There are a few prospects that have been brought up in the NFL Draft over recent years dubbed “quarterback with a linebacker mentality.”
But there’s something to be said about “wide receiver with a quarterback mentality.”
Rice signal-caller AJ Padgett describes Luke McCaffrey as the most quarterback-friendly wide receiver he’s ever played with.
So much so that it’s almost “telepathic.” That particularly came to light in the Lending Tree Bowl in December of 2022 when the Rice Owls were facing the Southern Miss Golden Eagles.
“We have this one route in our playbook, and in it, Luke is basically just reading the leverage on the guy over him and he’s going to decide whether he’s going to go in or if he’s going to go out,” Padgett said.
“It was third and long and we had called that route. I was thinking in my brain, ‘I really hope that he just runs straight and just sits and doesn’t go anywhere.'”
That’s exactly what McCaffrey did, with no verbal communication. It was as if he had read the quarterback’s mind, the way Padgett puts it.
“I threw before he broke, and it seemed like we had telepathy,” Padgett said. “It was the most crazy thing and we ended up scoring on the drive. Everyone was talking about how insane in was on the sidelines.”
One of the main reasons why McCaffrey is so good at understanding things from the quarterback perspective is because he was one himself. It was the position his name was under at Nebraska, and after a short stint at Louisville, he came to Rice where the decision to switch positions was completely left up to him.
It’s been for the better in his eyes.
“When I switched positions, it was a time in my life where I kind of opened myself up to a different world. I was so thankful because I felt like I got to be myself a whole lot more.”
And the move paid dividends for the Owls offense.
“I feel like at the receiver position, it’s hard to be 10 percent of someone’s offense,” Rice head coach Mike Bloomgren said. “And I feel like he was 40 percent of ours.
McCaffrey finished out the 2023 season with 71 receptions for 992 yards and 13 touchdowns just one season after catching 58 passes for 723 yards and 6 touchdowns.
“From a tangibles perspective, you get a guy who is sudden. You get a guy who understands the game incredibly well, which is why he plays so fast at the wide receiver position,” Bloomgren said.
His catch radius and consistency with his hands showed year-over-year improvement.
“He’s stronger than everyone gives him credit for, and everyone thinks ‘this dude can’t run’, but he can.”
McCaffrey had obvious success at wideout, but it didn’t end there.
He’s truly done it all, and all of those abilities will make him an asset in more ways than one at the NFL level. McCaffrey himself calls his versatility his best quality.
“We would give him a reverse every game. We’d run a quarterback-driven run, a wildcat type of thing with him,” Bloomgren said.
“He just did so much, in addition to when we had to be in a sting punt situation. He’d jump out there and be the gunner and make the play. He did so much for our football team, not just our offense.”
Coming from the system Rice runs offensively is also something that draws scouts in.
“We ran a system where every play is three plays in one,” McCaffrey said.
He noted the translation at the Senior Bowl, where prospects from a host of different programs and backgrounds had to adjust to a completely new system.
“It’s really cool to go through that and to be able to have to have read a defense already for the past three years at Rice and then get into an offense like this where you’re in the huddle,” McCaffrey said. “You have long play calls and you’re used to it.”
“A lot of guys come from systems that don’t.”
But more than anything else, McCaffrey is known for who he is as a person and a teammate as someone who “always walks into the building with a smile on his face.”
Padgett, who was just two lockers down from him at Rice, and anyone else who has spent time around McCaffrey will tell you that.
“You see the McCaffrey family all the time on social media all the time. Knowing Luke, all the great things you hear about him and his family, I’m inclined to believe all of that is true.”
“He’s everything you want in terms of a worker. He prepares the right way and is always going to be the most prepared guy. He walks in the building with a smile every day.
Luke McCaffrey never has a bad day, according to Bloomgren.
“Today is the best day of his life and tomorrow is going to be even better. That’s just the way he lives.”