I'm not professing to know how all this works, but I don't understand how this can be held against him. It's not like I'm comparing him to Coker, Mayfield, or Watson, where they're roughly in the same competetive group.
Did you think Cook should have done better? With what he had I can understand being disappointed if Michigan State was not a top 4 school, or if they weren't in Championship discussions every year. Do we think less of Jim Kelly because he brought extremely talented teams to the Super Bowl? 4 times?
Should Penn State have been in those conversations?
I don't think so, & it doesn't matter who the QB was, right? Would Cook have performed better in Franklin's offense? I don't know. However, I've read at least one analysis that blamed Hackenberg's lazy feet from the shotgun... does Connor Cook have lazy feet from the shotgun?
So, when I look at Hackenberg, my question is how will he perform on my extremely talented NFL team? He did well on a fairly talented team. I'll give him a 6 or a 7.
I look at Cook, how will he perform on my extremely talented team? Well, I don't think he's going to hold them back. Because I've seen him with an extremely talented team, I give him a 7 or 8. But that's a real grade. I don't have to guess, or what if.
To me, playing well on a talented team does not make a prospect worthless. Like I said in another thread, it doesn't make Brady a scrub, just because he's throwing to Gronk.