When picking a quarterback in the first round, what sort of career should you expect? What’s the median expectation? How many are above the line where you would consider him a good pick (which may be a different question)?
I looked at 25 years of drafting, from 1990 to 2014 (it’s too early to grade quarterbacks drafted since then, and maybe even too early to grade two of the three from the first round of 2014). There were 60 quarterbacks selected in the first rounds of those drafts. I took a stab at ordering them from best to worst, but don’t worry too much about some of the rankings. You can feel free to re-order them in your own way. [1]For example, I had Bryan Frye look at these, and he had Alex Smith, Trent Dilfer, Teddy Bridgewater, and JaMarcus Russell all 5+ spots lower, and Jeff George, Tommy Maddox, Vince Young, and Drew … Continue reading
But take a look at this list and decide where your cut-off is for drafting a first round quarterback. Where is the cutoff if you have a top-5 pick where you feel like it was a worthwhile investment? For me, it’s probably around somewhere between QB15 and QB20. Those odds aren’t too great: it means only about 30% of first round quarterbacks are really players you would be happy to build your team around. But your mileage may vary:
The other thing to note is how different things are for first overall picks and the rest of the bunch. For first overall picks, 9 of the 14 rank in the top 20 (although perhaps first round picks (I’m looking at you, Smith, Vick, and Bledsoe) are given longer leashes because they were first round picks), and somewhere between Luck and Vick is your median expectation. That’s pretty darn good.
There were also 14 quarterbacks drafted from 2 to 5, with very, very different results. Just 4 of the 14 rank in the top 19, and only one more ranks in the top 2. The median expectation is a Sanchez or Young or Bortles. If you spend a top-5 pick on a quarterback, you are certainly expecting more than those three, but it’s not quite clear if they are busts relative to what should be our expectation.
Leave the top 5, and it gets even worse. Of those 32 quarterbacks, just 6 rank in the top 20, and the median expectation is somewhere around a Ramsey or Ponder. That is obviously not when general managers are banking on when selecting a quarterback in the first round.
What do you think?
References
| ↑1 | For example, I had Bryan Frye look at these, and he had Alex Smith, Trent Dilfer, Teddy Bridgewater, and JaMarcus Russell all 5+ spots lower, and Jeff George, Tommy Maddox, Vince Young, and Drew Bledsoe all 5+ spots higher. |
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