Week 8 Scouting Notebook: Jacob Rodriguez, an exciting QB class and more

By Jack Brentnall

Week 8 of the college football season delivered on high-stakes drama and major movement on NFL Draft boards.

While a trio of star quarterbacks – Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza, Oregon’s Dante Moore, and Alabama’s Ty Simpson – broke away from the pack with more elite performances, another highly-touted quarterback, Miami’s Carson Beck, saw his stock plummet after an ugly four-interception outing.

Elsewhere, the wide receiver class showed off its depth and polish, and we check in on an explosive, high-upside linebacker prospect in Texas Tech’s Jacob Rodriguez and the dominant two-headed monster of the Notre Dame backfield.

Here’s the scouting report on who is rising and who is falling after a pivotal Week 8.

Rodriguez shines despite Red Raiders loss

I really love this linebacker class. It feels like with each week that passes there is another name worth highlighting. The guy that caught my eye this weekend was Texas Tech’s Jacob Rodriguez.

Rodriguez has had a number of impressive games already this season, but he really impressed against the Sun Devils, despite the Red Raiders losing the game.

What really stood out in this game was Rodriguez’s elite feel for run defense. He finished the game with 14 tackles, the most he’s had in a single game all season. Six of those constituted defensive stops.

At 6’1” and 235 pounds, Rodriguez isn’t the biggest linebacker in the class, but he plays with the necessary physicality and temperament. There were numerous occasions in this game where he was able to get downhill, engage with the Arizona State offensive line, and shed his blocker to make a play on the ball carrier.

He also displays an excellent first step. Rodriguez did a great job of reading his keys and reacting instinctively, allowing him to fly past would-be blockers and create splash plays.

He also managed to register a pair of forced fumbles in this game, although Texas Tech was unfortunately not able to recover either.

Rodriguez has certainly had an unusual journey to being an NFL prospect. He was a four-sport athlete in high school where he played quarterback and safety. He committed to Virginia as a quarterback before switching to linebacker after transferring to Texas Tech. That quarterback background really shows in how he reads the game – a trait that gives him a clear competitive advantage in terms of diagnosis and reaction speed.

Given his physical traits and football IQ, Rodriguez is quickly transitioning from a position-switch project to a legitimate, high-upside day-two prospect.

We have some quarterbacks to be excited about

The 2026 quarterback landscape has shifted drastically over the first half of the college football season, but over the last few weeks, it feels like it has begun to stabilise. I’ve felt that three names have begun to separate themselves from the rest of the pack, and Week 8 solidified that view.

People will have them stacked differently, but at this point, it feels difficult to argue the fact that the top tier of quarterback prospects is made up of Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza, Oregon’s Dante Moore, and Alabama’s Ty Simpson.

All three put on a show this weekend. Moore went 15 of 20 for 288 yards, four touchdowns, and an interception against Rutgers. Per PFF, he recorded five big-time throws in this game, the most of any Power Four quarterback in Week 8.

Not to be outdone, Mendoza completed a near-flawless 24 of 28 passes for 332 yards and four touchdowns against Michigan State. Simpson also got the job done in a tough, high-stakes contest against Tennessee, completing 19 of 29 passes for 253 yards and two touchdowns.

What really separates this trio from the rest of the pack is their ability to consistently find answers from the pocket and win with timing and accuracy. Their tape may not always match the likes of John Mateer and LaNorris Sellers for splash plays and off-script excitement, but these pocket passing traits are exactly what quarterbacks need to be able to translate well to the NFL level.

Despite the initial preseason pessimism, the continuous high-level play from Moore, Mendoza, and Simpson offers a compelling counter-narrative to the idea of a weak 2026 quarterback class. If this trio can maintain their current level of play through the remainder of the season,  we could be talking about three potential top ten picks. In a class lacking a tonne of blue chip talent, that is certainly exciting.

An emerging wide receiver class

A few weeks ago, I did a mailbag where I spoke about the state of the 2026 wide receiver class, and I expressed some concerns. I mentioned at the time that there was only one player at the time I’d really be comfortable taking top-15 in Arizona State’s Jordyn Tyson. I want to put it on record that I’ve changed my view on that, and the state of this class more broadly.

Not only have USC’s Makai Lemon and Ohio State’s Carnell Tate emerged as legitimate first-round talents, but we’ve also seen some really exciting stuff from the players that are perhaps in the next tier or two down. Week 8 was a perfect example of that.

