Big Blue View
Either that, or let them sit and learn before seeing the field
As the New York Giants and their fans burn for (seeming) eternity in quarterback hell, watching Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels carve up the Detroit Lions defense to reach the NFC Championship Game, “How can we get one of those?” is the question of the day. It’s been the question for a better part of a decade now.
The team definitely needs a bridge quarterback for the 2025 season, but the bigger question is where to find someone younger and with more potential for the long term in the 2025 NFL Draft. Maybe there are none worth drafting, or at least none that will still be on the board when the Giants pick at No. 3. Or maybe there will be several, but the trick is deciding which one is worth the investment, if not at No. 3, then in Round 2.
I don’t have the expertise to answer that question; I’ll leave it to Chris Pflum to tell us whether any of the prospects out there this year have the potential to make it as an elite starting NFL quarterback. Mostly that evaluation is about physical and mental traits that the best quarterbacks have: arm talent, accuracy, pocket presence, anticipation, ability to go through read progressions, etc. You’d have to think that all general managers know this, yet they often get it wrong, as evidenced by the number of failed quarterbacks on NFL rosters.
One thing I don’t hear discussed much - and when I do, it’s backwards - is the role that age and experience play in QB success. More often than I would have imagined, you hear people downgrade an older college prospect for one of two reasons: You’ll only have them for 10 years or so before they begin to decline (as if none of us would sign on for a decade of elite play), and if they’re good enough to succeed in the NFL, why did they have to stay in college so long?
Let’s look at every quarterback drafted in the NFL since 2016 in the first or second round and see whether age and experience at the college level play any role in their NFL success. There are 39 such QBs. We’ll use four different measures: Calendar age at the start of the year they were drafted, college games played, pass attempts, and pass attempts per game. None of these by itself is definitive, e.g., some QBs get into blowout games early in their career and just hand the ball off, some play for coaches who are more or less pass-oriented, etc. Collectively, though, hopefully they show us some trends.
Here are the six oldest and six youngest Round 1-2 quarterback draftees since 2016:
Age and experience aren’t everything - some quarterbacks are just not good enough to succeed at the NFL level. Kenny Pickett at least started for a while, while it looks like Will Levis’ starting days...
