Why only 30% of first round quarterbacks succeed

It's no secret that I get things wrong a lot when it comes to projecting

quarterbacks

to the NFL; in fact, it's probably by far my worst position group for a variety of different reasons, but that being said, I'm not the

only

one who's pretty bad at this. if we're honest, because most nfl teams get their quarterback projections wrong, besides taking 2021 out of the equation because not all the

quarterbacks

from that

first

round have played yet and also taking out jordan love from last year's equation because it's barely Played in Green Bay, there were 31 other quarterbacks drafted in the

first

round between 2011 and 2020.

Of those 31 quarterbacks, if we're generous, maybe we can consider 10 of them hits depending on how you feel about Baker Mayfield, Jared Goff Ryan. tannehill maybe even carson gonez if you just look at his really good year in 2017 that helped him win a super bowl again we are really grasping at straws here to get within double digits of 31 quarterbacks drafted in the first round during a whole decade. That's a 33 hit rate at best any way you look at it, so that's what I really want to talk about today is not just how bad I am at this, but how bad NFL teams are. on this and the kind of lessons I've learned. over the past few years about what I used to value and, honestly, what the league used to value and now what we know matters more.

Now, drafting quarterbacks is really difficult not

only

for me but for real professional GMs, so that kind of stuff. This begs the question of why so many of them fail, why so many of them are so ill-prepared to handle the NFL after being dominant in college in some cases, and what are the lessons that people like me specifically can learn from those? failures and learning. of those really bad reviews to at least try to get better at this in the future for lack of a better term, I'm trying to figure out why I'm terrible at this and to do that we're going to take a hard look at what I used to think mattered when It's about quarterback evaluation and then based on those rulings we're going to establish what really matters most now, so let's start by looking at some of the key ingredients that I used to think were super. important about five or six years ago, when I started doing this back then, I really had three main pillars that I looked for, they were always guys with very good footwork and release mechanics.

I didn't really like, you know, sloppy footwork and something like that. From weird throwing moves that you would see from spread quarterbacks, sometimes I was a lot like Peyton Manning, that's what I like. I also believed that you know pure pocket passers were always going to be better than scramblers and that kind of stuff and guys that relied on off-the-clock plays because, again, that's what I grew up watching dominate the league. I grew up with peyton dominating and breeze and brady. I was conditioned to think that was the only way to do it and then number three.

All this kind of, quote, raw passing attack and spread guys, I thought they had to sit back no matter what or they weren't going to develop because the NFL wasn't played like that, the NFL was very different from quote-unquote college offenses. So I thought they had no chance of success unless they sat around for two or three years and because of those rigid old school beliefs, in retrospect, I had some really dumb opinions like Christian Hackenberg was a better prospect than Dak Prescott and Deshawn. Kaiser is a better prospect than Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson, that was actually something I said on this channel, trust me, you can go back and look for him, it was really stupid, but there you are.

I also said Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen were better. perspectives than josh allen and lamar jackson, which now seems like absolute heresy, which it is in retrospect, but back then it was actually a pretty common opinion that we all make mistakes, well, some people really like josh allen and others really like lamar jackson, but most of us are the general draft coverage clique, however you want to refer to it, we all had Rosen and Darnold and yes, even Baker Mayfield as a tier or maybe even two levels above what Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson were in college, but all that said.

None of those were even my masterpiece because, believe it or not, just a year after that or two years after that, whatever the timeline, this idiot you're seeing on the screen is now talking to you, actually thought Justin Herbert wasn't a first rounder. I chose and I had my reasons to be honest, they were reasons that many people believed in. I talked to coaches who trained against him. I talked to people you know who even played with him. Nobody saw this coming. Nobody saw Justin Herbert, football demigod. being a realistic possibility aside from his most ardent fans, but here we are, I missed it, some didn't, but I and many others did, and it just goes to show that I don't want to say the NFL draft is random, but there are so many .

There are many factors that go into what makes a quarterback successful and what makes him fail, sometimes it seems random, sometimes things really come out of nowhere, not that the factors that led to those successes and failures did not exist, but simply did not exist. knowing what to look for and that's the point of this whole episode is to look at why I believed all of these things in retrospect and deconstruct why I believed them and hopefully avoid those same mistakes, why don't we start with maybe? the curse of og coleman on this channel for those of you who have been around for a long time and have been watching videos since the beginning, you will remember this one well because oh my god I loved Christian Hackerberg as a prospect and oh my god.

God, he crashed and burned my reasoning at the time, honestly, he wasn't that crazy. He played in an Earhart Perkins system under Bill O'Brien and showed a lot of promise as a true freshman before O'Brien left, there were many. from people who thought he was going to be a number one guy in the future, he had that kind of freshman year and had some accuracy issues, no doubt about that, but he was a very smart pocket passer who had some pro-style experience. , which again at the time I really prioritized because much of the league was running Erhart Perkins style offenses, at the same time Dak Prescott in that same draft class had better physical tools, better pure instincts as a quarterback dual threat, but I wrote him off at the time as just another product of the one back spread system that wouldn't work in the league because to me and a lot of other people that's the same system that produced tim tebow and tim tebow didn't.

