I’m clearly a Bengals fan. The Bengals are very likely taking Burrow in the draft. I’m stoked.
What are ya’lls thoughts on him, his game, his persona, stats last season, etc?
He obviously had an outstanding season at L.S.U. but I’m not one to get hyped up about QBs in the N.F.L. until they’ve shown that they can “do it” at the pro level for several seasons. Matter of fact I was watching the latest “Pro Football Weekly” show earlier today and on it Hub Arkush (the “czar” or “quarterback” of Pro Football Weekly as he’s often introduced as) said that the facts are that 90% of quarterbacks drafted in the first round of the N.F.L. draft don’t make it in the N.F.L. so I think that my skepticism of young quarterbacks is well justified.
90% sounds high. Seems like it depends on what the definition of “make it” is. We are talking about a league with an average career length of 3 years.
In my inexpert opinion he seems to have all the physical skills needed. To be the star franchise quarterback for 10-15 years like everyone is looking for calls for more than that. The ability to read and react to defenses at NFL speed is the most important ability and can’t be measured until it happens.
I know this is almost 3 years out of date but it’s still relevant.
They used what to me is a good measure of what a “successful” QB is; being a multi-year starter in the NFL.
Going by that measure, they determined the percentage of successful QBs from 1990-2016 based on where they were picked in the draft:
QB’s drafted 1990-2016
pick success %
1-16: 81%
17-32: 65%
2nd round: 48%
3rd round: 25%
4th round: 13%
5th round: 6%
6th round: 16%
7th round: 6%
Basically, the earlier you are drafted the more likely you will be successful. You can argue that teams may also be getting into the “sunk cost fallacy” where they figure that if they spent an early draft pick on a QB that they need to try to make it work, but being a starting QB means the team needs you to succeed or the whole team will fail. And if you have a Ryan Leaf you know that you can’t keep him as starter no matter what he cost you.
The “90% fail” stat is undoubtedly a hot take not based on any actual statistics. Most QBs drafted early work out at some point, and most successful QBs are drafted early. The QBs drafted later that shine (Brady, Wilson) stand out because they are outliers.
Thanks for sharing that, Atamasama – very useful. Though, the writer’s definition of “successful” is “multi-year starter at QB for the team that drafted you” (which, he acknowledges, isn’t a full picture of “success”). By that standard, he’s including players like JaMarcus Russell, Rick Mirer, Blake Bortles, and Blaine Gabbert as successes, which I think is pretty darned generous.
But, even by that generous defintion of success, he’s still saying that one in five QBs drafted in the first half of the first round won’t make it, and one in three drafted in the second half of the first round won’t.
Either way, I agree, “90% fail” is an exaggeration.
Not a Bengals fan, but I think he is the real deal, too. He won’t win a Super Bowl anytime soon (if ever) but he can definitely make Cincy and Baltimore the top two dogs in the AFC North, and likely get the Bengals over that playoff-drought hump. Probably another Phillip Rivers.
It has to be relative though. Bortles for example shouldn’t be on anyone’s all-time top QB list but he was a starter for most games in 5 seasons as a Jaguar and even got to the AFC Championship a couple of years ago (granted that was despite him, not because of him). He also owns a bunch of franchise records. QBs like him are better than the ones who are one-and-done like EJ Manuel. I’d call Bortles “successful” even if that’s a mediocre success.
That’s a fair point. I went through the list he had, of guys from the top half of the first round, and made some groupings on my own, admittedly subjective, judgment on success.
-
Clearly successful – long-term starter, multiple playoff appearances, multiple All-Pro / Pro Bowl selections, etc. (14)
P. Manning, E. Manning, Bledsoe, Palmer, Alex Smith, Vick, Stafford, Newton, Luck, McNabb, McNair, Ryan, Rivers, Roethlisberger. -
Moderately succesful – long-ish term starter, may have led his team to the playoffs a few times (7)
George, Collins, Tannehill, Cutler, Culpepper, Bortles, maybe Harrington -
It’s still early, but looking successful (2)
Goff, Wentz -
It’s still early, but longer-term success is in doubt (2)
Mariota, Winston
So, even if I generously count all of those as “successful,” that’s 25 out of 47, or 53%. It just shows just how hard it is to predict who’s going to be a successful NFL player, particularly at quarterback.
I could be totally off base here, but I am wondering if he is a real life Bo Callahan ala Draft Day. I saw him play in a handful of games and it just didn’t appear that his teammates really like him that much. Whenever he threw a touchdown I never saw any of his teammates go to him to celebrate. I did see him seek out a receiver to give a high five or whatever, but never the other way around. Whenever I saw him get sacked or knocked down I never saw a lineman offer him a hand to get up. When he went to the bench after a punt or turnover, I never saw him talking with anyone on the sideline. He either sat on the bench by himself or in between two backup QBs and never saw a word exchanged.
He seems to have all of the physical tools you could ask for. What kind of a leader he is in the NFL remains to be seen. I could be reading way too much into my observations, just wondering if I am the only one who has noticed it.
