NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT QUARTERBACKS

BY ADAM GREENE

Here’s the one simple fact you need to understand when you’re looking at pre-draft quarterback evaluations; nobody knows anything about quarterbacks.

There’s a thought out there, a provably wrong one, that NFL quarterbacks can be developed. That you can take a guy with raw talent and measurables and turn him into a franchise quarterback. The problem with that line of thinking is that it’s never once happened in the entire history of professional football.

Nope. NFL QBs are born. They are not made. No quarterback is whispered into existence by some guru who just happens to play the secret chord that pleases the Lord.

That doesn’t mean a guy can’t make the leap, as the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen seemed to have this past season, but to act like that’s coaching, mentoring, classroom work is just foolish. Because if it was, there would be more NFL franchise quarterbacks. Josh Allen was always Josh Allen. He just put it together.

There are, by my counting, 12 franchise guys right now. There are 3-4 guys that the jury is still out on because they’re so young and then, maybe six or seven guys that are legit NFL starters. If you’re doing the math, that comes to, at most, 23 QBs in a 32 team league.

That is the sobering thought as we enter another NFL Draft. There are 32 franchises in the NFL. There are not 32 NFL franchise quarterbacks on the planet.

It’s what makes it so hard to find one and so hard to judge who might turn into one. Your draft experts? Here’s Mel Kiper saying JaMarcus Russell will the be next John Elway. Mike Mayock, former ESPN draft analyst and current Las Vegas Raiders general manager, made a career of missing wildly at his QB projections. Here he is talking about Blaine Gabbert as the top QB in the 2011 NFL Draft, the same draft that Cam Newton went No. 1.  Mayock made a career of bad QB projections, and didn’t exit the Bristol for the Raiders front officer without one final epic miss, picking Sam Darnold as his top QB in 2018.

Here’s another sobering fact; no QB drafted in the first round since 2009 will start the 2020 season for the team that drafted him. In fact, 11 out of the 22 QBs drafted in the first round in that time frame are no longer even in the NFL. I count Andrew Luck among that 11 because I had to, but he’s the only one that would be welcomed back into the league from that crew.

Where does everyone go wrong? It’s as simple as this; they ignore what they see and fill in the rest with their imagination. They play pretend. Except they don’t call it that. They call it “evaluating a guy’s ceiling.”

And the “ceiling” does not exist. It’s fake. It is a lie. It’s manufactured whole cloth out of the GM or draft pundit’s brain. In fact, that 2018 NFL Draft should have shut all “ceiling” talk for good because, and I wrote this at the time, no quarterback in that draft, and maybe in history, had a higher “ceiling” than Lamar Jackson. If he could become an NFL quarterback, with this God-given natural athletic ability, he would easily become one of the best QBs in the NFL. But nobody, outside of me that I remember, even had Jackson going in the first round of the draft.

There is no “ceiling.”

What does exist, on the other hand, is “the floor” and that is where you can actually maximize your QB pick. Because “the floor” is what you’ve seen. It’s on film. It’s how the guy has performed in college on the game’s biggest stages against its toughest opponents. It’s believing what you have witnessed with your own eyes, in this reality. And it’s why I, and no one else on Earth, had Dak Prescott as the top rated QB coming out in 2016. Jared Goff was not even in my Top Five.

Focusing on “the floor” isn’t foolproof. I’ve whiffed on seeing what a guy could become simply because I don’t live in the land of football make believe. If I was a GM, I would have missed on Patrick Mahomes, but you know who I would have drafted as my top ranked QB that year? Deshaun Watson. Not Mitchell Trubisky, as Mayock and so many others talked themselves into as the best QB prospect in 2017.

While I did think Lamar Jackson was a first round talent, my top rated QB was Baker Mayfield in 2018. I would have missed out on both Jackson and Josh Allen, but you know who I wouldn’t have been stuck with? Sam Darnold.

In 2015 my top QB prospect was Marcus Mariota, who I still like, frankly. In 2014, it was Teddy Bridgewater, which means any team I ran would have been clear of drafting Blake Bortles or Johnny Manziel. In 2013 it was Matt Barkley so they all aren’t winners, but that was a dumpster draft at QB and at least he’s still in the NFL.

When I look at an NCAA QB, I want a guy that can start and win games today. Not win games in an imaginary future of flying cars, jet packs and starships. My imagination is not involved at all in the process. My eyes are.

As such, my criteria for evaluating a QB doesn’t begin with arm strength at all. I don’t care about a guy’s pro day or NFL combine showing (when they have one). To misquote Kenny Powers, I want the guy that’s good at playing the real sport, not trying to be the best at exercising.

What is important to me?

1. Can the guy read a defense?

Does he move past his first read? How deep does he get into his progressions? Does he move around and look for the play or does he bail and take off with the ball? Is he ready to fire the ball out when his back foot hits on most of his drop backs?

2. Does he have pocket awareness?

Can he feel the rush? Does he know how to move to avoid it while keeping his eyes downfield? Does he pull the ripcord too quick, try to run, or worse, spin out from an outside rush (it can work in college, it NEVER works in the NFL).

3. Is he accurate?

That’s right, accuracy is No. 3 because if you’re good at Nos. 1 and 2, you don’t have to throw pinpoint accurate balls.

4. How did he perform in the big games against the best competition?

You can’t fake this. You can’t pretend you’re seeing something that isn’t there. He either rose to the challenge or didn’t.

5. Arm strength, athleticism and everything else.

They’re all piled together because they all mean the same thing to me. Dan Marino could not throw the ball 50 yards and he did alright. Kyle Boller, picked in the 2003 first round by the Baltimore Ravens, could throw the ball 70 yards from his knees. One of them is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the other is Kyle Boller.

So that’s what to keep in mind when you see my QB rankings. I’m picking a guy that can win now, in real life, and not in my imagination.

The NFL DRAFT begins on April 29 at 8 p.m. EST. You can check out my first mock draft by clicking here. You can view all of of BetOnline’s NFL Draft props by clicking here.

Follow our BetOnline Twitter account for the latest sports news and betting odds, and stay tuned on the Instagram feed for more good information too.