Davidson Has Big Week At East-West Shrine Bowl

Back about six months ago or so, the idea that Kevin Davidson would continue Princeton's run of producing NFL-level quarterbacks seemed a bit unlikely.

Davidson entered his senior year with one career start, so his path to get to the NFL had some ground to make up. Then the 6-4, 225-pound senior from California went out and had a big senior year, one in which he led a team that figured to be in a bit of a rebuilding mode after serious graduation losses to an 8-2 record while writing his name all over the Princeton record book.

Beyond any numbers, he showed that he has a professional arm and can use it to make essentially every throw. On top of all that, he became the team leader that great quarterbacks tend to make.

With all of that, he began to attract NFL scouts to Princeton games. Since the season ended, he's been concentrating on preparing himself for what comes next, and he took a major step in that directly this past week.

Davidson competed at the East-West Shrine Bowl in Florida Saturday after a week of practice and meetings with scouts from all 32 teams. His week helped his status as an intriguing prospect as the process continues.

"The personnel guy who invited all of the players took me aside and thanked me for making him look good," Davidson said with a laugh. "It was an intense week. I met a lot of great guys, from big schools, small schools and everything in between. It was a really great opportunity, and it went really well."

Davidson didn't start until his senior year because of the presence of the two quarterbacks at Princeton who proceeded him, John Lovett and Chad Kanoff. Those two accounted for the 2016, 2017 and 2018 Bushnell Cups as the Ivy League Player of the Year, and both of them went to the NFL. Lovett, in fact, is on the Kansas City Chiefs, who will be playing in the Super Bowl.
In addition to his one game against Brown as a junior, when he threw for 299 yards and four touchdowns, Davidson went 209 for 313 for 2,569 yards while becoming the fourth Tiger quarterback to threw for 20 touchdowns in a season. Despite being only a one-year starter, he finished his career seventh all-time at Princeton in touchdown passes and 12th in passing yards. He is also the Ivy League record holder for touchdown passes in a game with seven, which he did against Bucknell this season, and is the only Princeton quarterback ever with two games with at least five TD passes.

He also received the invitation to the East-West Bowl, a game that sent 70 players a year ago to the NFL.

"The scouts grabbed you from the minute you got there," he says. "I got to meet with some GMs. They had really good advice on handling the process. The practices went really well. There were 300 scouts there. The game was fun for your family and friends, but the practices were the most important part. There were some guys who didn't even play in the game because they didn't want to get hurt."

This wasn't exactly a relaxing week in Florida. The days started with a wake-up call at 6 each morning, and then there would be meetings, practice and more meetings throughout the day. At night would be NFL-sponsored events on things like wealth management and handling social media. There were also IQ tests – "I took around 25 of them" – and individual meetings with scouts, often until midnight.

In Davidson's case, there was also a final exam Friday.

"I had to miss team pictures for that," he said. "The other guys asked me where I was and I told them I had a final. They were like 'wow, that's such a great opportunity to be able to do both, with football and school like that.'"

Next up would be the NFL Combine. He's still waiting to hear if he'll be receiving an invitation to participate, but even if he isn't offered one, there will be a pro day at Princeton and then more workouts leading up to the draft.

Kanoff and Lovett, as well as recent NFL players Jesper Horsted and Stephen Carlson, were all undrafted free agents. The odds are very, very strong that Davidson will be in someone's training camp, one way or another.

"I'm just being patient," he said. "This week was great. It was a lot of fun. I had a lot of support from my family and coaches. Coach Rosenbaum [Mark, the Princeton quarterback coach] was there. He talked to scouts about me. I just tried to enjoy it each day, and I was able to do that."

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