Burning Through QBs at the NFL Draft
The NFL Draft starts tonight, and the smart money says that, for just the fourth time ever, the first three picks will be quarterbacks. If the Arizona Cardinals trade down, which seems like a real possibility, then quarterbacks could be the first four picks, which would be unprecedented. In total, six could go in the first round.
This is just the state of the NFL now. Last year, quarterbacks were taken with the first, second, and fourth overall pick. In 2021, there were five quarterbacks taken in the first round, including all of the top 3 picks. The year before that, three of the first six picks were quarterbacks, plus a fourth taken later in the first round. That means that, after tonight, 13 quarterbacks — enough for nearly half the league! — will have been taken in just the first six picks of the last five drafts.
On one level, this makes sense. Quarterbacks are the coin of the realm in the NFL, and so if you don’t already have a franchise QB, you’re on the hunt for one. Usually that means trying to find one in the draft, so it’s not surprising that so many quarterbacks would go in the first round. The surprising thing is how bad teams are at finding them. For example, that 2021 draft isn’t even three years old, yet four of the five quarterbacks taken in the first round that year have already been dropped by the teams that drafted them: Zach Wilson (the #2 overall pick), Trey Lance (#3), Justin Fields (#11), and Mac Jones (#15) have all been traded to other teams, where they will be backups in 2024.
And while that draft was exceptional in just how many quarterbacks went so high, its rate of success is not that unusual. Of the 32 quarterbacks selected in the first round since 2014, only five have really turned into the kind of unqualified, destiny-altering, franchise quarterbacks1 that teams are really hoping for when they select a first-round QB: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, and CJ Stroud.
Interestingly, of that list only Burrow was the first quarterback selected in his draft. This, combined with the overall lackluster success rate, would seem to suggest that teams are not great at evaluating young talent. But I don’t really believe this: Teams invest millions of dollars in identifying great young players, and when it comes to other positions, they are generally pretty good. It seems unlikely that teams are uniquely bad at evaluating talent at the game’s most important position.
What’s really going on here is insufficient materialism. Specifically, it’s a refusal to acknowledge that circumstance is way more important than talent or ability. There have, on some occasions throughout NFL history, been quarterbacks who seemed destined to succeed wherever they went: Joe Burrow, Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning, etc. But for the vast majority of quarterbacks, the team that drafts you plays such a massive role in how your career unfolds that it’s depressing to even think about.
It’s tempting to think individuals are in control of their fate, that ability and determination are the most important things — hence all the focus, in the weeks before the draft, on figuring out a prospect’s precise level of talent and mental makeup. But the reason so many top quarterback prospects fail is NOT that scouts are unable to see talent and mental fortitude — it’s that the draft puts quarterbacks in situations where none of that matters.
If we look at quarterbacks who actually succeed in the NFL, we see that where they are selected is far less important than who drafts them. Reigning MVP Lamar Jackson went to a Ravens team that had one losing season in a decade before he got there. Josh Allen was drafted by a playoff team, as were Jalen Hurts, Brock Purdy, and Jordan Love — all of whom also sat for most of their first seasons. Same with Aaron Rodgers. Matthew Stafford and Baker Mayfield were each #1 overall picks, and had bits of success with the team that drafted… only to immediately achieve way more success when they ended up in better situations. Stafford was traded to the Rams and immediately won the Super Bowl; Mayfield went to Tampa Bay and made the playoffs and his first Pro Bowl last year.
And then there’s Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes might be the most talented person to ever play the quarterback position, so it’s tempting to think he would have succeeded wherever he went. But in fact, he had the good fortune to be drafted by a playoff team… that was coached by future Hall of Famer/offensive mastermind Andy Reid… and had the luxury of being cautious and giving Mahomes a full year as a backup before he was made the starter in 2018. So are you confident that Mahomes becomes Mahomes without that good fortune?
As I said, it can be depressing to think this way, because it illustrates how little control players have over their own fate. They can’t control where they are drafted,2 and it sounds like I am saying the most important thing is luck.
But it’s worse than that, because it’s not just luck that determines whether a quarterback with potential goes to a good team. It’s that the NFL draft is literally designed to put promising young quarterbacks on BAD teams, since the worst teams get the highest picks. Even worse, the current NFL salary structure heavily disincentivizes letting a quarterback sit and grow for a year, which used to be far more common for rookie quarterbacks. But now, having a quarterback on a rookie contract is so valuable that teams want to win in that first five-year window, so they rush quarterbacks onto the field, usually to their detriment (ask Bryce Young).
When that doesn’t work, they just cut or trade the quarterback and try again with someone new: Caleb Williams will be the third quarterback the Bears have taken in the Top 11 picks since 2017. The Jets have drafted two quarterbacks in the top 3 since 2018, and neither will be on the team next year. The Cardinals took Kyler Murray with the first overall pick the year after taking Josh Rosen with the 10th overall pick. The Giants drafted Daniel Jones in 2019, and the Patriots took Mac Jones in 2021, but both are looking to draft a quarterback tonight.
In other words, the league is burning through quarterbacks like Spinal Tap going through drummers. And yet nobody is wondering if the system is at fault. NFL pundits are constantly complaining that there “aren’t enough good quarterbacks” in the league, but the issue isn’t insufficient talent — the issue is that the NFL is not set up to nurture and develop good quarterbacks. Instead, the league is churning through potentially great quarterbacks at an unsustainable rate. So every spring, the Draft analysts spend hours and hours of time breaking down tape on the top quarterback prospects, as if the marginal differences in ability make a bigger difference than where they end up.
The obvious solution, as I wrote last year, is to abolish the draft — or, as I wrote last year, to flip it — and let players exercise some discretion over where they go. This would allow them to select the team/coaching staff/roster that is best setup to develop them. More importantly, it wouldn’t steer promising young players to teams that are actively terrible.
This year’s #1 pick, Caleb Williams, will likely be fine. For one, many scouts are putting him in that Manning/Luck/Burrow category of Can’t Miss QBs, but even more important is that the Chicago Bears have the #1 pick by virtue of a trade — they actually weren’t that bad last season. So Williams is going to a pretty good situation, with some talent around him and where he is set up to succeed.
But is anyone really optimistic about whoever ends up playing for the Dan Quinn/Kliff Kingsbury offense in Washington? Or with a New England roster that had zero Pro Bowlers last year and just ground Mac Jones into dust? And yet two players’ entire futures will be determined by these dysfunctional environments, purely because of two systems — the salary cap and the draft — set up to protect the interests of owners and limit the freedom and power of players. So the next time you hear that there “aren’t enough quarterbacks,” remember whose fault that is…
Of the other 27, I would say 11 were basically busts: Johnny Manziel, Paxton Lynch, Mitch Trubisky, Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Dwayne Haskins, Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, Trey Lance, Mac Jones, and Kenny Pickett. Nine were modest or qualified successes, in that they had playoff runs or good seasons, but were not long-term answers for their team: Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Baker Mayfield, Marcus Mariota, Blake Bortles, Teddy Bridgwater, Jameis Winston, Daniel Jones, and Deshaun Watson. For five, it’s still too early to tell: Bryce Young, Anthony Richardson, Jordan Love, Tua Tagovailoa, and Trevor Lawrence. That leaves two more — Justin Herbert and Kyler Murray — who are often put in the Franchise QB category, but who have not actually won a playoff game yet.
Well, it’s maybe wrong to say they have NO control. Players can simply refuse to play for the team that drafts them, but this is an incredibly risky move and most young players cannot pull it off. Tellingly, though, two guys that did it were quarterbacks drafted #1 overall — John Elway and Eli Manning — and it worked out great for both of them!