Inside the Race for the Next Great NFL Quarterback

The crowd at Arrowhead Stadium had gone deathly silent. The new proverbial villain in the AFC, the Kansas City Chiefs, were trailing the Buffalo Bills 36-33 with 13 seconds remaining at home in the AFC Divisional Round. One play earlier, Bills quarterback Josh Allen had found Gabriel Davis down the middle from 19 yards out on a beautiful route where he waltzed into the end zone to put the Bills up ahead. The Chiefs' hopes of a fourth straight home AFC Championship Game seemed all but dashed. The game had quickly turned into a track meet. The Chiefs couldn't find a way to score with just 13 seconds left, could they?

"When it's grim, be the Grim Reaper" Andy Reid mentioned to Patrick Mahomes after the Chiefs were set to receive the kickoff with just 13 seconds remaining. The two superstar quarterbacks: Mahomes and Allen had gone back and forth in a seeming battle of the titans like Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras at the 2001 US Open quarter-final, a match for the ages in which neither player was able to break the other's serve. The nonstop action left NFL fans everywhere on the edge of their seats and clamoring for more.

Rather than try a pooch kick to try and take some off the clock, the Bills' special teams unit abruptly sent the kickoff through the end zone for a touchback. On their first play from scrimmage at their 25-yard line, Mahomes found Tyreek Hill underneath for 19 yards and promptly called a timeout with 0:08 seconds. The Bills' defense was playing nearly 40 yards off the ball because they were so afraid of Hill taking another one to the house. With the game still very much in doubt, Travis Kelce split two defenders and found a hole in front of the safety where he turned around, caught the pass, and immediately got down at the 31-yard line where the Chiefs called another timeout. In just 10 seconds they had miraculously found a way to get in field goal range. With ice in his veins and 0:03 left on the clock, Harrison Butker trotted out and boomed a 49-yard field goal through the uprights to send the game to overtime. In the final two minutes of the affair, the two teams had scored three touchdowns and a field goal combined. It sort of felt wrong that one of them had to lose it but it set into motion one of the wildest offseasons in NFL history.

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A Domino Effect

The Chiefs ended up winning the coin toss in overtime and the rest is history. The OT rules have now been amended to give each team possession in the playoffs moving forward, but how it ended resonated across every front office in the NFL as an unstoppable Chiefs offense marched right down the field where Mahomes had found Kelce yet again, this time in the back of the end zone for the game-clinching score.

The Bills - Chiefs game set in motion a series of events where a handful of teams across the league pushed all of their chips into the center of the table like an entrant at The World Series of Poker deciding they'd had enough. The Broncos traded for Russell Wilson, the Browns sent three firsts and other picks for Deshaun Watson after fully guaranteeing his contract, the Raiders traded for Davante Adams and locked up Derek Carr to a massive extension, the Colts sent Carson Wentz away to the Commanders after one season, then turned around and traded for Matt Ryan, and the Chiefs sent away Tyreek Hill for five draft picks to the Dolphins where their front office had now seemingly gone all-in on building around Tua Tagovailoa.

There is a foreboding sense of haves and have-nots when it comes to quarterbacks in the current landscape of the modern-day NFL. In 2021, the San Francisco 49ers sent three first-round picks and a third-rounder to move up from 12th to 3rd overall ahead of the NFL Draft to take North Dakota State's Trey Lance. Never mind that one year prior, Jimmy Garoppolo had taken them to the Super Bowl where they were leading 20-10 with 10 minutes remaining until a furious comeback led by who else other than Mahomes, Kelce, and Hill had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Here we are one year later following another deep 49ers playoff run in a season where Trey Lance was basically a redshirt and Garoppolo still has a sort of anomaly 45-18 career record as a starter. However, Jimmy's limitations were on full display on the final few drives against the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship game where they fell short 20-17 and had only reiterated to just about everyone why the move for Lance was made. Will the switch to Lance this upcoming season change anything? Will it matter? Will it bring one of the NFL's most historic franchises back to the Promised Land and add a sixth Lombardi to the trophy case? Those are some questions that remain unanswered among many others and only reiterate a common theme in the NFL today: if you don't have someone who can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Mahomes, Allen, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Matt Stafford, Dak Prescott, Deshaun Watson, Kyler Murray, or Russell Wilson then you're at a disadvantage that is becoming continually more difficult to overcome.