I wasn't ready for the league at all, so I admit I was again. very stupid and I wrote him off as a project just like Tebow, it was what I didn't realize at the time and honestly this very crucial piece of information was that Scott Linehan who was the Cowboys offensive coordinator in 2016 when they drafted to Dak in the first Instead, he was literally the guy who taught Urban Meyer and Dan Mullen, who was Prescott's coach at Mississippi State, taught them the one-back-stretch offense in the first place, If you go back 20 years and look at the origins of the spread offense, which I did and I made a whole video this last offseason, so go watch that.

Linehan knew exactly how to use dak as a rookie while he was developing because he already knew the exact same system he used in college. Dak was able to touch the ground. run quite easily and develop much faster and easier than most spread quarterbacks simply because he already knew what he was doing, it was a great lesson for me to learn that these days the transfer between college systems and professionals makes them practically indistinguishable. from each other there are no pro style offenses anymore because pro style offenses and college style offenses are all the same they just call it different words if dak prescott had entered the league 15 years ago yeah he could have had a lot difficulties. but because it's coming now where the NFL has universally accepted the spread, I think they actually had it a lot easier than in the past.

It's a pretty similar story as to why I prioritized Desear Kaiser over Desean Watson and Patrick. Mahomes also back then was bug-eyed by the big, strong-arm pocket passer from a more West Coast-style system or West Coast-adjacent system in Notre Dame at the time and I wondered how Watson and Mahomes got along. They would adapt to the league. coming from the spread and the air raid respectively, mahomes in particular his mechanics were objectively a disaster in college and again at that time there were no successful air raid quarterbacks in the nfl and I know people want to point to draw brees, but even when brees was at Purdue, they weren't really a pure passing attack under Joe Tiller, so it wasn't exactly the same as, say, the Mike Leech side of that coaching tree and at least at that time, the best pure college air raid quarterback there was. still in the league at the time was probably the Keenum case, so there really wasn't any established precedent for a raw passing attack quarterback like Mahomes training in the league let alone dominating the league, however, once again , what I didn't know at the time was Now what I do know is that the theme of the day, lessons learned, is that Andy Reid, who drafted Mahomes, was literally at the forefront of creating the passing attack when he was in that legendary Byu's coaching staff in the early '80s under Lavelle Edwards, which also had Mike Holmgren. and roger french and steve young were the quarterback and believe it or not mike leach was a student at byu at the time and studied everything they did and then went on to work at valdosta state and perfected his version of the air raid .

From there it's again a wild and crazy story. I made a whole video about it last summer. You can go see it. I didn't know any of this at the time, so having Andy Reed with that air raid background as the basis of the story. the air raid itself and him knowing exactly how to coach and develop an air raid quarterback like mahomes, he really knew how to implement concepts that patrick was already comfortable with again to ease his transition to the nfl, they didn't try to force him to be a cigar under the central west coast quarterback because that's not what he was and Reed knew he let patrick mahomes be patrick mahomes and the chiefs have been dominant ever since and then the next year it's if you needed another more reason to believe that destiny is everything.

For quarterbacks, look at the situations Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen went to and then look at the situations Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson went into. Rosen literally never had a chance if we're being honest about it, the Cardinals were a complete disaster his rookie year and there was very little talent on the roster, especially around him on offense, the coaching staff was not equipped to develop him and ease his transition into absolute and his career never really advanced. They replaced him with Kyler a year later, who was already familiar with Kingsbury's offense because he had been playing in it since he was 14 and that was it.

By contrast, Sam Darnold actually showed a lot of promise as a rookie under the Todd Bowles regime, but then the Jets hired Adam Gase and his offensive line was bad. His weapons were bad, honestly, everything was bad. He regressed completely in his second year under the gas, got worse and worse and then went to Carolina, where they also had a terrible offensive line, possibly the worst in the league, and there was a fundamental gap between their own coaching staff on how to handle the offensive because Matt Roll and Joe Brady were at odds, so he didn't develop with the Panthers either.

He also didn't really have a chance to have a good situation, quote unquote, meanwhile, Josh Allen and Lamar. jackson was drafted to football teams that went over 500 the year before, I mean the Bills were a playoff team for God's sake and then they drafted Allen. They had a great coach in Mcdermott. They had a big main office. They brought in Brian Dabel, who just won. a national championship with Bama as offensive coordinator and QB coach, their offensive line had good pieces, as did their defense, and they were already showing signs of becoming a well-run organization, which then allowed Allen to go from being a objectively disappointing quarterback.

As a rookie so far you see him as a true football demigod when Allen first entered the league he was inconsistent enough that his team had to carry him but now he's good enough to carry them it's the same for Lamar again. were recruited inone of the best organizations in all of professional sports, they had a great staff, a great front office, they had a defense, an offensive line, and most importantly, an offensive coordinator in Greg Roman who knew how to use Jackson's mobility to al less continue to manifest. a good offense early on while developing as a passer and again, we don't need to ignore reality here, Lamar was objectively really struggling as a passer as a rookie, his eyes still weren't quick enough, so to speak, and he still had to reading from progression to progression and seeing guys be open before throwing it instead of just reading the defense to know who was open and feeling where to go with the ball right away.

