Couch: NFL-ready Cook belongs back on Heisman radar

EAST LANSING — Michigan State’s Connor Cook won’t win the Heisman Trophy.

Not as long as LSU’s Leonard Fournette is running like he is.

It takes a heckuva season for a running back to win college football’s highest individual award these days — only twice since 1999 has the Heisman gone to anyone but a quarterback. The analytical imagination of the post-turn-of-the-millennium Heisman voter is akin to a fruit fly circling a jar of vinegar.

That’s how good Fournette has been — on pace for more than 2,000 yards in 12 games, at a clip of nearly 8 yards per carry, and in a pound-the-rock, stop-us-if-you-dare offensive system. All for a so-far-unbeaten team that’s otherwise limited offensively.

But Cook is a decent argument for the best quarterback in college football right now. And a better quarterback than several recent Heisman winners who pretended to play the same position.

“I can’t answer to what other people are doing. I can say that a quarterback for us is about decision making,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said Monday, his 8-0 team heading into its off week. “It’s about varying the snap count. It’s about changing up the play at the line of scrimmage. It’s about proper read or the reads that he has as he goes through his progression every single play.

“Sometimes he makes the exact right reads, other times he doesn’t. I mean, that’s the nature of the position. But the quarterback position is clearly about choices as much as anything.”

Not entirely. Not if your quarterback doesn’t make the decisions between the huddle and the snap, instead looking to the sidelines for the call to be changed when needed. Not if he requires help from tempo to beat a defense. Or rarely looks beyond his first or second read before letting the ball fly or pulling it down to run.

From last year’s Heisman winner, Marcus Mariota, to Robert Griffin III in 2011 — many of the best “quarterbacks” in college football don’t play the position entirely.

And they sometimes struggle in the NFL because of it. Hence former MSU quarterback Kirk Cousins beating out Griffin to be the Washington Redskins’ starting QB. One truly played quarterback in college. The other mostly threw and ran — though he did it about as well as any college player ever has.

The Heisman Trophy shouldn’t go to the most NFL-ready quarterback. But when a college kid thrives in a pro-style attack, it should be noted he’s performing on a different plane than those whose numbers and talents are enhanced by the happy-clappy approach to offense. Cook plays in a thinking man’s offense, more so than Cal’s Jared Goff, Memphis’ Paxton Lynch, Baylor’s Seth Russell, TCU’s Trevone Boykin or many of the other big-name college passers.

“You get all those Big 12 quarterbacks that are throwing 40 bubble screens a game, versus what he’s doing, it’s night and day,” said NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock, who first saw Cook while broadcasting MSU’s loss at Notre Dame for NBC in 2013. “He’s in a pro-style offense where he’s both under center and in the gun. He throws the ball down the field vertically more than most of the quarterbacks in the country, so his percentage of completions is going to be lower than a lot of those guys.”

In the age of frequent MSU-produced NFL quarterback talents, Cousins, Brian Hoyer, Drew Stanton and Tony Banks, no one in East Lansing has ever been this complete. And few in the NFL are blessed with such a combination of talents — pocket presence, his size, arm strength, resiliency and, recently and importantly, accuracy.

It’s Cook’s presence in the pocket, his courage and feel with converging defenders around him that separates him from Cousins. That’ll make it hard for NFL teams to pass over him next spring.

Mayock said he recently broke down Cook’s Oct. 17 performance at Michigan as thoroughly as he will all of Cook’s 2015 games before the draft.

“The Michigan tape was really interesting, because of the (Jim) Harbaugh deal and they’ve got a very sophisticated defense,” Mayock said. “They play press man coverage. They ran overload blitzes. So you get a chance to see the kid throw the football against one of the more sophisticated groups out there, that challenge wide receivers and come after quarterbacks.”

“There were six or seven throws where I didn’t like the ball locations, even on completions,” Mayock continued of Cook’s 18-for-39, 328-yard effort. “But as the game progressed and the pressure (grew), and it became a bigger and bigger game, I thought he got more accurate. And especially with a bunch of those back-shoulder throws that are anywhere from 15 to 25 yards down the field — he made several big-time throws.

“The highest compliment I can give him is that under pressure, with several free runners on the blitz, where he knows he’s going to take a shot, he stayed in and delivered the football with accuracy. I like his toughness, he’s got good arm strength. The accuracy got better as the game went on.”

And continued the following week during Saturday’s win at Indiana.

Cook will eventually have to answer why his teammates never saw him as their captain. But if you’re a team without a winning quarterback in a league built around quarterbacks, are you willing to risk passing on Cook for that? Would you rather instead have a guy who was the quintessential team leader, but who never called an audible at the line of scrimmage on his own and gets jittery feet at the sight of a linebacker?

Not if you want to keep working in the NFL.

Cook last Saturday — the last three weeks, really — performed at a level worthy of being invited to New York as a Heisman finalist.

He is a gunslinging quarterback, driving a relatively complex offense in a major conference, carrying a team shorthanded on the offensive line to an 8-0 record heading into November. And, through it all, here’s the statistic that matters most: 17 touchdowns; two interceptions, despite making more throws than ever under duress and into tight windows.

Only Memphis’ Lynch has been more statistically efficient (17-to-1).

To deserve a mid-December ticket to Manhattan, to be in the running for the Heisman if Fournette falters, Cook has to lead MSU past Ohio State on Nov. 21 and keep the Spartans from slipping up before then. He has to remain in “the zone,” as he called it Saturday.

He threw for 398 yards against Indiana — two shy of the school record. He threw 52 times. Completed 30 passes. Nine of them third-down conversions. These were NFL throws. NFL decisions.

“He’s in a decision-making position, and there’s a lot of confidence in him,” Dantonio said. “There’s also a lot on his shoulders to make those decisions, but he’s very at ease with that, and that’s what’s making him, I think, so dynamic back there.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.