Nevada quarterback Carson Strong speaks during a press conference at the NFL football scouting combine on March 2, 2022, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
The Nevada Wolf Pack football team did not get the best of Carson Strong last season. Yes, Strong passed for 4,175 yards and a school-record 366 completions and 36 touchdowns with just eight interceptions in a dozen games.
But he did it all on just one good knee.
“I wasn’t able to drive off my back (right) leg,” Strong said this week at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. “I’m just learning how to drive off it again and get rid of the bad habits I developed during the year. I have so much untapped potential and power I haven’t been using.”
Strong passed for 300 or more yards in nine of 12 games last year and for three or more touchdowns seven times.
“I wasn’t healthy,” said Strong, who is expected to be drafted in the first three rounds of the seven-round NFL draft April 28-30. “During the season it (the knee) just wasn’t quite ready. I had (knee) surgery (in February) that normally requires a year to recover and I came back in six months. So what I put on tape (in the games) this year wasn’t the full me.”
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Strong said he knew going into the 2021 season that it would be his last at Nevada. “My dad tried to get me to not play the first part of the season (because of the surgery),” Strong said.
“But I was like, ‘There’s no way. I have to go out there and play with my team.’ There was never a question I was going to play. I was going to play no matter what. It was just a matter of dealing with the challenges that came with that.”
There were definite challenges last year with Strong’s surgically-repaired knee, even though the Wolf Pack rarely took him off the field.
“There were some inflammation problems and my leg was getting swollen,” Strong said. “But as the year went on I got better.”
Strong played his last season at Nevada with a bulky brace on his right knee and then went through his practices and the game at the Senior Bowl last month in Birmingham, Ala., without the brace. “What I proved at the Senior Bowl is I can move fluidly and smoothly,” Strong said. “I know I’m ready to go. I’m a lot better now and it’s still getting stronger. It’s way better than it was in the season.”
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Strong has worked with quarterback coach Jordan Palmer since the Wolf Pack season ended and has developed a friendship with Cincinnati quarterback Desmond Ridder, who is also working with Palmer in preparation for the NFL draft.
Palmer, the brother of former NFL quarterback Carson Palmer, has helped develop numerous quarterbacks now in the NFL such as Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Deshaun Watson.
“He knows his stuff,” Strong said. “I feel very fortunate and lucky he wanted to work with me.”
Palmer has been extremely complimentary of Strong in recent months, once saying that Strong, “has world class arm talent."
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Nevada was the only Division I school to offer Strong a scholarship after his 2018 senior season in high school. The biggest reason for that is likely because Strong missed his senior season at Wood High in Vacaville, Calif., because of a knee injury.
“That definitely left a chip on my shoulder,” said Strong of his recruiting experiences while still at Wood High. “My hometown school, UC Davis, was 20 minutes away from where I grew up and my dad played basketball there. They came to see me throw three times and on the third visit they said, ‘I would love for you to come to our camp.’ You know, ever since then I just had the biggest chip on my shoulder that it didn’t matter who was going to offer me. I was going to get one school to believe in me and I was going to give them everything I had. That’s one thing Nevada gave me. They had unwavering confidence in me and I can’t thank them enough for that.”
Strong said Pac-12 schools California and Oregon State also expressed some interest in him but never offered a scholarship.
“I was just a raw football player,” Strong said. “I was tall, lanky, had a good arm but I wasn’t polished. I didn’t have a quarterback trainer. I wasn’t going to the camps. But everything happens for a reason. I got to go to Nevada and I wouldn’t change anything.”
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Strong credited Wolf Pack coaches (quarterback coach Matt Mumme and head coach Jay Norvell) for putting him in position to get drafted by the NFL.
“The freedom my coaches gave me at Nevada, to be able to get into whatever play I thought worked at the time, was great,” Strong said. “I had no limitations at the line of scrimmage. I could get into any play at any time, especially on third down.
“My coaches always backed me up, whether it worked or whether it didn’t. That’s why the strongest part of my game is decision-making. My coaches developed that in me and had confidence I would make the right decisions over time.”
Strong played three seasons at Nevada, throwing for 9,368 yards, 74 touchdowns and 852 completions in just 31 games. He fell just 26 completions, eight touchdowns, 1,533 yards, and short of Nevada school career records, records he almost surely would now own if only his second season in 2020 wasn’t cut to just nine games because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Strong said this week that he doesn’t care where in the draft he gets selected and he doesn’t care which team picks him.
“You know I kind of envision myself making it the hard way anyway,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where you get drafted. It only matters what you do once you get drafted.”
Strong is hoping to become the seventh quarterback drafted from the University of Nevada.
Bill Mackrides, who was picked in the third round by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1947, was the first. Stan Heath was picked twice by the Green Bay Packers, in the 25th round in 1948 and the first round in 1949. Pat Brady, who also was a punter, was taken in the 13th round by the New York Giants in 1952.
The next quarterback taken from Nevada wasn’t until 1998 when John Dutton was taken by the Miami Dolphins. Jeff Rowe was picked in the fifth round by the Cincinnati Bengals in 2007 and Colin Kaepernick was picked in the second round by the San Francisco 49ers in 2011.
The last Wolf Pack player taken in the draft at any position was in 2018 when the Cleveland Browns took offensive lineman Austin Corbett in the second round. Corbett just won a Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Rams last month.
