DawgTalkers.net Forums The Archives 2018 NFL Season 2018 NFL Draft History tells us the NFL is terrible at evaluating quarterbacks

its a long article for those who would rather have pop up pictures

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23039...draft-prospects

We could come close to an NFL record this year before any players take a snap. There are five quarterbacks who could come off the board on Day 1 of the draft, which would tie the 1999 draft for the second most since the merger. The only draft to post six first-rounders is the legendary Class of 1983, which delivered a trio of Hall of Famers in John Elway, Jim Kelly and Dan Marino.

As much as the league seems to be struggling to pick between the prospects in this year's class, though, the coaches and executives of 1983 weren't able to separate the wheat from the chaff until well after the fact. Elway was the first overall pick, but the Chiefs still managed to draft Todd Blackledge seven picks before Kelly. Blackledge threw 29 career touchdowns. Kelly topped 29 in 1991 alone. Tony Eason was taken one pick after Kelly and 12 picks before Marino, who would post the greatest passing season in league history to that point during his second campaign.

A league full of coaches and personnel executives who had spent and would go on to spend the majority of their lives working in the game of football were not able to pick between a trio of future Hall of Famers and two guys who would fail to make a single Pro Bowl. (Ken O'Brien, drafted after Eason and before Marino, at least made two Pro Bowls over his 10-year career.)

2018 NFL DRAFT


When: April 26-28
Where: Arlington, Texas
NFL draft coverage » | Full order: 1-256 »

•Insider Mel Kiper's Mock Draft 3.0 »
•Insider Todd McShay's Mock Draft 3.0 »
•Insider Dueling two-round mock drafts »
• Kiper's Big Board » | McShay's Top 32 »
• Teams with most, least draft capital »
•Insider Projecting QB booms, busts »
•Insider Kiper: Re-grading 2017 NFL draft »

Thirty-five years later, I'm not entirely convinced we've gotten much better at evaluating quarterbacks. The league has access to more information than ever before, but the job has become tougher. A wider range of passing offenses at the collegiate level have made it more difficult for obstinate coaches to translate amateur success into bland professional schemes. Passers come better prepared for the pre-draft process than ever before and are far more selective about throwing at the combine.

As a result, the range of opinions -- anonymous and otherwise -- we hear about these players before they enter the league is truly remarkable. The error bars are impossibly large. Ask around about Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen and you'll hear that he'll turn into budding MVP candidate Carson Wentz or Titans washout Jake Locker. You'll hear that Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield will turn into either Johnny Manziel or Russell Wilson. This doesn't happen in other sports. Jaylen Brown didn't enter the NBA draft only to be compared to both Jimmy Butler and Bill Murray in "Space Jam."

Picking the right quarterback is the most important thing an NFL organization can do. The Browns famously didn't believe in Wentz and traded the second overall pick in 2016 to the Eagles, who did. The rest is history. You can basically get everything else wrong and still repeatedly make it to the playoffs with the right quarterback, as we saw in the first few years of Andrew Luck's career during Ryan Grigson's reign as general manager in Indianapolis. It is not hyperbole to suggest getting this decision right is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

And yet history tells us that the league will wrongly evaluate these prospects. Chances are that one or two of these five passers will turn into superstars, but it's unlikely that those one or two will be the first quarterbacks taken on draft night. Some fans are about to buy authentic team jerseys they'll quickly regret. Thousands of scouts spent tens of thousands of nights in hotels around America for decisions nobody will want to claim three years from now. We should be able to do better than this.

So, what has gone wrong? Why can't we reliably figure out which quarterbacks will turn into superstars? And can we fix it in time to evaluate this year's class?

Over the next two days, I'll look into how and why we struggle with the most important part of the draft process. We'll try to answer the "why" in Part 2 on Tuesday, as well as evaluate whether the problems are fixable and apply what we know (and don't know) to the Class of 2018. But let's start with what recent history can tell us.


