Hello Seahawk fans, Bronco fan living in exile in Texas here. I came on here to offer my perspective on Boykins. I live 30 minutes from TCU and I've been watching this kid since he was in high school here in Mesquite Texas. I may have seen him much more than anyone here. I am not a TCU fan btw. I was hoping Denver would draft him to run Kubiak's play action passing game.
For starters. forget the unfortunate incident in the bar. Trevone Boykins grew up in Pleasant Grove, a South Dallas bastion of drugs, gangs and violence locals here call "the Grove". it's probably the single worst area of town. The fact that he didn't land in prison or wind up dead by now means this kid had to make hundreds, if not thousands of good choices before making one really bad one. Boykins is not a trouble maker. He's a solid guy who visits with and spends time with at risk kids. He's not who the media have represented him as. His HS coaches confirm this as well.
As for his play on the field and potential in the NFL, there was no QB in the 2016 draft class who even came remotely close to achieving for his team what Boykins did. In 2012 when he came to TCU he was relegated to the ignominious "athlete" role that many black QB's who starred as runners in college are tagged with. But Boykins was a star both as a passer and a runner against the toughest high school completion in the country. At TCU he was made a WR his first two seasons and designated an emergency QB, meaning he didn't do much in practice in terms of running the offense. In TCU's first two seasons he was here, the frogs sucked. They had moved from the second tier Mountain West Conference where they excelled into the Big 12 and got their asses handed to them.
Boykins was thrust into the starting job after the regular starter got hurt and performed well as a sophomore, but when he took over as the starter his junior year this team exploded. From a 23 ppg offense and a substandard record in 2013, Boykins almost single handedly took TCU to the #3 record in the country and doubled TCU's scoring to 45 ppg, second in the nation. He did this with almost no legitimate talent around him. I think TCU had two players drafted in 2015 on the third day of the draft. It was Boykins who took the frogs to top 10 status overnight.
Compare Boykins production and stats his last two seasons starting and you will find nobody in college football did more than he did, including Jared Goff and certainly not Carson Wentz, who played at a school that counted juggernauts like Prairie View A&M, Coastal Carolina, Incarnate Word and other no name opponents among their victims. Wentz had an all star RB to hand the ball to and Brock Jensen, the guy who preceded him at NDSU as QB who won 3 straight national titles at that school is now on his second CFL team after being cut by the Dolphins practice squad. Apparently it's not hard to win games as a starting QB there.
Boykins has a good NFL arm. NFL scouts have said he can throw 60 yards off his back foot. He is adept at the deep ball. He throws with touch and his accuracy is better than people think. It is far superior to Christian Hackenburg who went in the 2nd round. He throws on the run and he can work from the pocket though he will need some work there.
Boykins is also an absolute Houdini with the ball in his hands as a ball handler. He's a virtual magician as a play action fake, roll out guy who can be the perfect mirror image of how Russell Wilson handles the offense. Watch his video clips and you will see a guy who makes pursuing defenders look positively stupid. Boykins ran a 4.77 forty at the combine, probably on a bad ankle he injured late in the year. Trust me, he is much faster. At W. Mesquite HS here in Dallas he ran a 4.5 forty and in a state loaded with track athletes he finished 7th in the state in the 100 meters and long jumped almost 22 feet. This kid is electrifying with the ball in his hands. He stops and starts on a dime, shifts speeds and alters directions in radical angles going 0-60 in the blink of an eye and has moves that leave defensive players lying on the ground. As a runner he is already probably better than Wilson and he even does his backside pivot and reverse spin out of the rush just like Wilson does. No QB in this draft can move like Boykins.
The big knock on Boykins has been the system he played in. It's the so called Air Raid developed at Texas Tech and used all over Texas in high schools now, allegedly a system that doesn't help QB's prepare QB's to read a defense or search out secondary targets. This is not entirely true but what I find amazing is that it's exactly the same offense Goff played in at Cal. Nobody is saying Goff can't play obviously. In fact the primary difference between TCU's offense and Cal's with Goff is that Goff can't run and Boykins can. Goff didn't come close to making the kind of difference for his team that Boykins did, yet he's the top pick and Boykins didn't get drafted. Boykins also has a considerably stronger arm than Goff, who throws flutter balls that wobble like Manning's wounded ducks the last two years. Goff is also skinny, a scant 205 pounds on a frame 4" taller than Boykins. Boykins is 6'0", 210 and more muscular and compact but he's not skinny.
In short, you got a steal in Boykins. He's in the perfect spot to learn behind Wilson and if I had to bet the mortgage I'd put it on him over Adams for sure. Boykins got a raw deal after the bar fight. Talent-wise this guy is superior to any QB not taken in the first round of this draft. If he gets the opportunity he apparently will with Seattle to sit and learn with no pressure to play now he can be every bit as good as Tyrod Taylor. Sometimes scouts get it wrong and I think this is one of those times.
