Don't Be Fooled By Draft Industrial Complex
Has the NFL become obsessed over quarterbacks? National insider & Pro Football Hall of Fame voter Howard Balzer dives deep into the latest league phenomenon.
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NFL TEAMS CONTINUE IN THE HUNT FOR A FRANCHISE QB
By Howard Balzer, Special To All Access Football
No one likes a party-pooper, so many of you might not care for what you are about to read with the 2024 NFL Draft right around the corner.
However, it’s important to communicate a level of reality when it comes to the land rush that occurs each year with the selection of quarterbacks, especially in the first round and most notably in the first few overall selections.
Amid all the hype, there’s this notion promulgated by the incessant chatter that surrounds the position that teams who need a quarterback and are picking at the beginning of the draft, simply can’t survive if they don’t grab one.
Doesn’t anyone have a sense of history, or is there is a collective amnesia that settles over everyone as if they’ve fallen off a planet and never witnessed a draft before?
Yes, there are 15 first-round quarterbacks expected to be starters when the 2024 season opens in September. However, if that number holds, that also means there are 17 teams that won’t have No.1 selections under center (or standing in shotgun).
Consider these stunning numbers (see list at the end):
*In the five drafts from 2014 to 2018, there were 16 first-round quarterbacks selected with eight in the top three. Only three of the 16 are with their original team: Patrick Mahomes (10th overall, 2017), Josh Allen (seventh overall) and Lamar Jackson (32nd overall) in 2018. Eight are with different teams and five are out of football entirely.
Eight were top-three picks, all of whom are now with different teams but only Detroit’s Jared Goff and Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield are projected starters, although Sam Darnold might be the opening-day starter in Minnesota.
*The numbers are better in the last five years but it’s surely too soon to truly know. There were also 16 first-rounders and 11 are with their original team. Seven were top-three choices and two, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance from 2021 won’t be starting.
In the 10 years of drafts, 26 teams have selected a quarterback in the first round with Arizona, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Jacksonville, and the N.Y. Jets picking two. The six teams that didn’t make one are Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Seattle.
What it is about the evaluation of quarterbacks that causes teams to fall in love with a new toy so often?
The Bears, after all, are expected to spend a No. 1 choice on a quarterback for the third time in eight drafts. If the Patriots use the third overall choice on one, it will be the second in four drafts.
Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian said there are varying explanations for the phenomena.
“First-round quarterbacks now don’t carry a price-tag penalty with them,” Polian noted. “Once we got the rookie wage scale, the price-tag penalty went away. The system was upside down (before that) where players became the highest-paid players in the league and at their position.
“Now you can gamble on a quarterback up high because you’re not risking all that much money. If it’s the first guy in the draft, it’s a hefty price tag, but at three, four, five, it’s not terrible. So they get pushed up.”
With Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy in mind, Polian insists that “there are not four quarterbacks who are better than everybody else in this draft.”
But desperate teams do desperate things and they don’t want to pass on a guy that winds up playing at a high level for another team.
What’s totally out of whack are how quarterbacks and other players are viewed by what Polian refers to as the Draft Industrial Complex.
He said, “What’s so pervasive today is the ignorance of the so-called experts in the media is breathtaking, No. 1. And No. 2, they fail to tell their listeners or readers that they don’t have at least 45 percent of the information that the clubs have. They don’t have the medical; they don’t have the psychological; they should not have, unfortunately too many get it, snippets of the intellectual testing and they absolutely don’t have any read-out on the visits that the players make and the interviews that they have with the coaching staff.”
“So that’s 45 percent of the grade and in the case of quarterbacks, it’s almost 60 percent of the grade. So they have no idea what we’re seeing and doing and they’re painting a false picture. It's entertainment. As long as fans recognize that it’s entertainment and not information, then everything will be fine. The problem is that some people in that business take themselves seriously and they get upset if you did something that they didn’t anticipate. Then, it’s a reach, then it’s terrible, you don’t know how to manage the draft; this GM’s terrible.”
