What’s the next best thing to a compelling NFL season? A drama-filled NFL offseason.

The Super Bowl ended less than a month ago, and the suspense and intrigue involving roster building and strategic maneuvering are just picking up steam.

Last week alone, Marcus Mariota was released, Tua Tagovailoa was praised and Aaron Rodgers came out of the darkness.

Meanwhile, the Lamar Jackson contract impasse continued, Brock Purdy’s sudden ascension was explained and future NFL quarterbacks — big and small — auditioned for teams at the NFL scouting combine.

By Tuesday, teams — such as Jackson’s Ravens — must designate franchise or transition players. The franchise and transition tags make it harder or impossible for teams to sign away free agents.

And on March 13 free agency begins, with players such as Jimmy G looking to find a new home. All this leads to the NFL Draft on April 27-29, where the top of the first round will be dominated by the quarterbacks.

Next wave of QBs

The top quarterbacks were interviewed at the combine on Friday, and all — Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, Will Levis and Anthony Richardson — professed belief in themselves. Wouldn’t expect anything less.

Young has all the tools but size, Stroud can spin it but always had a superior team surrounding him, Levis says he has a “cannon” for an arm and showed it off on Saturday, and Richardson is sort of like the football version of the “Bull Durham” character Nuke LaLoosh — someone who’s wildly talented but wildly inconsistent as a passer, much like Josh Allen in college. “I want to be a legend,” Richardson said.

The QB drawing the most debate is the diminutive Young, who stands 5-foot-10 1/8 and weighs 204 pounds (his measurements at Alabama were 6-0, 194.).

When asked about the concern of Young’s size, former Saints and current Broncos coach Sean Payton had this to say (his comments came before he was named Denver’s coach):

“Let’s do this. Let’s not draft small players in the first 15 picks of the draft anymore in the first round. Let’s not get away from prototype. … Those early picks have to be prototype players. You have to pay attention to typing when you’re looking at the health of players and you’re looking at the size of players.”

Said Sports Illustrated reporter Albert Breer recently on a talk show: “If Bryce Young were 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, we would be talking about him like he was Joe Burrow or Andrew Luck.

“You’re looking at a prospect who’s got very advanced football knowledge, who’s got great feel and instinct in the pocket, who’s a competitor, who’s produced in a high level in one of the best programs … so he checks every single box, intangibles, tangibles, all of it. And the size isn’t there. And so that makes this very, very difficult.

The comp that Breer keeps hearing from teams is that Young is like Drew Brees, but “the big question here is gonna be how he holds up.”

Seahawks on the hunt

Seattle, which had a transformational draft last year, should go for Richardson or Young. The Seahawks have the draft capital to move up and I think they should do it, either to No. 2 or No. 3, though Arizona at No. 3 might not trade within the same division.

The new QB could learn behind Geno Smith, if it’s the raw but uber-talented Richardson, or could challenge Smith, if it’s the pro-ready Young.

With a youthful, ascending core, the Seahawks probably won’t be drafting this early (No. 5, thanks to the Russell Wilson trade) or have this much draft capital (two firsts, two seconds) in the coming years. So they should go for it while they can.

Purdy’s emergence

Last year, the 49ers selected Purdy No. 262 — the last player taken in the draft. But a fairly new test might explain his surprising emergence.

An article in The Athletic by Matt Barrows detailed that Purdy scored in the 90s in a fairly new S2 Cognition test, a comparable score to Brees.

In what might become an alternative to the controversial Wonderlic exam, players might use this test to boost their stock. (Athletes own the rights to the results).

The test, according to Barrows, measures how quickly and accurately athletes process information. He called it like a 40-yard dash for the brain.

S2 Cognition was co-founded by neuroscientists Brandon Ally and Scott Wylie, who previously studied Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, the report says.

Barrows reported that Ally and Wylie tested “more than 40,000 athletes, from big-league batsmen to pro golfers, and the company has contracts with 14 NFL teams.”

By the NFL Draft in April, S2 will have scores for more than 800 prospects.

One test seeks to find out how many objects an athlete can keep track of at the same time. In another, there are 22 figures on the screen and the athlete must locate a specific one as quickly as possible.

“We’re talking about things they have to perceive on the screen within 16/1,000th of a second, which is essentially subliminal and which scientific literature says you shouldn’t be able to process,” Ally said in the report. “And I’ll be honest with you, we’re seeing pro baseball players see something way faster than 16 milliseconds, which has never been reported in literature, all the way to some athletes who may take 150 milliseconds. So our eyes may see the same thing. But for some, it takes longer to process than others.”

The Bengals’ Joe Burrow took the test at LSU and allowed S2 to disclose the information — he scored in the 97th percentile.

“We consider anything above the 80th percentile to be elite,” Ally said.

Top-tier quarterbacks have the highest average scores, followed closely by safeties.

“The average human being can keep track of about three and a half objects at a time,” Ally said. “The average safety in the NFL, it’s closer to six.”

According to Ally, Purdy did well in three areas — spatial awareness, distraction control (maintaining a steely focus when the pocket is collapsing) and depth perception speed, where Purdy ranked in the high 90s.

Ally said the cognition test not only can forecast whether a quarterback will be successful in the NFL, it comes close to predicting the quarterback’s career passer rating.

Mariota and Tua

With the QB market getting saturated — from incoming college prospects to free agents such as Derek Carr — I’m not certain there will be one for Mariota.

In my dealings with the former Saint Louis and Oregon star, money never seemed to be the driving force in his life, but the enjoyment of playing football was. However, with fatherhood now being in the equation, it’s uncertain where he goes from here.

I’m intrigued by his participation in a summer-time Netflix docuseries along with Patrick Mahomes and Kirk Cousins. It might be revealing.

Tua drew praise from Miami general manager Chris Grier, who said Tagovailoa is “our quarterback here to be successful for a long time.”

But because of Tua’s concussion history, the Dolphins remain mum about their plans of whether to pick up the QB’s fifth-year option on his rookie contract. The Dolphins have until May 1 to exercise the option that would keep him under contract in 2024 at $23.1 million

But more worrisome than the contract is his concussion history. Most of the league and fans have their fingers crossed.