 

The Continued Shift in Offensive Ideology

With how wide-open the league has now become with the passing game and the enforcement of defensive penalties, quarterbacks are more in demand than ever before. The sentiment spreading across the league now is that as a front office you either have that guy or you don't. It's also raised questions about how valuable quarterbacks are. Sending away three first-round picks for a 26-year-old quarterback in his prime like the Browns did may seem like a relative bargain in another few years (should Watson's suspension be minimal and no more civil suites arise).

In the NFL, teams cannot trade draft picks more than two years in advance, but there is a small window in the NFL offseason where a team can trade current picks before the current NFL Draft as well as the ones two years out (so essentially three years). Some of you have followed the NFL for decades and are rolling your eyes right now saying that quarterback has always mattered. Yes it has, but with how the game is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace to continually favor offenses, quarterbacks are mattering even more.

The desperation among teams to find the next franchise quarterbacks is likely only going to lead to more swings and misses on the weekend of the NFL Draft and even more quarterbacks taken in the first round. Just like the prior poker reference in the paragraphs above, some teams are going to continue chasing that full house to the river whether it ends up hitting or not. Given the current state of franchise quarterbacks mentioned above, there is no playing it safe anymore. The days of teams like the 2000 Ravens, 2002 Buccaneers, or 2013 Seahawks winning Super Bowls mostly with stout defenses are long gone. Yes, that 2015 Broncos defense was great as well, but at the end of the day, they still had Peyton Manning.

To compete consistently in the modern NFL landscape, a team needs to have a franchise passer in the fold, one who elevates everyone around him to new heights. While this reality has been made apparent to many, there are still a few General Managers across the league who will still play it safe mostly out of a desire "not to lose" rather than simply trying to play to win. While there is no doubt a lot of risks involved with drafting a quarterback in the first round (as you will see below), teams without one are simply just delaying the inevitable.

The Arizona Cardinals and General Manager Steve Keim deserve a measure of credit for not falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy that runs rampant across the NFL. After taking Josh Rosen 10th overall in the 2018 Draft, the following season was not kind to Arizona or Rosen where they finished dead last in the league at 3-13 and were in line for the 1st overall pick in the upcoming draft. Rather than passing up the opportunity to get first dibs on the next promising QB prospect, the Cards simply cut ties with Rosen and sent him to Miami for a second-rounder on draft day. While they have yet to win a playoff game with Kyler Murray under center, their offense has been noticeably better where they finished 6th & 8th in yards per game in 2020 & 2021, as well as 11th & 13th in points per game in 2020 & 2021. Josh Rosen has meanwhile been with 4 other teams in the past 3 years and has struggled to remain employed. Making the switch to Kyler seemed rash at the time, but looking back it was a no-brainer decision.

 

Introduction to QBASE & QBASE 2.0

Is there a secret formula to predicting QB success? Is there an algorithm that can be formed based on quarterback data that could tell us which quarterbacks would be good and which ones wouldn't? The creators of QBASE asked that very question several years ago and formulated their model for predicting success that took a variety of factors into account to predict NFL success based on performance in the college ranks:

• Completion percentage
• Adjusted yards per attempt
• Team passing efficiency from Football Outsiders' S&P ratings
• Sack avoidance
• Strength of opposing defenses faced
• Quality of Quarterback's supporting cast on offense
• College experience (adjusted for quality instead of pure quantity)
• Projected draft capital

Created by Andrew Healy, formerly at Football Outsiders, QBASE is a statistical model that is used to predict success amongst college quarterbacks who were set to be drafted into the NFL. After running 50,000 simulations, a QBASE score was then generated for every quarterback prospect. Healy left his post a few years later to work in the Cleveland Browns front office where he now resides. The model was then continued by Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders, as well as Alexandre Olbrecht, and Jeremy Rosen. They developed a QBASE 2.0 model shortly afterward which adjusted for a quarterback's mobility due to the nature of how much more prevalent mobile/rushing quarterbacks are becoming.

While QBASE is an impressive model and a must-reference for anyone scouting or making predictions for incoming QB Classes, it is not without its errors. In 2018, their top three quarterbacks were Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, and Josh Rosen, with Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson ranked fourth and fifth. "Josh Allen is a sort of exception to the rule," one college scout told me. "It's not often that you have a guy with known accuracy issues who only completed 56 percent of his passes in college at Wyoming as well as in his first two years in the NFL suddenly just have a lightbulb moment and find it." Yet in 2020, Josh Allen took a Herculean leap towards stardom as he completed 69 percent of his passes, threw for 37 touchdowns, rushed for 421 more, and added 8 scores on the ground.

 

How Important is Stability?

