But 247Sports national analyst Charles Power said Bailey mostly “looked how I expected” throughout his five-day stay in Texas.
“His best part of the week was the red-zone 7-on-7, where they kind of were working from the 20 and in,” Power said of Bailey, who’s ranked the No. 120 overall prospect and No. 5 pro-style quarterback in the industry-generated 247Sports Composite for the 2020 class.
“I think his strength now is really, like, a touch, red-zone passer where he can kind of throw fades and jump balls, because that’s definitely his strong suit.”
Power said it’s “kind of hard” to determine how much to weigh the 7-on-7 portion of The Opening Finals for quarterbacks “because of the amount of reps each guy takes, because they kind of are really at the discretion of the team they’re playing with.”
Bailey, for instance, “probably didn’t get as many reps” as “some of the other quarterbacks” on his 7-on-7 team at The Opening Finals.
“When he played, he was solid,” Power said of Bailey.
He still has room for improvement, though, starting with “just the overall kind of speed at which he plays,” Power said.
“When you’re kind of comparing him to the elite of the elite, he’d probably be a little slower with the way he kind of moves and just kind of the whole package,” Power said of Bailey. “He took three sacks — three timed sacks — in the group play. Kind of how they set it up was every quarterback had a game during the group play, so he had an entire game in that. And I think he had the most sacks of anybody in that. He doesn’t really have problems with his straight-line speed. It’s more so just the footwork, I would say.”
Power said the Elite 11 Finals and The Opening Finals showed that Bailey’s strength is being “a touch passer from the pocket — just tossing it up to kind of big receivers” in “jump-ball situations.”
“For our rankings, I think he probably would’ve been, like, 11 or 12. His numbers were basically pretty negligible with TJ Finley’s,” Power said, referring to the LSU commitment who finished No. 11 in 247Sports’ rankings of the Elite 11 quarterbacks. “(Bailey) had his moments, especially in that red-zone stuff. But he was probably middle-of-the-pack outside of that, for the most part.”