The Colts drafted Peyton Manning with the first overall pick in 1998 after much debate between him and Ryan Leaf. Jamie Squire/Allsport
How bad is the problem?
Pretty bad. We're about to hit the 20-year anniversary of the 1998 draft, which famously saw Colts general manager Bill Polian agonize over whether to take Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf, as Peter King documented for Sports Illustrated. Polian got his call right. The Colts grabbed Manning while the Chargers traded up to No. 2 and happily settled for Leaf, who threw 36 interceptions over 18 starts and was out of football by 2001.

Since then, it hasn't been quite as easy. We're still judging the most recent classes, and there are different ways to evaluate quarterbacks, but the first quarterback taken in the 19 drafts since 1998 has been the most productive and/or successful passer from that class only five times. It hasn't happened since 2011, when the Panthers controversially chose Cam Newton over Blaine Gabbert and a bevy of dominant defenders with the first overall pick. (More on that later.) That was the fourth consecutive year in which the league correctly chose the most productive pro passer first, but the success rate wasn't good before that and hasn't been good since.

YEAR FIRST QB
DRAFTED BEST QB
DRAFTED
1998 Peyton
Manning Peyton
Manning
1999 Tim Couch Donovan McNabb
2000 Chad
Pennington Tom
Brady
2001 Michael Vick Drew Brees
2002 David Carr David Garrard
2003 Carson Palmer Carson Palmer
2004 Eli
Manning Ben
Roethlisberger
2005 Alex Smith Aaron Rodgers
2006 Vince Young Jay Cutler
2007 JaMarcus
Russell Kevin
Kolb
2008 Matt Ryan Matt Ryan
2009 Matthew
Stafford Matthew
Stafford
2010 Sam Bradford Sam Bradford
2011 Cam Newton Cam Newton
2012 Andrew Luck Russell Wilson
2013 E.J. Manuel Geno Smith
2014 Blake Bortles Derek Carr
2015 Jameis
Winston Marcus
Mariota
2016 Jared Goff Carson Wentz
2017 Mitchell
Trubisky Deshaun
Watson
You can quibble with a couple of those choices. Maybe you prefer Luck over Wilson, even though Wilson has won a Super Bowl and has been far more productive in Seattle. Perhaps you think Jimmy Garoppolo has already proved to be better than Derek Carr. And there are some cases in which there really were no winners: The Bills would probably prefer to have Geno Smith over EJ Manuel, but you suspect they would rather have stayed out of the quarterback market altogether in 2013. You get the idea, though: The first guy often isn't the best guy.

It's fair to note that this doesn't tell the whole story. Teams that pick first are often some of the worst organizations in football, and they're among the worst because they're bad at talent evaluation and subsequent development. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy -- in other words, the Browns stay the Browns.

From what we know, though, even some of the league's most decorated talent evaluators struggle with evaluating quarterbacks. When he was deciding between Leaf and Manning in 1998, Polian paid the late Bill Walsh $5,000 to evaluate both passers, a price that I suspect most teams would love to pay for a quarterback evaluation today. If you were making a list of the best quarterback evaluators in league history, the architect of the 49ers dynasty might be a good place to start.

Quotes from the report made their way into a USA Today story at the time by Richard Weiner, and surprisingly, Walsh raved about Leaf. "He is gifted, in just a natural throwing motion that is so quick," Walsh reportedly said in his evaluation. "With a flick of his wrist, he can get the ball just about anywhere he wants. He is a good competitor, amazingly agile and smooth and graceful in his movement as a big man can be. He handled the Washington State offense beautifully. In a sense, it was an aerial circus." Mike Shanahan, then the coach of the Super Bowl-winning Denver Broncos, said the "excellent" Leaf was "a big, strong kid with unbelievable arm strength. He's played in a system very similar to a lot of NFL teams. That cannot be underestimated."

EDITOR'S PICKS

Where top six in NFL draft stand: It's all about QBs, Barkley, Chubb
The Browns will have their choice of QBs at No. 1 then see who's there at No. 4; the Colts at No. 6 hope teams in front gobble up other QBs.


Browns must decide if Josh Allen's talent can overcome his lack of accuracy
Josh Allen's arm is the envy of many, but his low completion percentage is the opposite of that. How will the Browns evaluate the Wyoming quarterback?


Boom or bust: 10 years of the best, worst draft picks for every NFL team
For every Antonio Brown or Russell Wilson, there's a Kevin White or Sergio Kindle. We look at the biggest draft hits and misses over the past decade.

