TH on the NFL Draft Pt. 1: The Cult of the Quarterback
The league has a problem trying to strain for quarterbacks, and it's harming the league from the inside out.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing in the same way over and over and expecting a different result. The Eagles stand at the precipice of a season with Jalen Hurts at quarterback, a player whose draft selection helped usher Carson Wentz out the door. Hurts, drafted in the second round of the 2020 Draft, did not inspire the full confidence of many observers in his cup of coffee at the end of the season. While he played some inspired football against the Saints and Cardinals in the first halves of each of those games, he was still rough enough around the edges that his play didn’t give definitive answer that he was the quarterback of the future. There are extenuating circumstances at play, given the team around him mostly stunk and/or was hurt, and he didn’t have a full season of reps in practice as the starter. The team is reluctant to name him the starter, but that might have nothing do with Hurts as a player. It’s most likely posturing to try and lure a team to trade into the number 12 pick if Trey Lance or Mac Jones fall that far.
However, draft pundits have taken this act at face value and have the Eagles addressing their “need” at quarterback one of two ways. Either the team would use resources they collected through trading Wentz and out of the sixth pick in the draft to move back up and select Lance if he were to fall enough or they would pick someone like Kellen Mond or Kyle Trask in the second or third round. Giving up resources to pick a quarterback from North Dakota State or taking a statistics-accumulating player with sub-first round grades to serve as an understudy backup… Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts or Trey Lance and either Mond or Trask? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing in the same way over and over and expecting a different result. Howie Roseman, Eagles general manager, has been known to indulge in a bit of insanity here and there.
Perhaps the biggest indictment of Roseman’s tactics vs. the reports that have come out about the Eagles potentially moving up for a QB or otherwise is that the team was already in prime position to select a blue chip player at pick number six, but the allure of accruing first round picks was too great. I don’t for a second think that Roseman intends to use all three first round picks he will have next year if he still has a job at next year’s draft. The accumulation of draft picks will almost certainly be used to pay a king’s ransom for Russel Wilson or, god forbid, Deshaun Watson (who stands credibly accused of assaulting 22 massage therapists and should not be playing in the league) or whatever quarterback has become unhappy with his current team. The desire to have a franchise quarterback on the roster is the siren song for every team in the league. I wrote about how it has perverted the draft earlier this year, but I want to take a further look into why this philosophy is destructive of the quality of the league.
No one can ever accuse a league built on the suffering of Black bodies for the enrichment of white bank accounts (for the most part) of being fair to labor, but this idea of going off the deep end to get a cheap quarterback takes the cake for being antilabor. Generally, the quarterback is considered the most important position on the field. It should follow that the quarterback should be the most highly-paid position on the field, right? At least in a situation where salary structure is determined by capitalism and not one where the players have control of the means of production and distribute equitably across the league regardless of performance. Like I mentioned in the newsletter issue linked above, teams were able to bypass that pesky maxim by capping rookie bonuses/salary slots. Sam Bradford was the last first overall pick to cash out. You could say he didn’t deserve it, but if you’re putting that much pressure on a single person to perform, I’d say whether or not you’re good, or in the case of a rookie, will be good, at it, you should be well-compensated for it until the team decides to move on.
With the stumbling block of having to pay for a quarterback’s services right out of college, now teams can take wild stabs at the position anywhere in the draft and attempt to build a team without a huge money sink at one position. Granted, teams with rookie quarterback salaries on the ledger spend elsewhere, but look at average salaries across the league per position. Players at other positions get paid, sure, but there’s a maxim that says you could be the highest-paid at your position and Otto Porter, Jr. could step to you and call you poor. That is true for every position in the National Football League except quarterback. Having all your money tied up at QB makes it a lot harder to build a Super Bowl-winning team with the NFL’s restrictive salary cap, whereas having a QB on a rookie deal doesn’t preclude you from paying, say, a guard, a linebacker, and a wide receiver comparable to the top players at their positions.
Basically, NFL teams are now in a cult where they all take turns throwing at a dartboard on rookies trying to hit on one of those rather than having one of the best veteran QBs in the league and then having to hit bullseye on several players on rookie contracts. I get how this is smart, but no one who defends this practice gets how it’s antilabor as fuck. The league has already used analytics to marginalize the running back position and depress salaries there. Only old school owners/general managers like Jerry Jones and Dave Gettleman have kept the tradition of taking a RB in the top five through sheer force of inertia. It’s already happening to every other position on the field except QB and positions germane to it, like blindside tackle, X wide receiver, cornerback, and edge rusher. The breakneck speed of the game touches everyone the same. A guard or an off-ball linebacker get CTE the same as a “premium position” player and at a higher rate than the quarterback. They don’t get paid the same on their second contracts though.
