Setting Reasonable Expectations for the NFL’s Second-Year Quarterbacks

The vaunted QB class of 2021 has now taken over six depth charts. One way or another, Trevor Lawrence, Trey Lance & Co. will have a major impact on the season. Plus, a look at two rookies.

Around this time last year, we tried to set some realistic expectations for 2021’s lot of rookie quarterbacks. That felt like a difficult ask at the time, given that Bill Belichick was handling a true first-year player, Trey Lance was backing up Jimmy Garoppolo, the Bears had already said Justin Fields would start the season behind Andy Dalton and Zach Wilson was playing on an incredibly young Jets team.

We wanted to continue the exercise with the 2022 rookie quarterbacks (we did it in ’20 too), though with only one likely seeing potential starter’s snaps, that wouldn’t be much fun to read. Instead, we’ll lump Kenny Pickett and Malik Willis in at the bottom of this post and take a second swing with the class of ’21, given that six second-year QBs are going into this season as unquestioned starters.

This should be a rebirth of sorts for Trevor Lawrece, who escaped an absolute schematic chemical fire in Urban Meyer’s tenure for the more sober and tailored approach of Doug Pederson, Press Taylor and Jim Bob Cooter. The same could be said for Trey Lance, who will be removed from gimmick duty and forced to pinball through the typical rigors of a true rookie season (where, by the way, I think we’re going to see some spectacular moments).

In many ways, the six names here are going to have as big an impact as any group across the NFL. Maybe none of them will play in the Super Bowl, but their successes or failures will reverberate, perhaps causing different QB openings, trades or front office and coaching vacancies.

We have seen second-year QBs take massive leaps in the recent past (hello, Joe Burrow), but here are realistic expectations that would show a mark of growth and progress.

Robert Scheer/IndyStar/USA TODAY Network (Lawrence); Cary Edmondson/USA TODAY Sports (Lance)

Trevor Lawrence, Jaguars

17 starts, 63% completion rate, two or more game-winning drives, 22 touchdowns, fewer than 15 interceptions

Have you ever seen an episode of Hoarders and wondered why the first option wasn’t always just to plow the house down and start over? Well, the new coaching staff in Jacksonville seems to be plowing the house down. For all intents and purposes, the Lawrence of 2021 simply doesn’t exist. He won’t be discussed. His film will barely be analyzed. He will—and should—be treated like a rookie quarterback who had a strange sleepover at nightmare camp last year.

So, for Lawrence’s “first” year, we’re going to take into account a reintegration of the kinds of plays he likes to run, in which receivers stay in their assigned parts of the field and seldom run into each other. This should lead to a decrease in interceptions. We’re going to factor in a more concerted effort to tie the running game and the passing game together. This should create a better completion rate (though, interestingly, most systems that tie the running and passing games together seem more efficient but less rocket-fueled for QB completion percentages than low-risk passing offenses that were popularized in the early 2010s).

And while game-winning drives are a flawed stat because racking them up requires a team to be perpetually trailing its opponent, it would be valuable for Lawrence to build something kind of fabled or mythical—something that could remind us why we labeled him a generational prospect in the first place (it’s not up to a quarterback to fulfill irresponsible media hype, but it sure does go a long way toward inspiring the locker room).

Trey Lance, 49ers

15 starts, 60% completion rate, 30 total touchdowns, fewer than 15 interceptions, more than 700 rushing yards

Fantasy football is not real life, but fantasy success does impact our global understanding of quarterback value. This is a strange place to start, but we’re getting there, I promise. Last year, Lance showed promise as a scoring machine, averaging the third-most fantasy points per dropback of any quarterback in football since 2011 (albeit with a woefully small sample size). In real life, I see this manifesting practically, because we thought of Jalen Hurts in almost the exact same way. Having a slightly sexier statistical campaign than Hurts did in ’21 would represent a massive win for the 49ers. Hurts may not be a game-changing quarterback, but he is more efficient than we might assume. Last year, his EPA (expected points added) per play was roughly the same as Derek Carr, who had a resurgent season a year ago and played one of his best years in the NFL total. Hurts also allows the Eagles to basically run three different offenses, forcing opponents to guess each week, and each down, what is coming next.

The success of Lance depends on both an easing of the Kyle Shanahan system rules and an embrace of the fact that, for as many plays as Lance might miss as a young player, he’s going to make up for by elongating plays with his feet or scaring defenses into overly preventative looks.

Zach Wilson, Jets

17 starts, a top-22 Total QBR, league average or better in a majority of deep-throw quadrants, a positive TD:INT ratio

Last year, Wilson was league average or better on half of the deep-throwing sections charted by NextGenStats. He had a 111.5 quarterback rating to the deep right (league average was 78.5) and a 91.7 quarterback rating to the deep middle third of the field (league average was 84.7). But to the side of the field he could not roll out to, Wilson had a 51 QBR. Earlier this offseason, I wrote about Wilson getting marginally better at the little parts of his game. I’m of the belief that mastering the plays where Wilson gets the ball out quickly on the assigned drop will unlock what he is best at, which is athletically extending plays and finding tight windows down the field to win with. So, this is why I put a good deal of focus on all-encompassing goal statistics.