Louisville wide receiver Chris Bell tore apart Miami’s secondary to the tune of 136 yards and two touchdowns on nine receptions. Indiana’s Omar Cooper racked up 115 yards and a score against Michigan State, building on an impressive Week 7 performance against Oregon. Alabama’s Germie Bernard had a more modest stat line of five catches for 60 yards, but his reliability and sure hands showed up again against a talented Tennessee secondary.

Even names that I didn’t have on my radar over the summer, like Oklahoma’s slot receiver Isaiah Sategna, have continued to impress.

What is really giving me hope for this wide receiver class is the variety of skillsets available, but also the number of players who already look technically refined and polished. We’ve seen with recent classes that those are the sorts of players who tend to find early success in the pros, so this could be a great class if you happen to be a receiver-needy team.

Notre Dame backfield duo run wild vs USC

Last week USC were making headlines for an outstanding rushing performance against Michigan. This weekend roles were reversed, as they were steamrolled by Notre Dame in a rivalry game that didn’t disappoint.

The numbers for the Fighting Irish backfield duo were eye-popping. Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price combined for a whopping 315 yards and a pair of touchdowns on 37 combined carries. Between them, they averaged 8.5 yards per attempt, with a staggering 59% of that yardage coming after contact.

Notre Dame had a scarcely believable 56% success rate on run plays and averaged 0.43 EPA per rush, a figure that ranks in the 97th percentile.

Notre Dame’s offensive line deserves its fair share of credit for this performance, as their blocks helped to spring a number of Love and Price’s big runs. Yet, what stood out consistently was the duo’s ability to turn a good run into a great one. Sometimes this was thanks to excellent second-level vision. Other times it was simply a case of hard-nosed, physical running to churn through contact.

Love’s dominance should come as no surprise to anyone who watched him in summer scouting. He was comfortably my RB1, and that remains true eight weeks into the season. Yet Price’s emergence as a reliable change-of-pace back has been a welcome surprise.

He has actually outproduced Love on a per-carry basis, with a better yards-per-carry, forced missed tackle rate, explosive run rate, and breakaway run rate.

In what looks to be a weak running back class outside of a true star in Love, Price has a chance to make his name as one of the next best options. Games like this will certainly have NFL scouts interested.

A performance to four-get for Carson Beck

It’s safe to say Week 8 didn’t go as planned for Miami. Coming into the week undefeated, they lost 24-21 to Louisville in a contest where their quarterback was making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Carson Beck completed 25 of 35 passes for 271 yards, zero touchdowns, and four interceptions.

This game marked a real step back for Beck, who had been enjoying a strong start to the season in Miami.

The big criticism for Beck has always been his inability to hold up under pressure, but that wasn’t his issue in Week 8. Instead, somewhat surprisingly, it was his play from clean pockets. Three of his four interceptions in this game came on clean dropbacks where he was not pressured. These weren’t panicked throws from a quarterback under duress – they were simply poor decisions by an experienced starter who should know better.

While Beck has been a good point guard at the helm of the Hurricanes’ offense, it has become pretty evident that he has lost a lot of juice on his throws since undergoing offseason elbow surgery. That was a big factor in his first two picks, where his lack of velocity saw him underthrow his target and present a gift to the defense.

When you look purely at true dropbacks in this game (no play action and no screens), Beck’s statline was a bleak 12 of 23 for 121 yards and four interceptions.

Beck is more than likely going to be a backup at the NFL level, but if he’s to find a long-term home there, he needs to show that he is able to take far better care of the football. The arrow is pointing sharply down.

Beck is likely a backup at the NFL level, but performances like this will threaten his ability to stick on a roster. The job of a backup is to provide a stable, mistake-free presence if your starter goes down. These four interceptions – especially the clean-pocket mistakes – are impossible to excuse.

If he is to find a long-term home in the league, he must bounce back and prove he can be a trustworthy caretaker of the football, because the margin for error for a prospective NFL backup is razor thin.

JACK BRENTNALL

HEAD OF NFL DRAFT CONTENT

Previously the founder of The Jet Sweep, Jack joined The Touchdown as head of Draft Content in 2024. A Scouting Academy alumnus, Jack has been Covering the NFL Draft since 2020. Follow him on Twitter @Jack_Brentnall.

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