Could Jayden Daniels be the 2022 first-round quarterback who's off the radar right now?

There's a college quarterback nearly every year who comes from off the radar to be a first-round pick, and Arizona State's Jayden Daniels may be that guy for 2022.

Seemingly every year, there’s a college quarterback who enters the season as an unknown and becomes a first-round NFL draft pick. 2020’s version was Zach Wilson, who took advantage of a pandemic-driven soft schedule for BYU to become the second overall pick in April.

Any ranking of the top quarterback prospects for the 2022 NFL Draft starts with Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler and goes North Carolina’s Sam Howell, USC’s Kedon Slovis, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ritter, Georgia’s J.T. Daniels. Quite frankly, based on what we’ve seen in recent years, the 2022 crop of quarterbacks doesn’t look great depth-wise at a glance.

As a freshman in 2019, Arizona State quarterback Jayden Daniels showed enough promise that head coach Herm Edwards saw Heisman potential. He put up nearly 3,300 yards of total offense with 20 total touchdowns (17 rushing) and just two interceptions in 338 pass attempts, so Daniels was a player to keep any eye on heading into the 2020 campaign.

But last season was a weird one all around college football, and the Sun Devils only played four games. Daniels wound up completing 58.3 percent of his passes with five touchdowns and an interception, along with 223 rushing yards and four touchdowns.

In his Pac-12 “Spring Ball Overreactions” piece, here’s what David Cobb of CBS Sports said about Daniels in his blurb about Arizona State.

With all due respect to USC quarterback Kedon Slovis, the best quarterback in the Pac-12 is Arizona State's Jayden Daniels. The former four-star prospect burst onto the scene in 2019 with 17 touchdown passes and just two interceptions as a freshman. However, the disjointed nature of a 2020 season that saw Arizona State play only four games kept Daniels from really breaking out nationally last year.

That probably just means he's hungrier this season as the Sun Devils look to take a major leap in Herm Edwards' fourth season as coach. It will be Daniels' second season in offensive coordinator Zak Hill's system, and if ASU can get a couple of receivers to step up, Daniels could play his way into the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft. Daniels' ability to run and improvise sets him apart from Slovis, whose numbers are inflated by the air-raid system in which he plays. 

Declaring Daniels as the best quarterback in the Pac-12 over the easily anointed Slovis is one thing. But the line that go my attention is “could play his way into the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft.”

ESPN’s Mel Kiper has mentioned Daniels too, but not in a particularly precise manner by merely saying Edwards has been talking up his quarterback.

At first glance, Daniels (185 pounds) will have to add some weight to convince NFL scouts he’s a legit prospect. But his overall tools will garner attention, with mobility as a critical skill for an NFL signal caller.

He’s not highly regarded right now, in terms of way too early 2022 quarterback rankings, But a normal, full season will help Daniels flesh out his talent in 2021, with a particular eye on a Nov. 6 game against USC and Slovis. An early declaration for the draft after a big junior season, and being a first-round pick next April, is within the realm of possibility.