The stability of the Buffalo Bills organization, while turbulent for a brief period, came to a screeching halt in 2017 with the hiring of General Manager, Brandon Beane and Head Coach Sean McDermott. Allen also had an offensive coordinator in Brian Daboll with an impressive coaching resume who played to his strengths, and a quarterback's coach in Ken Dorsey who is a brilliant improviser and football mind in his own right. The Bills were also a playoff team in 2017 and had a better roster around Allen in his rookie year than most teams who typically pick in the top 10 do.

As if they were trendsetters to the opening argument about how teams must change course to "find their franchise quarterback," the Bills hit the reset button after a successful 2017 season where they finished 9-7 and made the playoffs, their first in 18 years since their defeat in the infamous Music City Miracle against the Tennessee Titans. Incumbent starter Tyrod Taylor was jettisoned to Cleveland and some of the older veterans on the roster were purged as Beane looked to make a big splash in what was perceived to be a loaded 2018 quarterback class. On draft day, the Bills moved up to 7th overall by trading with Tampa Bay after Allen was still on the board. While no doubt everyone in the Bills' front office, as well as McDermott deserves credit for the bold move, we shouldn't overlook the stable situation that Allen was brought into with having the same offensive coordinator and head coach in his first four seasons. Such stability is unheard of in today's NFL!

There is another player who comes to mind that was provided with the same level of stability around him, that being Patrick Mahomes. Is either of their successes related to stability? Possibly. It's not fair to dismiss either of their incredible talents as the deciding factor, but both were seen as raw projects who needed developing when they were coming into the league. Josh Allen went from barely being able to hit the broadside of a barn before morphing into a demigod in year three!

The following are some of QBASE's 2.0's top projections for Top 100 Picks Since 2004:

1. Marcus Mariota
2. Baker Mayfield
3. Phillip Rivers
4. Andrew Luck
5. Justin Herbert
6. Robert Griffin
7. Cam Newton
8. Alex Smith
9. Joe Burrow
10. Kyler Murray

For the most part, their model was solid when it came to rooting out immediate busts, but it tended to favor stable, secure quarterbacks versus chasing prospects with more risk, but who had the potential for higher upside like Mahomes, Allen, Lamar Jackson, and Deshaun Watson. These players were probably further down the list than they should have been. QBASE 2.0 does deserve a measure of credit for projecting Cam Newton, who broke the mold in many ways and was a revolutionary talent at the quarterback position when he was younger and healthier. With Allen to Buffalo and Mahomes to Kansas City, there ought to be an added metric for landing spot versus draft capital, as higher draft capital can often mean that a quarterback drafted high will likely have a much worse team around him. The more overall stability for an incoming prospect, the better.

 

History of 1st Round Quarterbacks Since 2010

Looking back at the history of quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 2010, more of them have busted than have succeeded. It begs an important question: "Why is it that everyone from media pundits, to scouts, to former players and coaches, to fans, notable fantasy football analysts, and even General Managers who do this for a living are mostly unable to predict quarterback success consistently?"

There probably are a handful of quarterback whisperers out there who can pick them. Andy Reid, the late Bill Walsh, Bruce Arians, and even Steve Spurrier from his college days come to mind, but it's unlikely that Reid is going to share any of his secrets to picking them with us as long as he's still out there on the field coaching.

2010
1.01 - Sam Bradford (St. Louis Rams)
1.25 - Tim Tebow (Broncos)

2011
1.01 - Cam Newton (Panthers)
1.08 - Jake Locker (Titans)
1.10 - Blaine Gabbert (Jaguars)
1.12 - Christian Ponder (Vikings)

2012
1.01 - Andrew Luck (Colts)
1.02 - Robert Griffin III (Commanders)
1.08 - Ryan Tannehill (Dolphins)
1.22 - Brandon Weeden (Browns)

2013
1.16 - E.J. Manuel (Bills)

2014
1.03 - Blake Bortles (Jaguars)
1.22 - Johnny Manziel (Browns)
1.32 - Teddy Bridgewater (Vikings)

2015
1.01 - Jameis Winston (Bucs)
1.02 - Marcus Mariota (Titans)

2016
1.01 - Jared Goff (Rams)
1.02 - Carson Wentz (Eagles)
1.26 - Paxton Lynch (Broncos)

2017
1.02 - Mitchell Trubisky (Bears)
1.10 - Patrick Mahomes (Chiefs)
1.12 - Deshaun Watson (Texans)

2018
1.01 - Baker Mayfield (Browns)
1.03 - Sam Darnold (Jets)
1.07 - Josh Allen (Bills)
1.10 - Josh Rosen (Cardinals)
1.32 - Lamar Jackson (Ravens)