At the same time, we don't know what Walsh's report said about the future Hall of Famer on the other side of this comparison, and most evaluators preferred the Tennessee star. A poll of executives at the time found that 20 of 25 observers preferred Manning, while three preferred Leaf and two couldn't decide. Then-Steelers general manager Tom Donahoe, a member of the Eagles' front office staff when it chose Wentz in 2016, suggested that you couldn't go wrong with either guy. Colts coach Jim Mora said that both Leaf and Manning would be good players in the NFL, while Seahawks coach Dennis Erickson believed that Leaf would turn into one of the "future stars of the league."

We're lucky to have that many quotes about the Leaf-Manning debate on the record. Usually, pre-draft scouting evaluations are the domain of the dreaded anonymous scout or personnel executive, whose comparisons are often facile and occasionally prejudicial. It's only after the fact that those executives come out and reveal that they had a first-round grade on that franchise quarterback they passed on three times and let someone else take in the fourth round.

Fortunately, to get a better sense of what the league actually thought about quarterbacks, there's Bob McGinn. The legendary Packers beat writer took an annual poll of anonymous evaluators before the draft during his time with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and asked them to rank the quarterbacks from each year's draft class. McGinn then scored each of those ballots with five points for the top-ranked quarterback, four for the second-ranked quarterback and onward.

I was able to find polls going back to the 2005 draft, which was a fateful session for the team McGinn covered. Let's run through the top five from those polls to see just how difficult it is to project quarterbacks.


Aaron Rodgers fell to Green Bay at pick 24. AP Photo/Adam Rountree
2005
1. Alex Smith (63 points, 11 first-place votes)
2. Aaron Rodgers (53, two first-place)
3. Jason Campbell (25)
4. Charlie Frye (17)
5. David Greene (16)

While Rodgers challenged to be the first overall pick in the draft, the 49ers chose Smith, with Rodgers falling all the way to the Packers at 24. Many observers were concerned that Rodgers was a product of Cal coach Jeff Tedford, who previously sent Akili Smith, Kyle Boller and Joey Harrington to the pros with limited success. One NFL personnel director told McGinn that Tedford quarterbacks "all throw the ball the same way," while another said Rodgers "is very rigid mechanically." It's difficult to think of a quarterback in NFL history who is more fluid in getting rid of the football off-schedule than Rodgers.

2006
1. Matt Leinart (71 points, 11 first-place votes)
2. Vince Young (61, six first-place votes)
3. Jay Cutler (55, four first-place votes)
4. Brodie Croyle (10)
5. Charlie Whitehurst (9)

Opinions were split on the first three quarterbacks, although the legendary Rose Bowl battle between Leinart and Young loomed heavily on every scout's mind. Leinart lost his job to Kurt Warner in Arizona, while Young mixed game-changing plays, bad decisions and inconsistency during his run in Tennessee. Young made two Pro Bowls but lacked the longevity of Cutler. As then-Broncos general manager Ted Sundquist documented in 2015, Shanahan wanted to draft Leinart, only for the Cardinals to beat them to the punch. Cutler would be the last highly touted quarterback to hit the NFL with a significant losing record in college until the Titans drafted Locker in 2011.

2007
1. JaMarcus Russell (69 points, 15 first-place votes)
2. Brady Quinn (54, three first-place votes)
3. Trent Edwards (25)
4. Drew Stanton (15)
5. John Beck (8)

Kevin Kolb, who had the most success of any quarterback in this class, received only six points. Russell's pro day was the stuff of legend, with both draftniks and ex-pros alike raving about his future. Bucs coach Jon Gruden compared it to "Star Wars," while ESPN draft expert Mel Kiper Jr. compared Russell's athleticism to Elway's. Texans coach Gary Kubiak said he was sure Russell would turn into a great player, while Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw said Russell was a "pretty easy" choice for the Raiders with the first overall pick.

