Can a quarterback who’s under 5-foot-10 make it in the NFL? Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia wants to prove he can.
Pavia measured 5-foot-9 and 7/8 at the Senior Bowl, which would make him the shortest quarterback since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger if he makes it to the league.
Currently, the NFL’s shortest quarterbacks are Carolina’s Bryce Young and Arizona’s Kyler Murray, both of whom measured 5-foot-10 and 1/8 before they were drafted. Pavia is only a quarter-inch shorter than them, which shouldn’t take him off NFL team’s draft boards, especially considering that Young and Murray were both first overall picks.
But NFL teams look closely at measurables, and drafting a quarterback under 5-foot-10 may be a bridge too short for some teams. Accurate measurements aren’t available for every player in NFL history, but pro-football-reference.com lists Eddie LeBaron of the 1963 Cowboys at 5-foot-9, making him the last quarterback to play in the NFL at under 5-foot-10.
Vanderbilt listed Pavia at 6-foot-0, which anyone could see was nonsense. Now NFL teams know how short Pavia really is, and they’ll have a decision to make about whether he has the stature of a pro quarterback.
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