You can look at the playoff game against the Chargers as an example of I mean, it was tough and I don't think even Ravens fans would deny it, but the team overall was fantastic, their running game was ridiculous and they still won games while Jackson was developing into a more complete player and then like you. By now we all know that he put in a ton of work during the offseason after his rookie year. He really understood Greg Roman's offense at a high level in year two and if you remember my film room on this, I think it was maybe three or four weeks later.

That sophomore season he really became a more well-rounded player, not only was he a ridiculous running threat, but he was also a ridiculous aerial threat and he rose over the course of, I mean literally just a 16-game sample, from from kind of a one dimensional quarterback to being a unanimous MVP and someone who has been one of the top tier quarterbacks in this league since then, just like josh allen, the team was good enough to lamar to help him to hold him as he developed until he was good enough to carry them, damn and Rosen didn't really have that luxury, he was just a disaster from the start, so they got off to a bad start, had no help carrying the team for him and They just looked bad and that brings us to the final culmination of everything, which was my ranking. and jalen hurts ahead of justin herbert a couple years ago this was in the 2020 nfl draft class and to be honest it's probably good maybe not my worst take but it's definitely the one I get the most critics and rightly so, but I want to talk about why I had that opinion.

Justin Herbert played in a terribly hostile quarterback system in terms of maximizing what we now know he does best, which is that he has pushed the ball down the field or run screens 25 times as a senior. which is incredibly high and no NFL team has even come close to that number, they were mostly pushing the ball down the field in stock and making moves that looked like screens and that was their way of manufacturing one-on-ones on the edge that I didn't use his mobility at all until the Rose Bowl against Wisconsin and to be honest, his passing game in terms of design was so vulgar that it was very underdeveloped.

My mistake with Herbert, to be honest, was that while I recognized that he had crazy tools. Even at the time I said his arm strength and mobility and overall physical skill set were crazy, I blamed him for being underdeveloped and underutilized instead of blaming his coaching staff, I assumed the coaches at Oregon had a reason to keep him tied up. All the time when they didn't really know it, they were just up there. My mistake was putting my faith in these coaches that they knew what they were doing when clearly I don't think they realized what they had in Justin Herbert and me.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I talked to players who played against Herbert in college. I talked to coaches who coached against Herbert in college. I've talked to guys who played with Herbert in college and they all unanimously agree. that the justin herbert that we saw in oregon is not the same as the justin herbert that we see in the nfl, they are two very different quarterbacks and the truth is that I was wrong to project him based on what he was instead of what I thought he could have been with proper training and good weapons.

I just took what was in Oregon at face value instead of believing in the tools and believing in the person and believing in the NFL to get the most out of it and that was really my mistake and of all my failures and I've had a lot of them as you have seen, justin herbert really taught me the most in terms of lessons because he cemented in my mind what really matters when it comes to projecting quarterbacks to the nfl, so based on all these experiences and past failures , these are my new criteria that I have come to move forward on.

Number one physical tools like arm strength and mobility are much more important than pure mechanics. Number two instincts and trainability are important. much more than a pro style polish because let's be honest, pro style offenses and college style offenses are pretty much the same thing these days and number three and honestly this is probably the most important point of all them, destiny is everything that is not. It really matters if you're seen as a generational prospect, a can't-miss player, if you go to a bad franchise or have a bad supporting cast around you, you're probably going to fail and these boomer bus kids who end up going to the good organizations They tend to thrive far more than they fail because, again, destiny matters if you have elite physical tools and are remotely coachable and go to a good coaching staff that knows how to develop and design a modern offense.

We'll probably have much better odds of success than the 33 or whatever of first-round quarterbacks over the last decade, those 33 percent that made it are the guys that have the tools that got to the good situation, the other 67 68 whatever. The math is that I'm a film student, not a math student, please forgive me, the rest of that part didn't come to a good situation or they didn't have the tools in the first place, that's the reality of where we are. In terms of evaluating modern quarterbacks, I know it may seem like I'm oversimplifying a very complex question, but I mean just looking at the results of the last five years, these are the lessons we can learn from all these failures and all these successes, good physical tools plus a modern offensive coach and even a modicum of support structure around him equals success, that's the formula, so after seeing all this hindsight, I guess you can call it, some of you may be wondering Okay, brett is it?

There's someone who fits the bill this year, a super-skilled, super-hard-working, super-coachable kid, if you put them in the right situation with the right coaching staff, they can become one of these other, you know, transcendent physical talents. Is there anyone in this draft class that feels that way and you could actually argue that maybe there are several of them and I'll get to them very soon. Draft season is still very young. I'm not going to spoil the answer in the first video. We have three months left. There are many prospects to talk about. I'm going to the Shrine Bowl guys first because you know I love talking about these late-round gems that no one has heard of yet, but they are very, very good football players that you should pay attention to. them, I'm going to talk about the receivers, the edge class, the tight end class is ridiculous and of course I'm also going to talk about the quarterbacks because I have some very interesting ideas about where some of them are going to go or rather, Where are some of them going to go?

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