Others preferred Quinn, although he fell to the bottom of the first round before the Browns traded up to snatch him away with the 22nd pick. Polian raved about Quinn, dismissing a 58.0 completion percentage while noting that Quinn had no protection during his time at Notre Dame. Others disagreed, but Quinn certainly had his backers. McGinn asked 18 scouts if they would prefer to have Quinn or Rodgers, who had thrown only 31 passes with limited success over his first two seasons backing up Brett Favre in Green Bay. Just four of those 18 scouts chose Rodgers while 12 chose Quinn and two said it was too close to call.

2008
1. Matt Ryan (71 points, 12 first-place votes)
2. Brian Brohm (53, one first-place vote)
3. Chad Henne (38, two first-place votes)
4. Joe Flacco (36)
5. John David Booty (11)

There were concerns at the time about Ryan's accuracy, but after completing just 59.9 percent of his passes at Boston College, Ryan is up to 64.9 percent as a pro. Brohm, a quantitative darling who completed 65.8 percent of his passes at Louisville, failed to unseat Rodgers and never developed into a successful pro. Flacco rose late up draft boards by virtue of his arm strength, although McGinn astutely noted that the famously quiet Flacco could be characterized as an introvert.

2009
1. Matthew Stafford (46 points, 11 first-place votes)
2. Mark Sanchez (39, five first-place votes)
3. Josh Freeman (21, two first-place votes)
4. Rhett Bomar (1)
5. Pat White (1)

Stafford was another quarterback with a below-average 57.1 completion percentage in college, but he has improved his mechanics and accuracy as a pro, with the move to a short passing scheme under Jim Bob Cooter pushing him closer to 66 percent over the past several seasons in Detroit. Sanchez nearly parlayed his cool demeanor and lone year of college success into coming off the board second to the Rams, only to instead go to the Jets at No. 5 as part of a trade that the Browns somehow still lost.

2010
1. Sam Bradford (80 points, 20 first-place votes)
2. Jimmy Clausen (57)
3. Colt McCoy (30)
4. Tim Tebow (21)
5. Dan LeFevour (5)

The scouts got this one right, although Bradford never developed into the superstar some projected he would. Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff told McGinn that Bradford was "a tall-stature guy who has that prototypical stand in the pocket," which seems like a roundabout way of saying that the 6-foot-4 Bradford was tall. The flashpoint was obviously Tebow. McGinn polled 21 scouts about his future and the anonymous ones mostly got it right -- 16 said he wouldn't turn into an NFL starter, but eight of them suggested they would consider taking Tebow in one of the first two rounds of the draft.


The Panthers' selection of Cam Newton in 2011 was the last instance in which the first QB off the board has been the most successful of the class. Chris Trotman/Getty Images
2011
1. Blaine Gabbert (105 points, 16 first-place votes)
2. Cam Newton (100, 11 first-place votes)
3. Jake Locker (43)
4. Ryan Mallett (43)
5. Christian Ponder (37)

You'll note that this list doesn't include Andy Dalton (15 points) or Colin Kaepernick (11). Opinions were split on the class. One scout rather hilariously told McGinn that there were only second- and third-rounders at the position in the pool and bemoaned the fact that there was no Bradford or Freeman. McGinn polled the scouts on Newton's future, and only two of the 24 said he would become a perennial Pro Bowler. Nine said he would be a solid starter, while another nine said he would play without ever becoming effective. Four said he would be a bust.

2012
1. Andrew Luck (95 points, 19 first-place votes)
2. Robert Griffin III (75)
3. Ryan Tannehill (57)
4. Brandon Weeden (18)
5. Brock Osweiler (14)

Luck was the highest-regarded prospect of this generation, so it's no surprise he received every first-place vote from the queried scouts. Among the guys who didn't make it to the top five were Kirk Cousins (13 points), Russell Wilson (6) and Nick Foles (1). McGinn himself ranked Osweiler over Wilson, with one scout saying Osweiler was "like the CEO of a company." That's another roundabout way of saying someone's tall. Many were concerned about the 5-foot-11 Wilson's ability to throw from the pocket, but the only thing that's prevented him from doing so as a pro has been the Seahawks' offensive line.

