Max
Duggan.
Max
Duggan.
TCU· 6'2"· 207 lb· 4.52s 40
"He finished second for the Heisman and won the Davey O'Brien, then went 239th overall: the 2023 draft decided that Max Duggan's best season was a story, not a projection."Pre-draft read
Duggan played quarterback with his whole body. He was at his best on the move, sliding off pressure and turning broken downs into first downs, and TCU built its 2022 run to the national title game on designed keepers, red-zone runs and a passer who would take the hit to finish a throw. Inside structure he processed fast and got to his second read.
The arm was the ceiling. He has enough velocity for the intermediate windows but muscles throws when he wants extra on them, and the ball placement wanders on out-breakers and deep sideline shots. Accuracy came and went by quarter rather than by season, and the delivery gets long when his feet are unsettled.
Play-action and movement-based offense with designed quarterback runs and a heavy dose of half-field reads off boot and sprint action
Year 1: developmental QB3 on the practice squad; ceiling: mobile backup who can win a spot start with the run game
Full-field drop-back passing offense that requires anticipation throws outside the numbers on a schedule
The Chargers behind Justin Herbert was the right room and the wrong opportunity.
Max Duggan Highlights: No. 12 Baylor vs. TCU (2019) | Stadium
Max Duggan Highlights: No. 15 Texas vs. TCU (2019) | Stadium
Max Duggan Highlights: West Virginia vs. TCU (2019) | Stadium
Very few Day 3 quarterbacks arrive with Duggan's resume. He started 43 of 47 games at TCU, completed 739 of 1,225 passes for 9,618 yards with 73 touchdowns and 28 interceptions, finished second for the 2022 Heisman Trophy, and won the Davey O'Brien Award while dragging TCU to the national championship game. He also had a heart condition discovered during 2020 COVID testing and a procedure that nearly cost him a season, then came back and started.
Evaluators liked everything about the person and hesitated on the passer. The toughness is genuine, the leadership is documented, the running is a real weapon: 10 rushing touchdowns in 2020, nine more during the 2022 run, plus 110 rushing yards in the Big 12 title game. But the 2019 and 2021 tape was a different quarterback than the 2022 tape, and the accuracy dips were mechanical rather than situational.
The consensus landed on developmental backup. Good athlete at 4.52, a 7.12 RAS, quick processor, but an arm that limits the throw menu and a body at 207 pounds that invites contact he cannot always avoid. Los Angeles took him 239th overall to sit behind Justin Herbert, which is exactly the job the film described.
- 01
Legitimate run threat
Ten rushing scores in 2020 and nine more in 2022, plus 110 rushing yards in the Big 12 title game, made him a real problem on keepers.
- 02
Toughness that shows up
Came back from a 2020 heart procedure to start, and he consistently stood in against free rushers to finish throws downfield.
- 03
Fast processor
Gets off the first read quickly and finds the checkdown or the scramble lane instead of holding the ball and eating the sack.
- 04
Red-zone command
TCU trusted him with the ball in tight space, both as a runner on the goal line and on the quick game inside the 20.
- 05
Proven leader at scale
Forty-three career starts, a Davey O'Brien Award and a Heisman runner-up finish while carrying a team to the title game.
- 01
Inconsistent ball placement
Out-breakers and deep sideline throws drift, and receivers too often adjust backward or leave yards on the field.
- 02
Muscles the throw
When he wants extra velocity he throws with his arm and shoulder instead of his base, and the accuracy drops with the effort.
- 03
Uneven career tape
The 2022 season looks nothing like 2019 or 2021, so evaluators had to decide which quarterback they believed.
- 04
Frame and contact volume
At 207 pounds his running style invites hits, and durability was a fair question for a quarterback built on scrambles.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.52sp50
- Vertical
- 30.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 116inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.26sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.45sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Cmp | Att | Yds | TD | Int |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | TCU | 12 | 181 | 339 | 2077 | 15 | 10 |
| 2020 | TCU | 10 | 146 | 240 | 1795 | 10 | 4 |
| 2021 | TCU | 10 | 145 | 227 | 2048 | 16 | 6 |
| 2022 | TCU | 15 | 267 | 419 | 3698 | 32 | 8 |
| Career | — | 47 | 739 | 1225 | 9618 | 73 | 28 |
Seasons per cfbstats (2020-22) and footballdb (2019). Season sums match TCU/Chargers official career totals of 739-1,225, 9,618 yards, 73 TD, 28 INT. Rushing splits for 2019 are not published in a verifiable source and are left blank rather than zeroed.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- 2022 Heisman Trophy runner-up
- 2022 Davey O'Brien Award
- 2022 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award
- 2022 Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year
- 2022 CFP National Championship Game starter
Mobile backup who survives on scrambling and command rather than arm talent.
Undervalued athlete who built a long career because a staff invented a role around his legs.
Decorated college passer whose ball placement keeps him off active rosters entirely.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Duggan spent his 2023 rookie year on the Chargers practice squad and was signed to the active roster before Week 16 without appearing in a game. Los Angeles waived him in August 2024 after one preseason outing. He started five of eight games for the UFL St. Louis Battlehawks in 2025 (563 passing yards, 4 TD, 4 INT, 300 rushing yards, 5 rushing TD), signed with the CFL Toronto Argonauts that August, was released in May 2026, signed and released by Ottawa by June 2026, and was a free agent entering that fall.
The Chargers kept him on the practice squad all of 2023 and signed him to the active roster before Week 16 without ever putting him in a regular-season game. That is the whole NFL story. Los Angeles waived him in August 2024 after one preseason appearance, and no other NFL team picked up the phone. He has never taken an NFL regular-season snap.
His football life continued anyway. He started five of eight games for the St. Louis Battlehawks in the 2025 UFL season, throwing for 563 yards with four touchdowns and four interceptions while adding 300 rushing yards and five scores, then signed with the Toronto Argonauts that August. Toronto released him in May 2026, Ottawa signed him days later and cut him in June, and he entered the fall of 2026 unattached. The evaluation was right about the arm and right about the man: the competitiveness kept getting him another job, and the throwing never turned a job into a career.