Carson Wentz

Carson Wentz spoke to the media last month at the NFL Scouting Combine.

(Dan Labbe, Cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- ESPN's Jon Gruden has a tendency to fall in love with the quarterbacks he features on his immensely popular QB Camp series, but he had especially high praise for North Dakota State's Carson Wentz in clips released Monday.

"I think he's the most NFL-ready quarterback that we've had in the last couple of years,'' Gruden says in the Wentz feature, will air in April.

That's saying a lot, considering Gruden featured Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota this year, and Blake Bortles, Teddy Bridgewater and Derek Carr the year before.

The Browns, who are still in the mix to trade for 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, are strongly considering Wentz along with Cal quarterback Jared Goff and other top prospects.

But Gruden certainly isn't the only analyst singing Wentz' praises. NFL Network's Mike Mayock's compared him to 2012 No. 1 overall pick Andrew Luck the day before the NFL Combine last month.



"When I look at him, I see a kid that's as athletic or more athletic than Andrew Luck,'' Mayock said on a conference call. "He's bigger than Andrew Luck. He's got arm strength comparable to Andrew Luck. He just doesn't have the experience that Andrew Luck had at a high level that Andrew had coming out of college. So I see a ceiling for this kid similar to Andrew Luck. That's why I believe in this kid so much. But it's going to take a little bit of time.''

The top overall pick out of Stanford, Luck went on to make the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons and threw an NFL-high 40 touchdown passes in 2014 against 16 interceptions. Overall, he's thrown 105 touchdowns to 55 interceptions, and has an 85.0 career rating.

"The way I look at Wentz, the first tape I put in, I went 'Wow,''' said Mayock. "I didn't even know who he was. He was just a quarterback on my list. No clue. And I watched I think Northern Iowa and I watched this big kid sling the ball around a lot and on top of it, was athletic enough that they planned quarterback runs for him.

At the combine, Wentz finished tied for second in the 40 with a 4.77, tied for second in the broad jump and finished third in the three-cone drill. He also displayed a strong arm, good footwork, nice touch on the shorter routes and a quick release.

"Hands down, Wentz (6-5 1/4 237) was the best quarterback in these workouts,'' draft analyst Greg Cosell of NFL Films told cleveland.com. "Hands down he shone above everyone else.''

Like Mayock, he predicted big things for Wentz, who played in the FCS.

"I'd say Wentz has high level traits, the kind of traits that make you think if he were to become what he could be that he'd be a top five kind of quarterback in the league,'' Cosell said.

Gruden, who's also a huge Johnny Manziel fan, will feature six other quarterbacks in the seventh season of his QB Camp. They are Goff, Ohio State's Cardale Jones, Memphis' Paxton Lynch, Michigan State's Connor Cook, Penn State's Christian Hackenberg and Mississippi State's Dak Prescott, who was arrested two days ago on a DUI charge.