If you’re drafting a QB high in the first round your present is pretty shaky too.
Pft, if we’re talking Manning-related “busts”, let’s talk about Luck. Since Luck was drafted, Manning has won more games and thrown more touchdowns, even though he’s been retired for two seasons now.
Luck is a hell of a quarterback when he’s on the field…it just seems he’s never there. He’s Bradford 2.0.
From a very basic Google search of likely starters, 19 of 32 quarterbacks were taken in the first round, with a significant bias to players drafted in the last five years. Of a Top Five of Rodgers, Brady, Wilson, Brees, and Cousins (based on pay/stats/demand), only one was drafted in the first, and even then late (Rodgers at 24), with the rest drafted in the 7th, 3rd, 2nd, and 4th, respectively. Of the 18 (taking Godgers out), I would wager only five teams have a solid franchise quarterback with a proven track record that they wouldn’t move on from given the chance - Wentz, Ryan, Trubisky, Newton, and Luck.
The previous analysis discounts recent draft picks, because by and large, rookie quarterbacks that start Week 1 generally don’t work out. They start because there’s nothing better, because the team is bad. A bigger and faster game combined with inexperience and a weak team does not add up to a recipe for success.
Second overall pick, after Peyton Manning, and a lot of analysts had him ranked #1. I still say the jury is out on which guy is better.
The Titans have literally bet their franchise on Mariota. They fired the coach and OC that took them from 2-14 to the second round of the playoffs in three years because they thought Mariota was being held back by their offensive schemes.
On the flipside, over half of Superbowls and nearly half of the conferences championships were won by 1st round QBs.
Small sample size plus cherry picking. why would you include Cousins but not Newton, Big Ben, Stafford, Ryan and Wentz? They’ve had more success than Cousins. Go back just a handful of years an the balance shifts a ton with Manning, Eli, Flacco and Big Ben all being recent Super Bowl champs with guys like Palmer and Alex Smith being regulars in the playoffs.
Go back and look at the HOF QBs for the last 20-30 years, how many were first rounders versus others?
If not for the outlier in Brady no one would ever make this argument. Even Brees was the 32nd overall pick, he’s a hell of a lot closer to Rodgers and Big Ben than Brady. Brady has made people ridiculously irrational about this, it took 15 years of drafting mid-round QBs to find Wilson.
I find it interesting that the Patriots and Packers, 2 teams that found HOF QBs in the middle-late rounds, both drafted their heirs in the first round. You’d think they both would be advocates of waiting more than anyone else.
I agree. We won’t know for sure until Peyton returns from retirement after his anti-aging implants, and Leaf gets out of prison. THEN we’ll know for sure!
All of our expert analysis plus the shady crap we get from the experts, " …don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.”
I think we should guess which of our surefire hits will be out for the season even before playing a game. Every year a couple go down from contact/non-contact injuries in workouts of practices. We’d have just as much success that.
Does Vegas have lines on this sort of a bet? Asking for a friend, I don’t gamble.
Do us all a favor and take off your Patriots-colored glasses.
In the case of the Packers, I’m guessing that the “middle-late rounds” QB to whom you’re referring is Bart Starr. Yes, he was a 17th-round choice*, but that was 62 years ago, and I kind of suspect that it doesn’t have a big impact on the Packers’ current draft strategy. 
Their more recent HOF QB, Brett Favre, was a 2nd round draft choice (#33 overall) by the Falcons, and the Packers traded a first-round pick to Atlanta for him.
- Coincidentally, Starr was the 200th overall pick; decades later, in a much larger league, Brady was the 199th overall pick.
They drafted them both closer to the 2nd round than to Baker Mayfield/Andrew Luck/Cam Newton, and promptly benched them to learn behind a HOF QB, both of which were considered quite possibly the GOAT during their time. Nitpick: Favre was acquired via trade with the Falcons (Thanks buddies!).
I wouldn’t put Roethlisberger or Stafford in my top ten, let alone anywhere near top five. Even if we ignore the fact that Wentz played on a Super Bowl Championship team that didn’t need him to win it all and Cousins played for the hot mess that is the Washington Football Club, Cousins has been putting up the stats for years. Wentz had 3/4 of a great season. The case is easy to make for Ryan or Newton, but that still leaves you with less than half of your studs picked in the first round, and still only one picked in the first hour.