2019
1.01 - Kyler Murray (Cardinals)
1.06 - Daniel Jones (Giants)
1.15 - Dwayne Haskins (Commanders)

2020
1.01 - Joe Burrow (Bengals)
1.05 - Tu'a Tagoavailoa (Dolphins)
1.06 - Justin Herbert (Chargers)
1.26 - Jordan Love (Packers)

2021
1.01 - Trevor Lawrence (Jaguars)
1.02 - Zach Wilson (Jets)
1.03 - Trey Lance (49ers)
1.11 - Justin Fields (Bears)
1.15 - Mac Jones (Patriots)

It is still too early to fully grade the 2020 and 2021 classes, but it is safe to say that Burrow and Herbert deserve a spot in the "Elite" category based on how well they have played right out of the gate. There are four tiers that quarterbacks are ranked according to QBASE (more on this below), those being: Elite, Upper Tier, Adequate Starter, and Bust. It's probably not fair to certain players to label them purely as career busts, but for this exercise, the quarterbacks above were grouped into QBASE's 4 different tiers in their ranking system.

Elite: 9 - Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Cam Newton (during his prime when he was healthier), Andrew Luck (early retirement from injuries aside).

Upper Tier: 0 - This only reiterates the gap between haves and have-nots in the current NFL landscape.

Adequate Starter: 9 - Sam Bradford, Ryan Tannehill, Teddy Bridgewater, Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Baker Mayfield, Mac Jones. Jones may continue to improve, but he showed in year one that he belongs at least in this tier.

Bust: 12 - Tim Tebow, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder, Brandon Weeden, EJ Manuel, Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel, Paxton Lynch, Mitchell Trubisky, Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen.

DNQ/Injury: 1 - Robert Griffin III. He had all the makings of an elite quarterback before a nasty knee injury derailed his career. Life unfortunately just isn't fair sometimes.

Exempt: 1 - Dwayne Haskins. Just 24 when he passed and landed in a bad spot on draft day where he wasn't given much help to succeed or given the time to make a comeback. May he Rest in Peace.

Jury Still Out: 7 - Tua Tagovailoa, Jordan Love, Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Justin Fields, Daniel Jones. The Giants' offense has been nothing short of dysfunctional for three seasons and Jones is going on his third head coach in four. If the Giants don't bring anyone else this year besides Tyrod Taylor, it is only fair to wait and see if Daboll can transform Jones before writing him off as a total bust. Trubisky will fall into this same category should he win the starting job this season, but all signs point to the Steelers drafting a quarterback in either Round 1 or Round 2.

 

QBs Starters Not Drafted in Round 1 Since 2010

2011 - Andy Dalton - 2.03 (Bengals) - Adequate Starter (younger years of course)
2011 - Colin Kaepernick - 2.04 (49ers) - Adequate Starter
2012 - Russell Wilson - 3.12 (Seahawks) - Elite
2012 - Kirk Cousins - 4.07 (Commanders) - Adequate Starter
2014 - Derek Carr - 2.04 (Raiders) - Upper Tier
2014 - Jimmy Garoppolo - 2.30 (Patriots) - Adequate Starter
2016 - Dak Prescott - 4.37 (Cowboys) - Elite
2020 - Jalen Hurts - 2.21 (Eagles) - Jury still out
2021 - Davis Mills - 3.03 (Texans) - Jury still out

 

Predicting the 2022 Quarterback Class

There is a well-accepted narrative out there that says a quarterback typically has to be drafted in the first round of the draft in order to find success, but as we can see above, that rule has been proven wrong numerous times. After all, the greatest quarterback of our time, Mr. Tom Brady himself, went 199th overall to the Patriots in the 2000 Draft. There are always outliers and important aspects of a quarterback that can be missed, even by the best of scouts.

As NFL offenses have continued to evolve, the makeup of a quarterback has continued to evolve. In many ways, a player like Randall Cunningham paved the way for Michael Vick in much the same way that Vick paved the way for Lamar Jackson to be successful, which only helps less traditional passers like Malik Willis and Desmond Ridder to get their shot at making it in the NFL.

There is no right or wrong way to be a quarterback either, the only thing matters are being able to make it work whether it's as a more prototypical pocket passer like Joe Burrow or by being an ultra electrifying player like Kyler Murray who can equally make plays with his legs on top of having a rocket for an arm despite not having the standard size that was largely expected to have success in the league. Be on the lookout for part 2 of this series ahead of the NFL Draft which will feature an in-depth look at the 2022 Quarterback Class.

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