2013
1. Geno Smith (74 points, 11 first-place votes)
2. Matt Barkley (58, three first-place votes)
3. EJ Manuel (35, two first-place votes)
4. Mike Glennon (28)
5. Ryan Nassib (22)

The scouts rightly thought this was a dismal quarterback class, although it's clear to see the difference between the consensus and what actually happened on draft day. While most of the league preferred Smith, the Bills were one of the exceptions and took Manuel with the 16th pick. The Florida State passer was the only quarterback taken in the first round.

2014
1. Johnny Manziel (68 points, eight first-place votes)
2. Blake Bortles (61, four first-place votes)
3. Derek Carr (49, two first-place votes)
4. Teddy Bridgewater (41, two first-place votes)
5. Jimmy Garoppolo (16)

It's still unclear exactly who will end up as the best quarterback from this class, but it does seem safe to say it won't be Johnny Football. Twelve of the 20 scouts McGinn polled suggested Manziel's career would go down as a miss, with scouts expressing concerns about his off-field behavior even before hitting the pros. Zach Mettenberger received one first-place vote, with his six points placing him just ahead of AJ McCarron's five.

2015
1. Marcus Mariota (85 points, nine first-place votes)
2. Jameis Winston (84, 10 first-place votes)
3. Bryce Petty (45)
4. Brett Hundley (39)
5. Garrett Grayson (19.5)

Winston was seen as a far more polarizing prospect at the time of the draft, owing in part to his off-field troubles. One scout compared Winston to a less athletic version of JaMarcus Russell. Eight of the 19 executives on McGinn's anonymous committee suggested Winston would be a disappointment or a bust, while just one said the same thing about Mariota.

2016
1. Jared Goff (73 points, eight first-place votes)
2. Carson Wentz (71.5, seven first-place votes)
3. Paxton Lynch (52, one first-place vote)
4. Connor Cook (29, one first-place vote)
5. Christian Hackenberg (11)


Dak Prescott finished behind Hackenberg with six points. While that seems comical now, remember that the Cowboys tried to trade up for Lynch and then were pipped to Cook by the Raiders before settling on the guy who would quickly become their franchise quarterback. One scout told McGinn that Prescott had "no accuracy and no vision," while saying the Mississippi State product wasn't an NFL quarterback. Another suggested that the Eagles would need to sit Wentz for a year or two before he could become a real starter, while others alternately compared him to both Bortles and Ben Roethlisberger.

2017
1. Mitchell Trubisky (61 points, four first-place votes)
2. Deshaun Watson (58, six first-place votes)
3. Patrick Mahomes (56, five first-place votes)
4. DeShone Kizer (32, one first-place vote)
5. Davis Webb (23)

It's still far too early to draw any conclusions about this class, but it does seem likely that the person who submitted a first-place vote for Kizer probably won't be bragging about it publicly anytime soon.

On Tuesday, we'll try to figure out why teams struggle to evaluate quarterbacks, figure out whether the problems are fixable, and apply what we know (and don't know) to the Class of 2018.

i certainly remember a lot of hate from people talking about how Cam was gonna be a bust.

yea....

why can't it be both?

Couch wasn't all that good to begin with. if we were to redraft 99, do we still pick couch or do we pick mcnabb?

how do you build a team when you give an oft-injured QB how much money?

also, while the team is terrible, that is to ignore the fact that luck was a turnover machine to begin with BEFORE the injuries.

*disclaimer before the vultures descend*

luck was hands down the best prospect in that draft. and healthy, i'd still take him over wilson in the nfl....maybe.

but anyway, why can't it be both?

why can't it be that you poorly evaluated a QB who was probably not gonna be good to begin with?

how successful has blaine gabbert been, despite playing in different offenses?

and he still sucked.

Great points eo. Especially about Couch and Carr too. They never had a chance.

And likewise, guys like Russell, Wentz and Prescott were drafted to teams that had good run games, good lines, and good defenses. Just look at Wentz. He went down, and a career backup got plugged in and won the Super Bowl. Does that mean people missed the evaluation on Wentz, or that he just got put into a great situation?

http://www.profootballhof.com/news/super-bowl-starting-qbs/

some of the winners and just starting QB's in the superbowl overall.

just because you're the best prospect doesn't mean you're actually the better QB.

people talk about "well, its a team sport".

by that logic, why are we handing out 100 mill contracts to QB's who haven't done jack crap?