I’m pretty sure I heard Mr. Arkush correctly but even if I didn’t the takeaway is that quarterbacks taken in the first round don’t fulfill expectations very often (which leaves room for “gems” picked in later rounds) so as impressive as Joe Burrow was at L.S.U. it remains to be seen how he’ll do in his “post-doc” football career.
I guess the question then is what expectations are they supposed to fill? From whom? Pundits, the team drafting them, fans, sports media?
If you hope they are good enough to start a few games by year two and be serviceable, you probably have a large majority. Though that’s a low bar. If you expect them to lead your team from the bottom of the league to hoisting the Lombardi in their rookie year you’re going to be disappointed. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in between, but where?
Okay, so I re-watched that segment of the show just now. The exact quote from Hub Arkush was: “We did a study at Pro Football Weekly and since 2000, 90% of quarterbacks taken in the first round fail. That’s just the reality of it.” So the comment is somewhat nebulous, agreed. However, if the general expectation is that first round picks (not just quarterbacks) will be starters and contributors right away and will eventually make it to Pro Bowls and onto All-Pro lists then maybe it’s not hard to see what he was talking about. Maybe just ponder all the current starting QBs in the league and think to yourself which ones are truly top-level and then remind yourself (or look it up if you have to) in which round those guys were taken.
So, it does sound like they have some sort of actual (though unstated) criteria for defining success or failure, but that it’s a pretty high bar.
The highest bar (and what a lot of sports fans might agree with is) “anything less than a Super Bowl win is a failure.” By that standard, only four quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 2000 are successes: Ben Roethlisberger, Joe Flacco, Eli Manning, and Aaron Rodgers (between the four of them, they have six rings). If that’s their criteria, then, yeah, something like 90% of first-round QBs are “failures.”
Even if one added in some additional “high bars” to the criteria (MVP or Offensive Player of the Year awards, All-Pro), I don’t think you’d likely add anyone else to the list, except maybe Matt Ryan or Phillip Rivers.
But, part of the reason for this is the dominance of the Patriots over the past 20 years, behind their sixth-round draft choice, who accounts for six Super Bowl rings and three MVP awards. And, a number of the other top quarterbacks in that time frame either were drafted outside of the first round (Drew Brees, Russell Wilson), were drafted before 2000 (Peyton Manning), or both (Brett Favre).
I have a personal theory as to why it’s hard to reliably draft a good QB.
I think we get an idea of what makes a good QB. Physically and mentally. So someone like Brees gets drafted (after the first round) and does well, despite not being the mighty statue that is expected. Then Wilson is drafted, also late, and most think he’s too short, and he also breaks records. Now being short is okay, having running skills is something to look for, and you get Kyler Murray drafted #1 overall. Lamar Jackson then lights up the league with his legs.
When the standard of what makes a good QB keeps changing it makes it even harder to find one that clicks.
This gives a list of quarterbacks drafted in the first round from 2000 through the 2016 draft. You can be the judge of how many of those have succeeded and how many of them have failed (to meet expectations of a first round draft pick).
See my list in post 9 – though, that was based on the article to which Atamasama had linked, which was focused on the QBs taken in the first half of the first round.
To the 14 in the “clearly successful” list I’d made earlier, if we add in those taken in the second half of the first round (from your USA Today link), that only adds Aaron Rodgers. I’d also then add Joe Flacco to my “moderately successful” group – yes, he won a Super Bowl, and was the Ravens’ starter for 10+ seasons, but he’s never even gone to a Pro Bowl, much less been an All-Pro. Definitely not a failure, but also not at the level of most of the guys in my “clearly successful” group.
But, I’ll also say that quarterbacks who do get drafted in the first round (especially those drafted early in the first round) do have outsized expectations placed on them, undoubtedly far higher expectations than first-round draft choices at other positions (with the possible exception of non-QBs taken with the first overall pick). And, while I think it’s fair to say that a first-round quarterback who puts together a solid career as a starting quarterback is a success, it’s also likely that he still hasn’t lived up to the (possibly unfair) expectations which came along with being drafted in the first round.
FGE,
Go on YouTube, and watch the tapes of LSU this season. Watch how accurate Burrow is downfield. Just watch the damn tapes.
Any team that has a shot at Burrow and doesn’t draft him is insane. He’s a can’t miss. He’s not padding his stats by throwing in an RPO system, though he does have that at LSU. Burrow throws the deep ball almost too - the - inch. Granted, some of that is the system, some of that is the talented receivers core, but most of that accuracy is Burrow.
In addition to what **asahi **said, Burrow played in the SEC, the toughest division in football. He wasn’t padding his stats against minnows in a weak conference - he was beating the likes of Alabama.
Does Joe Burrow become the next Tom Brady or Joe Montana? I think that unfortunately that depends a lot on the franchise, the coaching, and supporting cast.
I don’t know if we’ll be talking about Burrow 10 years from now. The difference between Joe Montana and Jake Plummer is, Montana had Bill Walsh, the Debartolo family, and years of a system to work with. Plummer started in Arizona, and then ended with an aging Denver Broncos team. He still made the playoffs a few times with both teams but we don’t talk about him now. Nevertheless, Plummer made the Cardinals better than they were. Plummer made the Broncos competitive after a legend retired, and they weren’t that competitive again until some guy named Manning became their QB.