Rookie QB's - why the sudden success?

The Game Room
1

Up to a few years ago, a rookie QB stepping into a starting role in the NFL and having success was pretty rare. The formula was to give them 2 years on the bench, then ease them in as the starter.

But, a few years ago, that started to change. Roethlisberger may have been the first of the rookies to step in and hit the ground running. Since then (2004), it’s happened several times - Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Matt Stafford, Sam Bradford, Mark Sanchez, Josh Freeman, Andy Dalton, and Cam Newton among them. And several of these were bad teams sticking a rookie in and improving.

You would think, with offensive playbooks getting more and more complicated, that instant success in the NFL would be getting less, not more, common. But the evidence says otherwise. Even this year, with the lockout preventing rookie QB’s from practicing with their team, Newton and Dalton are looking good.

What’s up with this? A change in QB coaching? Dumb luck? Something else?

2

bump.

3

I’m not big on college football but aren’t more big time schools using pro offense formations now than before when they used things like the option or wishbone? I think they did this because many high school QBs with dreams of going to the NFL wouldn’t go to a school unless they could learn how an NFL offense worked.

4

Your user name is your answer.

5

It’s not that colleges are using pro-style offenses; it’s that they’re using pass-heavy offenses. The shotgun spread that now dominates college football isn’t much like a pro-style offense, except that it involves lots of passing and lots of checks at the line.

The hardest things for rookie quarterbacks to pick up in the NFL are reading coverages and setting protection, so the spread gives them a head start on those.

If anything, the biggest difference now is that NFL coordinators are better equipped to teach spread quarterbacks to play from under center. When the first crop of spread quarterbacks came out in the draft (eg., Byron Leftwich and Ben Roethlisberger) the big worry was how they’d adapt to playing from under center- less time to get throws off, and less ability to see the field.

That no longer seems to be an issue.

6

Actually, the common offense in college is now the spread, which doesn’t require the quarterback to play under center much, if at all. Experts have frequently been concerned at how well spread QBs would adapt to playing under center, though it doesn’t seem to have slowed some of them (like Newton) down much, if at all.

7

From what I’ve heard, Cam is in shotgun a lot. This plays to his lack of experience under center. As he gets more reps under his belt, I imagine he’ll spend more time under center.

8

Is sudden success actually more common?

I’d argue we don’t have enough data points to draw a firm conclusion, yet.

For all the success stories, look at the so-so players and the outright failures.

Here’s some QBs who started at least 1 game their rookie season.

Class of 2006 starting rookies:

Vince Young. Won a few games and even got to the playoffs in '07 but has definitely been a mixed bag.
Matt Leinart. Backup QB. Opposite of a good rookie season.
Gradkowski. Backup QB. Opposite of a good rookie season.
Jay Cutler. Pretty good QB right now. Didn’t start out so hot.

Class of 2007 starting rookies:
Jarmarcus Russell. 'Nuff said
Trent Edwards. Captain Checkdown
Troy Smith. UFL

Class of 2008 starting rookies:
Matt Ryan
Joe Flacco

Class of 2009 starting rookies:
Matt Stafford
Mark Sanchez
Josh Freeman

Class of 2010 starting rookies:
Sam Bradford
Tim Tebow
Jimmy Clausen
Colt McCoy

So, we had a great 2008 class, well above average 2009 class (Sanchez still looks a little shaky to be a franchize QB), and a mixed bag in 2010 (so far). The 2006 class was mixed, and 2007 stunk up the joint. And even for the good QBs on this list, having a good rookie season is still the exception, rather than the rule.

That’s not counting the QBs drafted that didn’t start their rookie season (Kevin Kolb, Brady Quinn, Jimmy Clausen, John David Booty, etc), who are more miss than hit.

If there is a new trend in rookie QBs being nearly NFL ready from Day 1, I’d like to see at least 2 or 3 (preferably 5 or more) years of data. Right now, the last 5 years of QBs looks like it always has, roughly 50% have what could be considered a good rookie season. And several of the successful ones had severe sophomore slumps.

9

It’s the opposite. There are far fewer NFL style offenses now than there once were. Back in the day there were a bunch of option/wishbone teams but there were also a ton of NFL style teams playing pure NFL sytle offenses. Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas and a bunch of other premiere programs almost exclusively ran NFL lite offenses. Today there’s less of a bias towards being an NFL-prep school because coaches are more concerned with short term success due to the money hungry nature of college football.

My answer to the OP is simply that teams, by necessity of the salary cap, have been forced to abandon the old meme that a QB had to sit to have a chance. Before the salary cap in 1994, and before the recent explosion in NFL contracts, it was easy for teams to stockpile QBs and “develop” them. The recent success of rookie QBs tends to imply that perhaps adjusting to the NFL isn’t quite as tall a hurdle as old school NFL honks would have you believe. Good players, even QBs, will adjust and produce when they are called upon, bad ones won’t. Sitting on the bench for 2-3 years has negligible benefits, whatever knowledge you gain is offset by rust.

10

I think that’s a good chunk of it. Even if a QB was a “can’t-miss” prospect, the conventional wisdom was that he was better served by carrying the clipboard for a year or two. As recently as 1998, Peyton Manning (the #2 pick in the draft, and considered to be fairly “NFL-ready” coming out of Tennessee) struggled as a rookie starter (28 interceptions), and there were more than a few who said that it was too much to make him start as a rookie. (We probably don’t even need to mention what happened to the #1 pick in that draft, Ryan Leaf, as a starter that year.)

11

Manning was the #1 pick and Leaf was #2, but the point stands.

12

Gah. I always do that. One of these days, I’ll keep it straight.

13

All 3 of these guys were terrible quarterbacks as rookies (or at least put up terrible numbers), with barely half as many touchdowns as interceptions. That’s pretty much on a line with most of the good quarterbacks from the 80s that I looked at. Of the old-timers, Dan Marino’s the only guy I could find who was good out of the gate; terrible early seasons were had by Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Boomer Esiason, and Bernie Kosar and then I stopped checking.

14

As a Jets fan, let me specify that Sanchez spent his rookie year (a) handing off to guys who rushed for more yards than any other team, and (b) watching the defense give up the fewest yards and touchdowns in professional football; back-to-back trips to the AFC championship promptly ensued, but he got there by just not screwing up too badly.

15

Great Antibob and Tom Scud make pretty good points. It’s not rookie success, it’s early success. Freeman sucked as a rookie, but was astonishingly good (at protecting the ball, at least) in Year 2. 6 interceptions in 16 games for a 2nd year player is unheard of.

And note that Cutler actually had better numbers as a rookie (admittedly in limited starts) than he ever has since.

16

But this is the opposite of my OP. In past years, hardly any QBs stepped into a starting role in their rookie season and were anything beyond mediocre. Certainly not 50%.

Who, other than Roethlisberger in 2004, started at QB in their rookie season before 2006, and was average or better? There’s Dan Marino, and …

17

Clausen was a starter in his rookie year. His suckitude was what lead the Panthers to draft Cam Newton. And he’s not even the backup anymore, he’s #3 behind Derek Anderson.

18

Jim McMahon, oddly enough.

19

Doesn’t take long to reach a really low ceiling…

20

Well, when the ceiling is Sam Bradford and Joe Flacco (never mind the 3 guys you mentioned in the OP who were actively bad)…