Polian then broke down the 60 percent that pertains to quarterbacks.
He said, “The most difficult thing you have to judge with a quarterback is a) his ability to recognize defenses, b) his ability to process it quickly, c) his ability to know where to go with the football and d) the ability to do it accurately under pressure.
“Notice, nowhere in there did I say making off-platform throws, escaping, all that stuff. If a player has that, if it’s Mahomes or a player like that, that’s wonderful. But it’s not required. The other four things are required. How do you measure that? Well, it’s hard to do. There are tests that purport to do it; I don’t have a lot of faith in them. They haven’t proven to be in my view, anywhere near appropriate.”
That’s why those team visits are so important.
“You have to do that by sitting down with your quarterback coach, your offensive coordinator, your head coach,” Polian said. Putting a guy on the chalkboard, taking him through film, trying to make sure that he can explain to you what he’s looking at on the film. What he was seeing. And then you do it in a way that’s really fast; almost like a high-octane quiz (snapping fingers). Pop clips up there, what defense is this? Pop another one up there. What defense is this? Here's this play. Who do you go to there? Take him through that. That’s part of what the quarterback candidates do when they come and visit. You can’t do that at the combine. That 15-minute, 18-minute thing at the combine; that’s hello, goodbye. There’s no substance to that.”
“But the real substance comes in the facility and only the clubs have access to that information because it’s proprietary. And each one’s different. Three clubs could look at the same quarterback entirely differently.”
Reflecting on drafting Allen, Bills general manager Brandon Beane said at the combine, “What’s the DNA? The DNA of, ‘That’s the face of your franchise.’ What is the intelligence because you’re a coach on the field, he’s got to know what everybody’s doing and he’s also got to know what the defense is trying to do. So how quick can he process? How much does he know? Does he understand what teams are trying to do? And then that leader; everybody can lead when it’s going well, but what are his leadership traits when it’s going bad? How’s he going to overcome adversity?”
Broncos head coach Sean Payton said, “What’s hard to measure is their ability to multi-task and process and make decisions. You can visit with someone and they can be intelligent, but how quickly can they deliver the information and how quickly can they get through the progression? Are they accurate? There’s some fundamental things that we have to see that are present and so sometimes it’s not as difficult as we make it out to be. And sometimes it’s very difficult. I think we’ll be really good at this and I think to some degree we’re glad that a lot of people aren’t.”
The Packers have been blessed with having two quarterbacks from 1992 until 2022 and now it appears Jordan Love has the chance to continue that excellence.
Asked at the combine what makes drafting quarterbacks such an inexact science, general manager Brian Gutekunst said, “It’s probably the toughest position of all professional sports to play. The amount that is on that guy’s plate from pre-snap to post-snap and everything that goes into it, the amount of information he has to process in such a limited amount of time, all the leadership stuff, the intangible stuff makes it an exceptionally hard position to play.
“There’s a certain amount of athletic gifts and talent that you have to have, and then there’s so much more beyond that and I think the thing that I think is lost at times is how much of it has to be developed over time. And so, you never really know until you have that time to try to develop a guy, whether he’s going to be able to do it at a high level or not. So, it’s just a tough league to excel at that position.”
The comment about development is crucial and is at the heart of what happens to some quarterbacks. The higher selections are generally teams that weren’t very good the previous season. If that doesn’t improve quickly, there are often changes in staffs that goes beyond the head coach.
This season, there are eight new head coaches to go with 16 teams that will begin 2024 with an offensive coordinator who is different than the one that started the 2023 season.
Five of the new head coaches are on teams with top-eight first-round picks: Washington (2, Dan Quinn); New England (3, Jerod Mayo); L.A. Chargers (5, Jim Harbaugh); Tennessee (7, Brian Callahan); and Atlanta (8, Raheem Morris). There would be six if Carolina with Dave Canales hadn’t traded the first overall choice to the Bears. The other two are Las Vegas (13, Antonio Pierce) and Seattle (16, Mike MacDonald).
