Sam Darnold’s decision not to throw at the combine puts pressure on him to light it up at USC’s pro day later in the month, and reviews of his board work in Indy have come back mixed. My belief is that he went into the process as the leader to be the first quarterback taken, and very clearly he has work to do now to hold the top spot. (Both Josh Allen and Baker Mayfield shone last week.) That said, my feeling is the more people get to know him, the more they’ll like him, and feel comfortable handing the keys to their operations over to him.

And what his college coach, Clay Helton, told the Bull and Fox show in Cleveland on Wednesday explains it perfectly: “No situation is too big for that young man. He does it the right way. He doesn’t come in talking or shootin’ his mouth off. … I’ll never forget when he first took over the starting job, one of our great receivers that was here at the time was JuJu Smith-Schuster, who has a dynamic personality and was an older kid at that time. We’re in a 7-on-7 drill and Sam and JuJu hook up. JuJu does a great celebration right afterwards and I’ll never forget Sam walking up to him just one-on-one, not in front of the whole group, one-on-one and just saying, ‘You know what, we don’t need that. Let’s focus on our job, let’s get this practice and really continue to focus.’ I was like, ‘Wow’. For a young kid to be able to do that to a guy that’s older, a guy that was already established, to have that type of confidence to lead right off the bat in the exact, correct way, he does a great job of that. He’s such a dynamic one-on-one leader and that’s why everyone respected him.”

It speaks to Darnold’s sense for every situation as a leader, and I had my own brush with it in August. I was doing a story with Norv Turner on the ex-NFL coach’s first summer out of football and we stopped by a USC fall camp practice, which was just ending. We caught Helton and Darnold coming off the field as the rest of the team went in for dinner and to get ready for meetings. After about five minutes, Norv said to Darnold, “Well, I don’t want to hold you up, I know you got to get to dinner and meetings.” Darnold quickly responded, “Coach Helton’s right here. As long as he’s here, I’m good, and I’ve got some questions for you about Troy Aikman and Drew Brees and Philip Rivers.” Same as it was in the Smith-Schuster story that Helton told, Darnold was thinking on his feet and trying to get the most out of the situation. He had questions ready, and came away with stories on what made the quarterbacks Norv had coached great. And I left thinking that’s what a young Tom Brady or Peyton Manning would do.

That’s not to say Darnold will make it. I don’t know if he, or any of the others, will. But I do know being comfortable with a quarterback is a big part of picking one high—you’re tying your job security to the guy. And so I think if a team like the Browns or Giants or whomever likes Darnold as a player, this part of him will make them feel very good about picking him.