29toLIFE

There’s been so much talk (at least down here) about the need to draft a quarterback in the first round that I decided to do a little shoddy research. I’m not entirely sure what any of it actually means, but this is what I came up with…

Of the 31 teams in the National Football League, plus the Carolina Panthers, 18 of them have a starting quarterback who was drafted somewhere in the first round. Only 4 teams employee a second round draft pick, while the other 10 are going with somebody drafted in the third round or later.

Of the 18 teams with first round quarterbacks, 10 of them are in possession of a guy you would be happy with. Another 7 have quarterbacks who would be considered average, at best. And one team got stuck with Alex Smith. (Sorry, Niners’ fans.)

The second round of the NFL draft produced just 4 quarterbacks. And, really, Drew Brees is the only one anyone would consider a success. The other three? T-Jack, Chad Henne and Jimmy Clausen.

The remaining 10 teams have quarterbacks taken in the third round or later. Half of them are mediocre, while 4 of them can be considered anything from good to great. And, again, one team wound up getting stuck with Derek Anderson. (Sorry, Cardinals’ fans.)

Now, some of that data is either flawed or incomplete. For instance, guys like Sam Bradford and Josh Freeman are way too young to accurately assess their talent levels. And, in some situations, I wanted to use the quarterback that the team would most likely be relying on going forward, as opposed to the aging, hired gun some teams were using, which is why Tarvaris Jackson was listed instead of Brett Favre. I had no idea what to do for teams like the Redskins and Panthers, who are probably going to be switching quarterbacks at some point in the near future, so I was forced to go with the guy they had been using, even if he’s not a realistic part of their future. Again, I never said this was 100% accurate, just a general representation of what’s going on in the league.

Now, let’s look at the draft…

The numbers I’m about to go over only take the first twenty picks into consideration. Why not use the entire first round? Because the remaining picks are basically playoff teams, which means that they’re already pretty good, which means that any quarterback taken at that point will get to sit, learn for a while, and then wind up starting for a team with receivers and linemen who are actually capable of performing football-related tasks. Unlike, say, the Bills. And since we’re trying to find out what your crappy team should do in the first round, let’s try and stick to similar situations.

Since 1993, there have been 34 quarterbacks taken somewhere in the first twenty picks of the draft. Of those, maybe 10 have been great, 12 have been good/mediocre, and 12 have been godawful. Again, of the 12 mediocre quarterbacks, 4 are too young to assess with any certainty, so they might become great, but they also might become Jay Fiedler.

So, what does all this mean? It means that if you take a quarterback with the third pick in the draft, you could wind up with Steve McNair. Or Heath Shuler. Or Akili Smith. And if you wait till after the tenth pick to take a quarterback, you might get stuck with Kyle Boller. But, you also might wind up with Ben Roethlisberger.

I think what this whole thing means is that nobody has a clue. We like to talk about certain GMs being smarter than the rest, but if that were the case, the Patriots would’ve taken Tom Brady with the 46th pick, instead of waiting until the 199th. Matt Leinart and Jay Cutler were taken one pick apart. So were Drew Bledsoe and Rick Mirer. Those weren’t smart picks. They were lucky.

It means that I have no idea what your team should do. It means that nobody does, not even the people hired by the teams to know these things. Because so much of this sport, especially the draft, is throwing darts at a piece of paper taped to the wall. Just hope your dart lands on Donovan McNabb and not Tim Couch.