Also Brady to the Bucs.
Or Cutler to the Bears, Wilson to the Broncos … oh, wait.
Manning, Brees, Brady, Cutler…one of these things is not like the others.
Even still, put me in the camp of drafting your own as the more likely path to success.
Brees was no Hall-of-Famer when he joined the Saints, either. I was just pointing out that the good-team-bringing-in-a-top-QB* trope doesn’t always lead to Super Bowls.
(*which Cutler was considered to be at the time of the trade)
With the Bears complete lack of any shred of successful QB development in pretty much their entire history, save for Luckman I guess.
There is no sure path. But drafting a QB high isn’t exactly a sure path to a Superbowl either.
I would imagine it has succeeded more than tanking and drafting a QB in the top 10 to play with a terrible team has. Besides, I’m not talking about this being the best path for every team, just that I think it’s the best path for the Bears, right now, with the team we have.
Well that’s probably true. The last team to win a Super Bowl lead by a QB it drafted with a top 10 pick it earned by being terrible* was, if I’m not mistaken, the 2007 Giants with Eli Manning.
(* as opposed to the Chiefs, who were a good team that traded up to pick Mahomes)
I see this argument pop up regularly. The missing piece is always the answer to the question; what’s the better way to find a QB who you can win a Super Bowl with? Drafting QBs high in the draft is a low percentage exercise - and your list ignores the pick number, there’s a big difference between a QB taken in the top 5 versus a QB taken in the low teens (or later). If you focus on the lines and the defense and build a good roster, you’re then going to be in a position with a team ready to win now and no reliable answer at QB. And that good roster will get prohibitively expensive to retain before your young QB is ready to play high level football.
It’s awesome to get lucky with a QB. If you get lucky, you have a decade or more to figure out the rest of the roster. If you’re already a good team and get lucky with a QB you’re golden. But for all the complaints about failed high picks at QB…the failure rate later in the draft is an order of magnitude worse. Trading for a proven veteran can be franchise crippling due to contracts and picks. If you don’t have a QB it’s hopeless.
All you have to do is look at the Championship teams for the last 10 years to know this is false.
NFC Championships
AFC Championships
| Season | Playoffs | Winning team | Score | Losing team | Score | Location | Stadium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2013–14 | Denver Broncos (7) | 26 | New England Patriots | 16 | Denver, Colorado (6) | Sports Authority Field at Mile High (2) |
| 2014 | 2014–15 | New England Patriots (8) | 45 | Indianapolis Colts | 7 | Foxborough, Massachusetts (6) | Gillette Stadium (5) |
| 2015 | 2015–16 | Denver Broncos (8) | 20 | New England Patriots | 18 | Denver, Colorado (7) | Sports Authority Field at Mile High (3) |
| 2016 | 2016–17 | New England Patriots (9) | 36 | Pittsburgh Steelers | 17 | Foxborough, Massachusetts (7) | Gillette Stadium (6) |
| 2017 | 2017–18 | New England Patriots (10) | 24 | Jacksonville Jaguars | 20 | Foxborough, Massachusetts (8) | Gillette Stadium (7) |
| 2018 | 2018–19 | New England Patriots (11) | 37[a] | Kansas City Chiefs | 31 | Kansas City, Missouri | Arrowhead Stadium |
| 2019 | 2019–20 | Kansas City Chiefs (1) | 35 | Tennessee Titans | 24 | Kansas City, Missouri (2) | Arrowhead Stadium (2) |
| 2020 | 2020–21 | Kansas City Chiefs (2) | 38 | Buffalo Bills | 24 | Kansas City, Missouri (3) | Arrowhead Stadium (3) |
| 2021 | 2021–22 | Cincinnati Bengals (3) | 27[a] | Kansas City Chiefs | 24 | Kansas City, Missouri (4) | Arrowhead Stadium (4) |
| 2022 | 2022–23 | Kansas City Chiefs (3) | 23 | Cincinnati Bengals | 20 | Kansas City, Missouri (5) | Arrowhead Stadium (5) |
2013: Manning, Brady, Wilson, Kaepernick
2014: Luck, Brady, Wilson, Rodgers
2015: Manning, Brady, Newton, Palmer
2016: Brady, Roethlisberger, Ryan, Rodgers
2017: Brady, Bortles, Foles (Wentz), Keenum
2018: Brady, Mahomes, Goff, Brees
2019: Mahomes, Tannehill, Rodgers, Garoppolo
2020: Mahomes, Allen, Brady, Rodgers
2021: Burrow, Mahomes, Stafford, Garoppolo