We are all just guessing. When I say "we" I mean literally every person.

In general i think people get mixed up between evaluation and projection.

Imho evaluation of skillset is possible.
But projecting/predicting success or failure is a myth because there are simply too many factors external to the prospect skillset that determine success or failure.

Fit, scheme, personnel, coaching, personality, locker room dynamics, stability in the FO/team, ownership etc...

The reason people often miss on "tools" guys is that all they see is projection.

The reason people often miss on locker room/ gaudy stat guys is that they get blinded to projection.


The former is going to love Josh Allen. The latter is going to love Baker Mayfeild.

It would be interesting to see the “success “ rates at evaluating other positions in comparison.

Honest question.

Were you replying to my post?

It was more rolling out my thoughts on your comment than a reply. So, yes and no.

Just a little wrinkle, an insight for this topic that is very valid, especially ;looking back at a winless season. It is one mistake to misevaluate skills, maybe to be blinded by hype, snake oil, and kool aid; it is another to mismatch drafted skill set to a system, like a deep ball vertical O relying on dink and dunker, or pick a blitz guy and drop him into pass coverage a lot. But the part I see here is we make the bad decision and lock it down by insisting on the same mistakes and really locking in that bad decision by trying desperately to make it work while it often gets worse the longer that the insistence on it, regardless of failure, gets more set. I feel Kizer is an example of this and Kessler as well. This is ego trying to save face. Pathetic at best. The level attained is dependent on results. But the need for correction in new directions are visible along the way. We ignored them.

...

Agreed....

I've always maintained that a bad franchise will never have a "franchise" QB.
They won't be able to identify a potential one through the draft and/or they will fail to develop them and/or they will fail to keep them.

Washington is prime example of this. Hopefully the Dorsey regime for the Browns will solve this for you guys.

Also, another note. QBs always get blamed in the end and sometimes its rightfully the prospect fault. But other times when a franchise fails to develop a QB they never admit and say 'we screwed that kid up' the QB gets labeled a bust and they rinse wash repeat with the next guy. Sometimes these scrap heap of potential franchise QBs get picked up and have success in the right situation....and sometimes not.

I'll probably get flamed for saying this on the forum but i'm quite sure some of the 20 something QB prospects that have come through Berea could have made it if the situation around them was right.

Anyhow....i figure there are three parts to a QB prospects success: 1) off the field assessment 2) situation of the team that drafts them 3) the prospects skillset as judged on the field

Great QB.

If he played for Cleveland? He'd already have a statue.

If he played for Cleveland he's probably have two broken legs...

Our O line is usually at least okay, so maybe just one.

He's been in enough car accidents in ATL...

I think that the biggest question about Newton was that he had a very, very limited college career to look at.

As far as QBs being "over eated" ... that would have been Jared Lorenzen ... for sure .... or Jamarcus Russell.

If we take away all the prototypical QB stuff and the sudden risers in the mock drafts, I'm sure the QB assessment's would be much more accurate.

I think the media promotes some QB's and down faults others just for headlines,but if we stick with the end-season assessments we have a much better record.

We also have to discount ruined QB's like Vince Young and RGIII and others that were miss managed by HC's

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-team-can-beat-the-draft/

Yea but after that 50 Percent it drops to under 20 percent after round one. So .. U pick your favorite when u can in round one.

You mean you think we should draft one when your odds are the very best they can be? Who'da thunk it!!? lmao

Ranking the 18 quarterback classes since 2000

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000925934/article/ranking-the-18-quarterback-classes-since-2000

Eh.

Ironically, everyone can thank the Browns for ruining the curve on this, lol!

Great article and I also think some of this comes down to College systems not preparing players for the NFL. In particular, the QB, which is the most important position. When QBs are running spread or air raid etc., never in a pocket, allowed to run all over the place and improvise, have little understanding of how to read a defense, let alone a complex one, or rarely, if ever, call plays in a huddle/take the ball from under center...that is a problem. It is literally not much different than sending a kid to college with a 6th grade reading level. Maybe part of the problem is the NFL that wont change and adapt their schemes with the college game...or, the college game has adapted to take advantage of the talent disparity on any given NCAA team? Or, it is all about big show, big offense, big sexy plays to keep it exciting for an audience with less attention span? Whatever it is, the QBs coming out are often one dimensional and expected to be immediately two, and more often than not, three dimensional.

