In 2008, four undrafted quarterbacks were leading potential playoff teams in Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme, Jeff Garcia, and Tony Romo. Warner’s Cardinals made the Super Bowl, Delhomme’s Panthers went 12-4, Garcia went 6-5 for the Bucs, and Romo went 8-5 for the Cowboys. A fifth undrafted quarterback, Shaun Hill, went 5-3 for the 49ers.
The undrafted quarterback era seemingly disappeared, but is it on its way back? Nick Mullens had one of the best seasons by an undrafted free agent rookie quarterback last year. Only two other rookie UDFAs started games last year, one apiece by the two Panthers backups (Taylor Heinicke and Kyle Allen). And while it was an ignored week 17 game, Allen played extremely well.
Highly drafted rookies get a chance to stink for a very long time — think of the awful rookie seasons of Blake Bortles, Josh Rosen, Derek Carr, or Jared Goff. But we don’t have a very large sample when it comes to lowly regarded prospects who play poorly.
In the last 5 years, there have only been five late round draft picks/UDFAs who have thrown 100+ passes as a rookie: Mullens, 6th round picks Zach Mettenberger and Jeff Driskel, and 4th round picks Dak Prescott and Bryce Petty. When it comes to Petty, who was terrible, he got a chance (and a second chance) only due to Christian Hackenberg being worse than him. Driskell took over in Cincinnati after Andy Dalton was injured, and while he was not good, he wasn’t any worse than your average rookie quarterback. Mettenberger was the Titans third string quarterback, and also performed like a typical rookie. Prescott and Mullens were above-average starters, of course.
The NFL is going in a direction where teams are relying more and more frequently on highly-drafted passers, and there’s no sign of that slowing down. But the sample size of how non-elite prospects perform is very low, making it impossible to analyze the strategy of giving them more opportunities.
Kirk Cousins, Case Keenum, and Tyrod Taylor didn’t get handed opportunities, but all have had success in recent years. Given the huge dollar amounts given to veteran quarterbacks, it’s become clear that going with a highly drafted rookie quarterback is a very cost-efficient move. At the simplest level, I think teams would break down their preference into the following three tiers:
- Superstar QB even if he costs $25-35M per year
- First round QB
- Average veteran QB for $18-$22M
But the real question is whether a low-ranked prospect would be better than tier three. A 4th or 5th round quarterback — or even an undrafted free agent — is going to cost less than one million dollars per year. The assumption, of course, is that such a player is not capable enough of providing quality play. And while that may be true, I’m not so sure the evidence is there to prove that.