DeShone Kizer recently made comments comparing himself to Tom Brady and Cam Newton that raised eyebrows throughout the NFL draft community.
“I do have the ability to be the greatest quarterback to ever play,” Kizer said. “Imagine taking Brady’s intellect and Brady’s preparation and putting it on a guy with Cam Newton’s body. Why can’t I be the greatest? The only thing stopping me from it is me. That’s what’s driving me now.”
Though he first said his comments were taken out of context, he now stands fully behind them. Here’s what he had to say about it after being by NBCSN during Notre Dame’s spring game.
“When you decide to play a game like this you’re going to try to model yourself after the greatest. It was a comment I made and I’m going to stand by it,” Kizer said (h/t Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk). “Why play this game if you don’t want to be the greatest?”
The sentiment is one you’d expect out of any top athlete about to enter into his chosen profession. But it’s also one you might hope the athlete would keep to himself.
Being confident in oneself is a virtue, to be certain. But saying (out loud) you’re essentially a combination of Brady — a future Hall of Famer and arguably the GOAT — and Newton — a player who transformed the game hearkens to mind he hubris of Odysseus and Achilles.
No wonder an AFC head coach reportedly thinks he has “diva qualities.”
It’s going to be fascinating to see how NFL people see Kizer during the upcoming NFL draft. He could go as early as the bottom of the first round or as late as Round 3.
His own coach at college, Brian Kelly, said Kizer should have stayed in school another year — a claim the quarterback actually agrees with. There’s a whole heck of a lot going on with this young man, and we’re not sure what to expect as he enters his next phase in life.