Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia does not seem too overly concerned about whether NFL teams are worried about his maturity level.
Pavia was asked about such concerns at the NFL Combine on Friday, and he was content to make light of that narrative. He joked that Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea had always liked to tell his players that they weren’t finished developing mentally yet.
“Coach Lea always pressed that your frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until you’re 25, and I just turned 24. So I’ve got like 365 days to go,” Pavia said, via Madelyn Burke of CBS Sports.
It’s a pretty good one-liner from Pavia, though it is highly unlikely to make teams feel any better about him if they do not think he will take the sport seriously enough. Realistically, those concerns will likely have to be addressed in private interviews either way.
Pavia’s larger-than-life personality endeared him to college football fans. However, his behavior after finishing second in Heisman Trophy voting left a lot of people unimpressed, and NFL teams undoubtedly took notice of that, too.
At 24, Pavia is not really a high-end prospect, and that is only further reinforced by concerns about his height. If he catches on in the league, it will be as a depth player, and no team is going to want to keep someone on the roster for that purpose if they’re going to cause issues off the field.
