a second or third contract, because the league produces the same situation constantly: a team misses on a drafted quarterback, misses in free agency, and has to get somebody. In a couple of years, that somebody could be Gabriel.

Cleveland was never the place he was going to stand out.

Then Arch Manning, where Sikkema admitted upfront that he got burned.

He put the cart in front of the horse last year, watching the limited snaps behind Quinn Ewers and concluding the full-time job would unlock everything. It did not, at least not immediately, and he grants that opening in the Horseshoe against Ohio State is a brutal way to start.

But the second half of last season looked entirely different, and he wants that noticed.

"He turned into a much different quarterback through the second half of last season," Sikkema said. Manning looks bigger now, the frame filled out, and he genuinely looks like an NFL quarterback.

"I'm back in."

Bones asked the sharpest question of the interview: what if he were Arch Johnson?

Sikkema thought that framing mattered enormously a year ago and matters much less now. Last season the last name was doing heavy lifting on the Heisman and first-overall anointing. This season, on the second-half tape alone, Sikkema thinks Arch Johnson would still be a first-round caliber quarterback. Maybe not the consensus number one, but in the conversation.

Both men then landed on the part of the Manning advantage that is real and rarely stated properly.

It is not the name. It is the phone.

Sikkema pointed to an interview where Manning was asked the best part of being a Manning, and answered, laughing, that All-Pro and Hall of Fame quarterbacks are a call and a text away. That is not someone insisting he will do it alone.

"Can Peyton be out there to throw the ball for him? No," Sikkema said. But on mental reps, on how to prepare, on getting to high-level football faster, those are tools other quarterbacks simply do not have.

Asked about the next one, Peyton's son, a 15-year-old freshman, Sikkema admitted to doing a little forward scouting off the social clips.

You can already see it. A Peyton mannerism here, something of Eli there, enough that you could guess this kid has been through a Manning camp just from how he operates.

On Trinidad Chambliss, Sikkema was emphatic and slightly aggrieved.

"I think he could be an impact starting quarterback at the NFL level," he said, and if you want to push it to Pro Bowl, he is not going to fight you hard.

He has been telling Jets fans in his life all offseason that he does not understand why Chambliss is not their starter. Had Chambliss declared, Sikkema believes he was a first-round pick, in top-ten consideration, possibly top five.

The arm is not the strongest, but it is plenty adequate. What Sikkema loves is what happens when a play breaks. The snap, the first read, the second read, a missed blitz pickup, and suddenly it is a fire drill. That is when the game slows down for Chambliss instead of speeding up.

"When the lights were brightest, he showed up."

Dante Moore's assignment is narrower. Sikkema thinks Moore carved up the softer parts of Oregon's schedule with real accuracy and pre- and post-snap vision, and that the question is entirely about speed. When NFL-caliber players are attacking the pocket and playing the secondary, can he operate faster while protecting the ball?

Oregon should be back in the playoff, so the sample will be there.

On Julian Sayin, Sikkema called him a deadly accurate quarterback and was honest about the physical ceiling. Sayin will not wow anyone with arm strength, velocity or stature. What he did last season was make the right decision seemingly every time, throwing to Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate.

Stack that against the best competition, and the case builds.

"Some offenses just need a facilitator, because they have the other skill players."

Drew Allar got the most sympathetic read. Sikkema thinks the only reason Allar did not come out after a very good junior year was the injury, and that the physical attributes have never been the question. He can put the ball anywhere on an NFL field.

The question is consistency, or longevity. You can get two great drives or two great games. Can you stack that across a season?

That inconsistency is why he was drafted later than the raw talent suggested, which makes the preseason encouraging, in a room where Aaron Rodgers has said this is his last year and will take all the snaps regardless. Sikkema also liked Will Howard, and thinks Pittsburgh could feel good about either man in Mike McCarthy's offense heading into next season.

The closer was one word on Fernando Mendoza.

"Overthought."

Sikkema thinks far too many people nitpicked him as a prospect, that he will be exactly what the Raiders need, and that he will be a student of the game under Clint Kubiak. He is also high on what general manager Jon Spytek is building around him.