It's also not like the hit rate on quarterbacks taken in the top part of the first round is or has always been high enough to justify the gamble. Forgoing the 2020 draft because it’s still too early to tell, there’s a litany of players who have already shown they haven’t panned out for whatever reason, their own faults or the faults of the teams drafting them. Going back to 2019, Daniel Jones has shown flashes of adequacy, but only the most deluded of Giants fans and hottest of hot take pundits are claiming he’s a franchise cornerstone. Dwayne Haskins has already been released by the Washington Football Team. Looking at 2018, Sam Darnold has already been traded, and the Jets are going to enter the QB derby again. Josh Rosen was traded after his rookie year with the Cardinals and has struggled to find a foothold since. The second overall pick in 2017, Mitchell Trubisky, flamed out with the Bears and is now a backup in Buffalo. And while the top two picks of the 2016 draft, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz, indubitably helped their teams win and reach the Super Bowl respectively, the drop-off in quality of play since their appearances in the big game showed their teams that trading them and taking a mammoth cap hit was favorable to keeping them around.
This isn’t to say drafting a quarterback early is a bad idea. If a guy is there who has all the tools at the top of the draft, you should take him or trade the pick to a team that is desperate to select a franchise quarterback for more picks and maybe even some players who could help out. That being said, there’s a difference between the Atlanta Falcons trading up in 2001 to the first overall pick to select Michael Vick and the 49ers this year moving up to select either Lance or Mac Jones. Even the suspected number two pick, Zach Wilson of Brigham Young, has question marks around him that have seemingly been unanswered. Before the elimination of the rookie signing bonus, would Lance have been picked higher than the end of the first round? Would Wilson have needed a concentrated tanking effort to get into range to select him? Would the draft media have pretended Jones’ grade was anything higher than round three Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields, I get it. Those guys have always shown they have the tools to succeed at any level, and their successes have translated on the field independent of any of their supporting casts.
Frankly, it feels like the teams targeting the other quarterbacks would’ve been better off selecting excellent players at their draft positions. Would a Niners team with Jones at QB be any better than one with Jimmy Garoppolo to the point where they felt they had to move up instead of taking someone like Rashawn Slater or Christian Darrisaw? If the Jets really are not enamored with Fields (and at this point, the only reason not to be is a preconceived bias against Ohio State QBs, racism, or a combination of both), then why wouldn’t they grab Penei Sewell, JaMarr Chase, or Kyle Pitts at 2, or trade to a team that wanted Fields there to add even more players around Darnold?
Football isn’t a one-on-one game, and it’s not a game like basketball that can be distilled down to single matchups. You need impact players at quite a few positions to contend for a Super Bowl title. A lot of smart people who follow draft dealings say that you should always draft the best player available, not strain for a fit at your position. Taking guys like Jones, Lance, or even Wilson in the top half of the draft when in other years they might be available later is a picture-perfect example of this kind of straining. However, common wisdom will always dominate front offices looking for leverage to maximize chances to win the title while minimizing cost, even if the only part true about that phrase is the word “common.”
And so that cycles back to the Eagles and what they should do. The obvious choice for them is to stay at 12 and either draft one of the top four receivers in the draft (really, Pitts isn’t a tight end, he’s Mike Evans playing out of position) or one of the top three cornerbacks. If Fields somehow tumbles all the way down to 12, I would tell Roseman to run, not walk, but run to the podium to take him. That being said, I can’t think of him falling too far, even if a quarterback-needy team like the Patriots leapfrogs the Eagles to get him. Hurts may not be a prototypical prospect, but he’s got tools available enough that you should probably kick tires on him. If he’s not the answer, and he may very well not be, then odds are the team will be bad enough to be in striking distance to select Sam Howell, Spencer Rattler, or Kedon Slovis. Even if they aren’t, they will have at least one extra first round pick to leverage a move up, if not two if Carson Wentz plays enough snaps for the Colts. If he is the answer, then the team will be free to draft whatever players they want or use those picks to package in a deal for someone like Julio Jones. The fact still remains that insanity is the idea that doing the same thing over and over will yield different results. I don’t think the Eagles, or any team really, should go trying to reach for a quarterback early whose physical tools or decision-making wouldn’t have rated by scouts that high in years past. The NFL needs to deprogram itself from this QB cult the league has enrolled in. Or at least the Eagles do. I don’t care if every other team trades capital to move up to draft Scumbundle McFuckstick.