Asked about the lack of continuity in the league, Polian said, “We are doing, in my view, and this is not just an old guy grousing about it was better in my day; we’re doing a worse job we ever have done in the National Football League in terms of developing, not only quarterbacks, but players at every position. Most notably, quarterbacks and the offensive line. There are going to be some quarterbacks who have failed, Mac Jones comes to mind, who may go on and have a good career somewhere else. Because they don’t fit the system they were drafted for and they get cast aside. They get labeled as failures and they can grow and develop if they get in the right system.
“But the change is constant. You can never develop players, you can never develop a team, you can never develop a system and a process unless you have some continuity. When you’re changing coaches every three years, it’s a prescription for failure. I don’t know why it happens. I think it’s this sort of group mentality, mob mentality if you will, on the Internet. Someone decides that this guy’s on the hot seat and if he doesn’t make it to the Super Bowl, off with his head. None of that makes any sense in terms of program development. You can’t do it by changing coaches every three years, or every two years or after 11 games. It just doesn’t work.”
Polian concluded by bemoaning some of the owners in the league and said, “People who come in from the financial world tend to be fans, so they think the people that they hear and listen to on television and radio know what they’re talking about when the reality is they don’t. And they tend to think in terms of fungibility if this doesn’t work.
“It’s not like a stock. You don’t sell it. You gotta develop it. You gotta develop players. You gotta develop coaches.”
So, we will all watch as April 25 arrives and see how many quarterbacks will be selected in the first two rounds. Many will get caught up in the excitement while having a certain degree of certainty that in five years (or less) everything will have changed.
A Decade of Quarterbacks
Players in bold still with original team. Total teams if more than one in parentheses after name. Total games played/started in parentheses after drafting teams.
2014
Blake Bortles (2), Jacksonville (No. 3, 75/73, 78/73 total)
Johnny Manziel, Cleveland (No. 22, 14/8)
Teddy Bridgewater (6), Minnesota (No. 32, 30/28, 79/65 total
2015
Jameis Winston (3), Tampa Bay (No. 1, 72/70, 93/80 total)
Marcus Mariota (5), Tennessee (No. 2, 63/61, 90/74 total)
2016
Jared Goff (2), L.A. Rams (No. 1, 69/69, 117/117 total)
Carson Wentz (5), Philadelphia (No. 2, 68/68, 95/93 total)
Paxton Lynch, Denver (No. 26), 5/4)
2017
Mitchell Trubisky (3), Chicago (No. 2, 51/50, 69/57 total)
Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City (No. 10, 96/96)
Deshaun Watson (2), Houston (No. 12, 54/53, 66/65 total)
2018
Baker Mayfield (4), Cleveland (No. 1, 60/59, 89/86 total)
Sam Darnold (4), N.Y. Jets (No. 3, 38/38, 66/56 total)
Josh Allen, Buffalo (No. 7, 94/93)
Josh Rosen (3), Arizona (No. 10, 14/13, 24/16 total)
Lamar Jackson, Baltimore (No. 32, 86/77)
2019
Kyler Murray, Arizona (No. 1, 65/65)
Daniel Jones, N.Y. Giants (No. 6, 60/59)
Dwayne Haskins (2), Washington (No. 15, 16/13)
2020
Joe Burrow, Cincinnati (No. 1, 52/52)
Tua Tagovailoa, Miami (No. 5, 53/51)
Justin Herbert, L.A. Chargers (No. 6, 62/62)
Jordan Love, Green Bay (No. 26, 27/18)
2021
Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville (No. 1, 50/50)
Zach Wilson, N.Y. Jets (No. 2, 34/33)
Trey Lance (2), San Francisco (No. 3, 8/4)
Justin Fields (2), Chicago (No. 11, 40/38)
Mac Jones (2), New England (No. 15, 42/42)
2022
Kenny Pickett (2), Pittsburgh (No. 20, 25/24)
2023
Bryce Young, Carolina (No. 1, 16/16)
C.J. Stroud, Houston (No. 2, 15/15)
Anthony Richardson, Indianapolis (No. 4, 4/4)