Update: The Steelers picked Mason Rudolph in the third round.

Most NFL draft analysts don’t really know what to do with a guy like Mason Rudolph of Oklahoma State. At 6’3, 235 with functional athleticism (4.9 40 and 26-inch vertical), a strong arm, and 13,618 college passing yards, there’s a lot of data, but no consensus on his ceiling in the NFL.

Some scouts and teams really seem to like him, and there are rumors he might go in the second round or earlier, perhaps to a top team like the New England Patriots.

Part of the problem is the unique nature of the Oklahoma State offense, which is very much a college-style spread, but one that includes NFL concepts and one that the NFL is starting to more closely resemble. The questions with Rudolph include whether his talents can translate to a broader system and whether his mastery of a college spread offense was a hint as to what he could become as a professional.

Oklahoma State under Mike Gundy has been one of the better and more cutting-edge offenses.

Gundy was the OC for Les Miles in Stillwater, and while Gundy embraced the spread pretty quickly, he always maintained an emphasis on running the ball and throwing vertical routes off play action.

For most of the last four seasons, the Cowboys’ offense has been driven by slot receivers running dig routes inside of James Washington, to draw in the safety and isolate his post routes on cornerbacks. They’ve often done this in the classic “pro-style,” by throwing off play action with a fullback nearby:

And from a more modern “pro-style” spread setting, using shallow cross route combinations, which help isolate the post route:

If you pull up the last four seasons at Oklahoma State, you’ll see Rudolph connect with Washington on a post route in a play like these in nearly every game.

The shallow cross concept and the post route are NFL things, but it’s tricky to know what to do with Rudolph’s utilization of them. It’s similar to the way Baylor would dominate team after team with vertical choice routes under Art Briles, or how Steve Spurrier’s Fun ‘n’ Gun offenses would demolish defenses with the same dig-post combination.

In other words, even though this is very much an NFL throw and concept, it’s one that we’ve seen mastered by college QBs who didn’t pan out as pros. Even tall, strong-armed, pocket guys can turn out to be system quarterbacks.

The Cowboys’ passing game wasn’t just Washington running past cornerbacks.

They’d mix in deep outs to Washington, throws to fellow 1,000-yard WR Marcell Ateman in isolation on the other side, and more, but those deep shots were a pretty significant part of the system.

For instance, the one game in which Rudolph really struggled in 2017 was against Texas, which unveiled a 3-2-6 dime package. Three deep safeties played in zone and took away the angles for the Cowboys’ dig-post combos.

In that game, Rudolph revealed his capacity for reading past Washington and for trying to beat good coverage, including this laser seam route over the hands of 10.6 sprinter LB Gary Johnson ...

... as well as regular use of a pro-style Hank concept, which uses an option route in the middle of the field to open the curl-flat combo on the outside, though it worked better against Virginia Tech in the bowl game:

What has made Oklahoma State consistently good under Gundy has been getting a lot of mileage without having to install a large number of concepts. The Cowboys have a few core things they believe in, which they’ll run with spread spacing and RPOs in a wide variety of fashions, with the QB always having safe checkdowns or options.

For some spread QBs, learning an NFL offense is like tackling ancient Greek after learning high school Spanish.

For Rudolph, this won’t be nearly as pronounced because there’s more overlap between NFL and college offenses these days.

What’s more, Rudolph was a much more advanced student than your typical college spread QB.

The Oklahoma State offense often worked in a “pro-style” fashion, in that Rudolph would approach the line of scrimmage with a menu of options, based on the look the defense was giving. Then he might check the play to one of a few alternatives if he saw an opportunity to hit a big play or smelled a negative play coming.

You can see that against TCU:

The Cowboys had just converted a first down with a run. Rudolph is communicating to his teammates to get them into position for a play he knows will be available. They hurry into a formation, he checks the alignment of the corner to be sure what he’s seeing, and he takes the easy money on the comeback against an isolated defender, all after eyeing the weak-side safety to ensure he knows the defensive alignment. The timing and placement are perfect.

NFL scouts would like to see Rudolph progress past his first read more, but it’s hardly his fault that he and Gundy knew Big 12 defenses well enough to make exploiting matchups look easy.

The fact that Rudolph spent four years at Oklahoma State, albeit in a simpler college system, allowed him to learn the process of game planning and field generalship in a way that might make it easier to expand his game in a pro offense.

A college QB who runs a simple offense and has a coach doing everything for him — in terms of diagnosing defenses and getting the team into the right play — not only has to learn a new offense but also how to QB like a pro. Rudolph at least has the latter under his belt.

If he were to go to an established team, it seems likely that he could learn a new plan of attack, even if he never masters something in the NFL quite like he did throwing post routes to Washington.