You don't have to guess how somebody did in their bowl game(s), You can see what they did against top competition in college. I mean there ae indicators.

It might not be a science but sometimes the science gets in the way, I mean there are indicators, and don't mind being wrong anyway, just like a guy and make the most of him.

The Browns?

Who do they not give up on too soon? "18 months and we'll change everything again" has been their only consistent move since 2006.

I mean there are indicators. Don't be afraid to be wrong, stick with the plan,

stop poking holes in the bucket.

What's the worst that could happen, you are right back here again next year? We already have that.

I tend to agree.

There might be some resistance to the idea of Allen, but there has to be a reason why many people consider him the top guy....if all we read has some merit.

and many others are calling him fools gold. I think he is one of those guys we see every year who shoots up the charts based on measurables and looking good in shorts, throwing the ball

Kingo, I don't disagree. Don't take my words and think I would draft him. I like Mayfield the most.

I am just saying there is a lot of buzz about the kid, and he does have the tools. None of us that I am aware of make our livings evaluation talent.

There has to be something that scouts and GMs like. I don't see Lamar Jackson ranked above him anywhere and I think Jackson is a damn good QB.

His problem is similar to Tebow. The team that takes him has to take him for what he is, not what they want him to be.

That is a problem in the NFL, they are slow to change and face the facts.

Ranking the Browns' 28 QBs since 1999 from worst to first


http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23139554/ranking-browns-28-qbs-1999-worst-first

Charley Casserly claims to have polled 24 different teams on their quarterback rankings. He says for the top QB on the board, the results were:

Darnold - 17
Mayfield - 3
Allen - 2
Rosen - 2

Interestingly, he also devised a point system to indicate their overall standings. For being a team's top QB, the player is given four points. For being their fourth quarterback, the player is given one point. The results;

Sam Darnold - 87
Josh Allen - 61
Baker Mayfield - 46
Josh Rosen - 45

I think this highlights that there is pretty significant differences in how the teams rank the quarterbacks, in spite of Darnold being seen pretty consistently the top quarterback. It does suggest that Allen is rarely the top quarterback, but must pretty often be the second. I think it also suggests a lot of polarity between Rosen and Mayfield - I'm guessing teams either really like them, or don't like them at all.

I felt it was worthwhile adding to the tread given it highlights how differently teams view quarterbacks.

https://twitter.com/CharleyCasserly/status/984560749149347840

Although this article feeds the general consensus that it is a total crapshoot, I don't think a it is nearly as dire, with respect to the Browns in 2018. Let's look only at the QBs taken first overall in the last 20 drafts:

Manning
Couch
Vick
Carr
Palmer
Manning
Smith
Russell
Stafford
Bradford
Newton
Luck
Winston
Goff

There's 1 clearcut bust there...Russell. Then 2 more with an asterisk...Couch and Carr.

Sure, not all of these guys are/were elite, but it looks like we've got a 78-92% chance of getting a long-term starter. And at this point, I'll take a top 15 QB supported with great skill positions and a top tier defense ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

understood.

but look at the QB's that were in the same draft class.

most of those guys on the list you just gave were considered the hands down best QB *prospect* in the draft.

there's no one who truly separates themselves in this year draft class. and thats the problem.

some have darnold, some have allen, some have rosen, a few have baker and lamar.

so now its to the point where we got people falling in love with the combine heroes.

i hope we get the pick right.

I did hear an interesting take on the NFL network the other day. Not sure who said it but basically they said, “Look there’s only 32 starting caliber QBs in the world. And only about 7 of them currently are ‘great’. Yet we’re supposed to believe there’s 4 or 5 can’t miss candidates in this draft class alone? The statistical likelihood of all these guys being great, or even good, is actually fairly low.”

Now I don’t fully agree with them in that we’ve seen loaded draft classes in the past. So why couldn’t this be another 1983? Kelly, Elway, Marino... Let’s just hope we don’t Blackledge or Eason it.