2022: Burrow, Mahomes, Hurts, Purdy
Category 1: Brady
Category 2: Early First Rounder: Newton, Ryan, Bortles, Big Ben, Luck, Mahomes, Burrow, Allen, Goff, Palmer, Wentz (partial credit)
Category 3: Late Firsts/Seconds: Rodgers, Garoppolo, Hurts, Kaepernick
Category 4: Later Rounds/Undrafted: Purdy, Wilson, Foles, Keenum
Category 5: Retreads: Manning, Brady, Stafford, Brees (sorta), Tannehill
Drafting a QB in the early 1st is by far the clearest path to contention, it’s not even close. It’s also the only one you sort of can control. Brady of course skews the numbers when you look at later round picks which is why I made him his own category. If your plan is to draft the next Brady, good luck on that. Brees is technically a retread but that was a rare instance. Cutler is probably the only reasonable comp for a successful QB to come available while on his rookie deal. Though I guess Watson also qualifies. As for the later round picks, late firsts and seconds are actually pretty rare hits based on this criteria. The later round picks other than Wilson (and Brady) are usually backups who aren’t actually any good, we’ll see on Purdy.
So I ask, if you don’t want to target an early first rounder and instead build the rest of the roster first, what path are you taking? Are you just going to hope that a veteran who’s not completely washed is available (Manning, Brady, Stafford - also Wilson, Mayfield)? Are you going to hope that once in a decade young QB to comes available (Brees - also Cutler, Watson)? Are you going to wait for a middling guy like Cousins and Tannehill to be a free agent because the team that drafted them is giving up on them? If that’s you plan, what are the odds of the timing working out such that your good core is still under contract when one of these uncommon opportunities strike?
I swear, the entire Brady thing seems to have completely warped the casual fan’s view of what’s actually possible here.
Ok, but you were recently singing the praises of an undrafted division II guy as our potential future, right?
No, never said anything of the like. I said he looked really polished for a UDFA from a DII school. At times our offense looked better under him compared to Fields. Which isn’t really saying much. But Bagent regressed badly.
It’s looking more and more like Caleb Williams is fools gold. The Bears will probably draft him, he’ll flame out and everyone will blame the McCaskeys for our QBs sucking.
Great research here.
It’s worth noting that, while category 2 is the largest, only two of them (Mahomes and Big Ben) actually won Super Bowls – and both were drafted by teams that were already good. (Which holds true for Wentz’s partial credit as well.) Bad teams taking a QB high in the draft haven’t ridden that road to a championship since the Giants did it with Eli.
But you can’t win it all without contending, and it does seem to be the main route to contention.
And a handful of elite QBs warps your vastly more intelligent fan’s view, while ignoring the costs.
We all agree, and the evidence shows, having an elite QB is the best way to get to and win championships. The question is, for the 28 or so teams that don’t have an elite QB, how do you get one. And I think the best way to do that is to be great at scouting and developing QB talent.
For you, the solution is to either tank for a top 5 pick every year that you’re sure your last draft pick isnt the guy, or sell the farm and trade up to get one. Looking at the wasteland of the teams that used those two options, I think you’re wrong. You want to buy one lottery ticket for a million dollars. I think it is better to buy 20 lottery tickets and work on the rest of your team in the interim.
But fandom likely matters to your view. The Packers have traded for and drafted late their last 2 HoF QBs. The Bears meanwhile have sold the farm for Jay Cutler, drafted Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields.
The one thing I really dont understand about NFL teams is that, given the importance of the position, why teams dont use more resources on QB development. I know every roster spot is valuable, but I dont get why teams dont spend a draft pick almost every year on a QB to develop. That way, you get more chances at your Bradys or Purdys or Foles or Johnsons or Brees.
