Gang Green Nation
I’m sure many of you did a double take reading that headline.
To answer some of the questions the title likely raised, yes, I have watched the Jets this season. I do understand the team has a glaring need at quarterback both immediately and in the long term. I have seen whichever successful young quarterback you want to mention and how he has impacted his team.
Today the number two and three ranked quarterbacks according to QBR are Daniel Jones and Sam Darnold respectively. Baker Mayfield is number eight. These are all quarterbacks who were selected with top six picks in their respective NFL Draft classes and were discarded by their original teams. At the time they were cast away, they were viewed as massive disappointments.
We could even toss in current number seven rated passer Jared Goff. He had a higher level of success with his initial team, going to a Super Bowl in 2018 as Rams starting quarterback. By the time the Rams traded for Matthew Stafford, maybe viewed Goff’s part in that trade as a salary dump. The reason the Rams made the trade was they didn’t think they could win a championship with Goff as their starting quarterback. To their credit, they did win a championship in year one with Stafford as their quarterback, but the Lions have helped Goff reach a level that even noted offensive guru Sean McVay struggled to help him achieve.
Recently in The Athletic, Zak Keefer wrote an exceptionally detailed piece on how NFL teams bare responsibility for their failures of young quarterbacks. It’s as thorough of an explanation of how dysfunctional franchises fail the players they have invested in as anything I have ever read. I highly encourage you to click and give it a read. It offers insight from coaches, players, and other insiders on the inner workings of NFL teams.
Of course players do bear responsibility for their own shortcomings. It’s very easy to blame a team when the player just isn’t good enough. Still, the recent ascendence of players who were written off early in their respective careers suggests there’s something to the idea that teams have to take a significant portion of the blame when things don’t work out. Just reading some of the anecdotes from The Athletic piece will offer a great degree of insight as to why the Jones, Darnold, and Mayfield types are written off when there’s more to the story.
At the risk of oversimplification, it becomes clear that there are two types of franchises that pick quarterbacks in the NFL Draft.
To take it a step further, I’ll submit that there are three types of quarterbacks who are selected early in the NFL Draft.
