Well, Tebow was cut by the Patriots and has probably heard his last hurrah in the NFL. How does this continue to happen? Tebow, Brady Quinn, Colt McCoy ... the list goes on of college star QBs that fall flat in the NFL. Is it bad scouting? Are they placed in offensive schemes that don't use their talents effectively? Do they play for just plain bad teams?
I often wonder about this myself, i think alot of it has to do with the type of offenses they run in college, like alot of offenses center around option play and the wildcat formation and players that specialize in that dont always adjust into the nfl that well. And not to mention that the defensive schemes are much more complicated in the pros and some QBs have trouble reading them. There were a lot of people that forsaw that tebow would not be succesful in the nfl bc of the type of player he was in college.
I think a couple of factors come into play. First, the speed of the NFL game is so different than in college. In the NFL, you rarely see any player have speed that is far & away greater than other players on the field. Whereas college there is bigger discrepancy. Second, I think the issue of accuracy is a huge factor with the success (or lack thereof) from college to the pros. Quinn, Tebow, and countless others struggled in college with accuracy. That is not correctable in the pros, where the window and split second a receiver is open is dramatically less than in college.
And as Dellacroce pointed out, the ability to read a defense is what separates the Andrew Lucks and the JaMarcus Russells. Defenses are far more complex and deceptive in the pros, which many of the college QBs are not used to seeing and fail to make the adjustment once they get to the NFL.