But, again, the best way is to be great at QB evaluation and development. So just hire Andy Reid.
Ron Wolf, who was the Packers’ GM during Brett Favre’s tenure as their QB, did this, more or less. It meant that several guys who wound up being starting QBs for other teams started out as Packers’ draft choices and Favre backups: Mark Brunell, Matt Hasselbeck, and Aaron Brooks.
I don’t think that Brady is the issue, not entirely, and maybe not even the main reason. Because there has only ever been one Brady.
But there have been a lot of Ryan Leafs in the draft. Hyped-up overall first draft picks that busted, or even if they didn’t bust they disappointed. When you have guys drafted high that go on to be mediocre or even bad, and see folks drafted later that excel, it’s natural to start thinking that a later draft pick can be your savior.
Your overall point is good though. Overwhelmingly, higher picks lead to better results. If they didn’t, the draft system would be completely broken and it’s not. It’s not perfect, unless you can see the future it’s always a gamble. But it’s an educated guess made by people who do this as their job and they get it right more often than they get it wrong.
And even then, that was really just one bad year in 2003 when they went 4-12. They had made the playoffs in 2002 and even made it to the Superbowl in 2000. So it’s not like they were a perennial loser hoping for a QB to save them.
Also worth noting, that 3 of the 5 “Retreads” were high draft picks. Two 1OAs and Tannehill at 8OA. A 4th was Brady. The Rams also traded one 1OA in Goff for another 1OA in Stafford.
I get that it sucks to draft Trubisky, passing on Mahomes. That’s bad drafting. But bad drafting doesn’t invalidate the entire strategy.
I’m not exactly sure how one would go about “QB development” without a farm system, but on this point we agree. Teams would be smart to over invest in QB. For the Bears, what I think we SHOULD do is keep Fields and even if he shows out over the last 8 games we still pick Williams, Maye or another QB early in the draft. More QBs is better. The problem being that fans and QBs both tend to lose their shit when you do this. As Packer fans well know, drafting Rodgers pissed off Favre and caused no end to the drama in Green Bay. Then drafting Love was the same song again but even louder and more toxic.
The primary point is that it would be crazy to say “don’t draft a QB early in the 1st round, that never works out”. It does work out sometimes and it works out more often than waiting and hoping does. Of course, the best thing to do is to draft a great QB when you have the chance and never draft a bad QB. But I think this has a lot more to do with luck than it does skill.
I wish someone could have figured that out sooner!
Next I’m going to share my football strategy of “score more points than the other team”. I guarantee you that will work every time.
Fans do often have too high of an expectation for their teams. But you have to wonder about Chicago’s historically bad record in signing QBs. It can’t just be bad luck, not for that many years.
I suppose, but I’m not convinced. Our owners are idiots, but they know they are idiots. They don’t meddle and I’ve never even heard a rumor of ownership pushing a GM to pick a player or a coach to start a player. That is not part of the program here. We’re also not chronically under the cap so it’s not like we’re the cheapskates that lazy observers like to whine about. So when people bemoan ownership, just once I’d like a concrete example of where they are actually interfering here. I’m ready for a change at ownership of course, but I have no reason to believe that some new owner would magically solve the QB problem any more than the GMs we hire would.
We’ve failed to find a QB under offensive coaching staffs and defensive coaching staffs. We’ve had 4 GMs since 2001 and between them they’ve tried every single model to find a QB. There’s no one philosophy that’s failing here. We traded for Cutler, we drafted Trubisky and Fields, we rolled with Kyle Orton and Rex Gossman. We grabbed cast offs like Jason Cambell and Brian Greise.
Maybe the Bears need to hire former QBs at every key position. Elway at GM, Harbaugh as HC, Kellen Moore at OC and Ken Dorsey at QB Coach. Maybe that’s the answer. But we’re not the only team with a perpetual black hole at QB so I’m not ready to say that it not just a string of staggeringly bad luck.
It’s staggeringly bad luck. The only team I can think of that’s been as snakebit at QB for longer than the Bears is the Jets.