Senior Bowl QBs Dillon Gabriel, Riley Leonard look to restore 'Brady phenomenon'

MOBILE, Ala. — The top quarterbacks trying to help their draft stock here are putting the Senior in Senior Bowl, well-traveled passers who have excelled for two if not three college programs, playing six and even seven seasons to build up experience for the NFL.

Take Dillon Gabriel, who fittingly wore an Oregon helmet at Wednesday's practice, but one also proudly bearing stickers from Central Florida and Oklahoma, his first two college stops. The 24-year-old Gabriel played three years at UCF and two at Oklahoma before shining this past season at Oregon, finishing fourth in Heisman voting. His career numbers are impressive: 64 games and NCAA records with 18,722 passing yards and 155 touchdown passes.

"You can't get live reps as a quarterback until you go and experience it yourself, go through the ebbs and flows of what seasons, back to back, look like," Gabriel said. "You try to get as much football as you can, and I've used all that experience to my advantage as I try to continue learning more."

Gabriel is still younger than Louisville quarterback Tyler Shough, here in Mobile as a 25-year-old who spent three seasons each at Oregon and Texas Tech before breaking through last fall with the Cardinals, passing for 23 touchdowns against six interceptions.

The best arms here are taking connecting flights to the NFL: Riley Leonard, who just played in the national championship game for Notre Dame, spent most of his college years at Duke; Jaxson Dart, another top quarterback prospect from Ole Miss, spent his freshman year at USC.

"I really like having the exposure, having interviews with coaches, getting to play with these great players and just learning," Dart said. "That's really what I'm here to do is take in as much wisdom as I can to help myself."

These quarterbacks aren't in the 2025 draft's top tier — Miami's Cam Ward and Colorado's Shedeur Sanders are both potential top-five picks — and Alabama's Jalen Milroe is in Mobile as perhaps the next quarterback to be taken. But for most of the quarterbacks here, the challenge is a daunting one: to bring the late-round quarterback gem back to the NFL.

[Related: Inside the Shedeur Sanders, Cam Ward bond: ‘They want to be the No. 1 draft pick’]

It's been 25 years since Michigan's Tom Brady went to the Patriots in the sixth round, creating hope and optimism for every late-round quarterback since. The problem is, Brady is exceptional in every sense, and finding winning quarterbacks late in the draft is quite a challenge. Consider the past 10 years: 72 quarterbacks have been drafted in the third round or later, and out of those 72, only two — the 49ers' Brock Purdy and the Cowboys' Dak Prescott — have more than 20 starts and a winning record.

Those two have 98 career wins, but the other 70 drafted quarterbacks combine for just 114 as starters. That's 1.6 per quarterback, and the darlings of the group aren't exactly trending upward: Jacoby Brissett has 19 wins, Gardner Minshew 17, Trevor Siemian 15, none in any position to be a starting quarterback in 2025.

The problem is that the NFL is in a constant state of desperation, with any team that doesn't have a franchise quarterback using high draft picks until it finds one. Six quarterbacks went in the top 12 picks last spring, with impressive results between Washington's Jayden Daniels, Denver's Bo Nix and others. But the dropoff was pronounced after that: Only one other rookie quarterback started even one game, and it was the Saints' Spencer Rattler, who went 0-6 as an injury replacement.

Former Saints quarterback Drew Brees, himself the No. 32 overall pick in 2001 and preparing to serve as a host of sorts for next week's Super Bowl in New Orleans, said he thinks the urgency to use high picks on quarterbacks has made it tougher for lower-round picks to find success. But perhaps quarterbacks with a lot of college experience can change that.

"The Brock Purdy phenomenon, it doesn't happen very often, or the Brady phenomenon, right?" Brees said. "I think everybody wanted to be Brady. It's just tough to make it happen. I think there's somewhat of a formula from the perspective of being able to go get a guy with a lot of experience coming out of college. I think the more high-level college starts a guy has, the more prepared he would be to step in and be a contributor in the NFL. Brock had almost 50 college starts at Iowa State, where he was probably an underdog the majority of times he stepped foot on the field and was finding ways to win. 

"If I'm a scout, I'm looking at a guy like that saying, 'All right, he's got some moxie, he's obviously a competitor. I like this guy leading our team.' ... There's no precise formula, because you've got like a 50 percent success rate even drafting somebody in the first round."

This draft class still has the benefit of the NCAA not counting the 2020 season toward eligibility due to COVID-19. It's a benefit that helped quarterbacks in recent draft classes, and it could help this year's crop as they try to work their way up NFL draft boards.

Ohio State's Will Howard was scheduled to play in Mobile, but he backed out, citing his playing recently in the national championship game, which the Buckeyes won over Notre Dame. Leonard came out on the short end of that, but he thought it was important for him to get one more game before the draft.

"I just wanted to get back on the field after losing the national championship game," he said. "You don't want to sit around and think about it. You want to get back on the field and prove yourself again. I have a lot of confidence right now. I remember walking off the field against Ohio State, thinking my best is yet to come. 

"I have to grow in a lot of different things, but I'll attack those things, hopefully get on a team and work my tail off, prove myself to a lot of people."

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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