Kellen Moore Not Drafted? No Reason to Feel Blue The denizens of my hometown, Boise, Idaho, learned a cold, hard lesson this past weekend. In the N.F.L., measurables do count. For months, all the talk around town has been about the draft prospects of the city's star quarterback, Kellen Moore. Never mind that six of Moore's Boise State teammates were projected to be early round picks (some of those teammates wound up falling, although DE Shea McClellin and RB Doug Martin went in the first round, and DE Tyrone Crawford was taken in the third). The focus around town has been entirely on the quarterback. On Saturday, much of the city experienced a lighter version of what its extremely likeable 22-year-old rock star experienced: prolonged disappointment. The league announced 158 draft picks at Radio City Music Hall in Rounds 4-7; not one of them was named "Kellen Moore." The local media's reaction to Moore's draft snub has echoed that of the national media. There's a general bewilderment about how a player with 50 college victories can go undrafted, and a collective commitment to putting the best spin on Moore's signing as a free agent with the Detroit Lions. But if the buzz on the street before the draft was any indication, the typical Boisean will be up in arms for the next few days. The people who watch only Broncos football and don't know anything else about the sport are the ones saying that the N.F.L. bigwigs just don't like to give the little guy a chance. Those who watch football casually but whose knowledge does not reach beyond blue turf or a basic understanding of fantasy football are the ones thinking N.F.L. teams simply look for the wrong traits in a quarterback. How can Ryan Tannehill be that much better than Moore!?! Tannehill started only 20 games in his collegiate career; Moore won 50! Those who follow college football closely and the N.F.L. more casually - which is many of the fans in Boise - gripe that the N.F.L. is erroneously undervaluing Moore's football IQ. Kellen may not have the best measurables, these people will say, but he makes up for it with smarts. I've learned over the past few months that passionate Kellen Moore fans are like passionate Anybody Else fans. You can have a conversation about the object of their adulation, but if your opinion doesn't completely align with theirs (i.e. if you're looking at Moore from a rational third-party's perspective), you won't be heard. Kellen Moore is like Tim Tebow in Boise....if Boise were 100 percent evangelical Christian. Instead of trying to talk to friends and family about Moore's draft snub, I'd much rather write about it and just send them the link. My response to the Kellen Moore crowd is, welcome to reality. In the N.F.L., arm strength counts. So does size. And speed. And athleticism. In a vacuum, none of these traits are vital. But even in a vacuum, each of them is more important than "being a winner." Moore is a winner, sure. But he's won at the amateur level. Simply put, that doesn't matter to N.F.L. talent evaluators. It's easy to see why. People don't realize just how gargantuan the gap is between college and professional football. Take Alabama. It was the top program in college football this past year, and it also produced the highest number of draft picks this past weekend, eight. The 2011 Crimson Tide had 112 players on the roster. Let's be generous and assume Bama can continue to produce eight draft picks each year. Eight players from the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes equals 32 players. So 32 members of the team will get drafted. That means 80 won't. Keep in mind, this is the best college program in the country. In the best college program in the country, less than 30 percent of the players are draft worthy, while the rest are amateurs. A typical college program - like the ones Moore often faced - produces, in a good year, maybe three or four draft picks. The point here is, no matter who you play in college or what you do, you're almost always doing it with and against amateurs. If you're an N.F.L. talent evaluator, it does you no good to put much, if any, stock in how much a player wins against amateurs. Especially considering that in football, players don't win, teams do. The high volume of amateur athletes in college is also why Moore's greatest asset - his intelligence - matters very little to the N.F.L. Intelligence can set a college player apart, but in the pros, where the systems are complex and tenfold deeper, where the opponents aren't 20-year-old kids studying history and science along with scouting tape and playbooks, but rather, 28-year-old men studying tape and playbooks and then more tape and more tape after that, and where the coaching staffs often consist of tenured veterans who were once the best of the best from the college ranks...well, then intelligence becomes a prerequisite, not an attribute. In the N.F.L., just about everyone is smart. So for a hopeful N.F.L. quarterback, intelligence cannot affect draftability - only the absence of intelligence can. The same principles apply for athletic measurables. Arm strength, mobility, size, etc. - they're all prerequisites. Many people in Boise don't understand why Moore's lack of size is such a problem to pro teams. There are many reasons it's a problem - durability, pocket passing prowess and the sheer difficulty of designing an offense when the passer can't see over his linemen, to name a few. It's not a mere "fun fact" that the only two N.F.L. starting quarterbacks who are not over 6 feet are Michael Vick and Drew Brees. Vick compensates with otherworldly athleticism; Brees compensates with a strong arm and uncanny accuracy. Kellen Moore was accurate in college, but that accuracy won't translate to the pros because the throwing windows close so quickly. The only quarterbacks who even have a chance at getting a ball through a quick-closing window are those with strong arms. Boise State fans hear all this and understand the logic behind it, but they can't resist countering with a "yeah but." The reality is, there is no "yeah but." Things don't happen in the N.F.L by accident. Sure, there are about two or three players on every Week 1 roster who were undrafted at some point and made the team anyway. But a few weeks before that, there were about 25 other undrafted players on the roster who didn't wind up making the team. Teams don't draft players the same way fantasy owners do. By the time they select a player, that team's front office members have gotten more familiar with him than they are with probably most of their own cousins. A few weeks ago, I met with one of the few N.F.L scouts who lives in Boise. We talked about how he was already up on the players projected for the 2013 draft. The people who think that N.F.L teams simply refuse to give Moore a chance are misguided. All 32 teams studied Moore for several years. All 32 teams watched him at the scouting combine. Many of those teams interviewed him there. Several teams saw Moore at Boise State's pro day. Who knows how many more teams spoke with the Boise State coaching staff about him. These days, all prospects are given more than a fair chance because quality pro talent is simply too valuable to even run the risk of passing up. When all 32 teams pass on a talent, history and - hopefully now, common sense - suggest that the reason is almost always that that talent wasn't actually pro talent. Kellen Moore was a great college quarterback. And he'll probably make a great coach someday. And from all accounts, he's a great guy. And, as every expert inside the N.F.L. tacitly declared over the weekend, none of these things make him a great pro.