Your four recent Super Bowl champs feature three quarterbacks carried, even dragged to the Big Game by their defense. Alex Smith as a regular in the playoffs is as much a product of a stupidly weak AFCE than his prowess. Nobody’s putting him on any elite list. Carson Palmer has perennially been a “good enough” quarterback. Playoff appearances and team wins do not a top tier quarterback make. Hell, a few years ago, not-first-round-pick Kaepernick was considered the future of the position.
At the end of the day, barely more than HALF of the starting quarterbacks in the league were drafted in the first.
HOF QB’s drafted in the last 30 years in the first round? One.
Not as bad as it sounds, since there were only two HOF QBs drafted in **any **round in the last 30 years. A third, Warner, was undrafted.
ETA: and of course, if you include QBs not yet in but locks to get in eventually, there are several first rounders.
I was referring to Favre. For some reason I had it in my head that the Falcons grabbed him in the 4th round.
What are you talking about? Marino, Kelly, Aikman and Elway are all first rounders.
I never said drafted in the last 30 years.
Ready, fire, aim.
There have been a few teams that have admitted that Mayfield was at the top of their draft chart (including the #2 and #3 picking teams, the Giants/Jets). Specifically, the Giants GM said “once we saw Baker was gone, we knew right away it was Sasquon no matter what” or something to that effect.
I think the stigma against air raid or other college offense QBs is fading, both because college produces very few pro-style system anymore (and guys like Quinn/Clausen/Kizer are NFL busts, so much for “pro-ready” offensive systems) and because the NFL is becoming more like a spread college offense. A lot more shotgun for NFL teams, a lot more focus on spreading out the defense and playing matchups. I think as the NFL shifts to a more spread-like offense more of the time, we’ll finally start getting air raid QBs that are successful early on.
Incidentally, if Mayfield was 6’3, is there any doubt that he’d be the #1 pick on most team’s board? I feel like height is focused on too much. He played with a college line with guys who were 6’6 and taller and excelled. The tendency for teams to start spreading as I mentioned above will open passing lanes and prototypical QB height will be less important.
I think there are two main concerns about QB’s coming out of “Air Raid” systems in college. First, they’re simplistic, both in execution and in what it requires the college QB to do. Second, there are a shit ton of easy throws (throws behind the line of scrimmage, throws on a 2 yard out) so it’s difficult to judge those kinds of QB’s ability to make NFL throws based on game tape.
With most Air Raid systems I’ve seen, the QB doesn’t have to run a huddle, call a play, doesn’t have to get an alignment set, doesn’t check protection, and doesn’t do more than one pre-snap read. Everyone looks over to the sideline, there’s a huge poster with Colonel Sanders on it, and they run a play. After the snap, the QB (generally) makes one read, and then hands it off, runs it, or throws to the guy he’s supposed to. Rare are the plays where he has to make more than one read, and even rarer are the ones where he has to read downfield coverages and have to adjust.
The simplicity also goes to week to week game planning. Most colleges run their offense, plain and simple. There are a lot more adjustments to an offense, a lot more installation of plays or defenses, week to week in the NFL, based on whom you’re playing. One of the things that Mayfield’s coach was sure to stress about him in the runup to the draft was that he was able to process those changes quickly, allowing Oklahoma to be more unpredictable and have a wider variety of play calls.
The other thing is that it’s really hard to judge whether an Air Raid QB is able to make NFL caliber throws. A majority of throws in an air raid system are easy, quick passes that don’t require a ton of arm strength or fitting the ball into a tight window. In the NFL, the defenders are so much faster, stronger, and better that the separation and holes in the defense just aren’t there in the NFL like they are in college. So it’s hard to tell if an Air Raid QB can make those throws based only on a few a game.
These are the reasons why I usually hate those kinds of QBs, and why I was biased against Baker Mayfield. But he seems to be a guy who can handle a more complicated offense, can run a huddle, and can make tight window throws. Will he be able to in the NFL? Who knows.
The last QB the Pats drafted in the first round was Drew Bledsoe. Garoppolo was a 2, and is no longer the heir either. Who are you thinking of?
There are stories they wanted Mayfield but couldn’t package enough picks together to get him. If true, that at least speaks well of the new Browns GM.
Another consequence of the “Air Raid” collegiate offense is what it does to offensive linemen. It makes them pretty one-dimensional, as it’s largely their pass protection that’s keeping the play alive.
Apparently this doesn’t translate into the NFL very well in terms of what they ask of the new olineman compared to what they were used to blocking for a guy like Baker Mayfield, which then results in poor NFL blocking technique.