Wilson needs to be a better all-around handler of football games. Last year, despite wins against dominant AFC clubs like the Titans and Bengals, Wilson posted a total QBR of 28.2, which was better than only Justin Fields. His DYAR (defensive-adjusted yards above replacement) was the worst in the NFL, lower than the man he replaced, Sam Darnold, by 11 yards (by comparison, Davis Mills and Daniel Jones seemed to be the league’s definition of replacement level last year, with roughly 0 DYAR). Hitting check downs, integrating C.J. Uzomah into the passing game, sustaining drives without the tendency to break away and drift in the pocket, showing coordinators he can slice up a team between zero and 10 yards with quick-hitting routes … all of this, much like it does for Aaron Rodgers, Wilson’s ultimate stylistic muse, causes more defensive vulnerabilities from which to exploit the truly devastating parts of Wilson’s game. If we were to have five or six games in 2022 in which we came away thinking Man that guy is good, that should be considered a reason to celebrate for the rebuilding Jets.

Justin Fields, Bears

10-plus starts, a sack rate below 10%, 20 total touchdowns, fewer than 18 interceptions

Justin Fields needs to take care of himself in 2022 and make it to a place where he can either ensure the Bears are bringing in reinforcements or that they are selecting his replacement and, thus, will provide him with a soft landing spot elsewhere. Fields took sacks on 11.8% of his dropbacks last year, a higher sack rate than any other quarterbacks on this list, actually higher than the combined sack percentages of Mac Jones and Lawrence. It was not close, but dangerously reminiscent of the 14% sack rate that David Carr took during his painful rookie season (Carr finished his career with a sack rate over 12%). Fields will be playing in an offense theoretically inspired by the Packers, with a heavier focus on a running and passing game that looks identical. The hope is that this will get more pressure off Fields. However, if his offensive line cannot establish any running power, he’ll spend the season as a tackling dummy. So, for Fields, this season should be about recognizing when to get rid of the ball or how to hit dependable short-range targets with more efficiency. We know what the raw tools can produce in the best of circumstances, but this is far from the best of circumstances.

Mac Jones, Patriots

17 starts, 4,000-plus yards, a 30:10 TD:INT ratio, a top-10 season in QB efficiency, situational trust

Disclaimer: We’re not saying that Jones is Tom Brady; we’re merely comparing Jones to a player who has had roughly 20 years of experience in the same offense.

It took Brady until the 2004 Super Bowl season to compile a net yardage per attempt number as high as Jones had during his rookie season. Jones had a better play success percentage than Burrow last year. All of this to say, we can dream a bit when it comes to the Patriots’ quarterback in his second season. Jones threw for nearly 4,000 yards last year; had it not been for a game when the Patriots decided to run the ball 300 times instead of allowing Jones to pass, he likely would have eclipsed that number as a rookie. So, it’s not asking much to see eight more touchdowns, 200 more yards and a hair more efficiency (Jones was 11th in EPA+CPOE composite, which is a pretty solid measurement of a quarterback’s overall efficiency).

A major difference will be seeing how Bill Belichick, Joe Judge and Matt Patricia trust Jones situationally. While this is hard to measure given that New England approaches most of its game management sensibly (albeit conservatively), it would represent a good season for Jones to exit with some personal mythos. We said something similar about Lawrence, though Jones has his own ghosts to vanquish through no fault of his own. He is replacing one of the most mechanically clutch athletes in sports history. And while there is no besting Brady, there is compiling another season with fewer mistakes and more critical down conversions. One at a time.

Davis Mills, Texans

17 starts, 3,500 yards, a 20:10 TD:INT ratio, a continued grip on the starting job

Last year, we said it would represent a true victory for the Texans if they finished the season winless but still somewhat convinced Mills could be their quarterback of the future. Instead, they won four games and seem to be fairly convinced (for now) that Mills is the quarterback of the future. If you’re a Texans fan, you’ve already been through some serious, psychedelic level torture, so this, we assume, can be classified as good news. Mills outplayed a majority of his rookie counterparts despite some truly uninspiring personnel situations around him, not to mention the overarching, inescapable idea that there is some bigger plan here that no one seems to be a part of except for those at the top of the organizational food chain. All that said, we’ll find out this season if Mills is simply a Case Keenum type of player, or if there was really a fortuitous uncovering of a diamond during the pandemic in Houston. Mills was one of the best quarterbacks in the country a few short years ago before COVID-19 and the typical slog of FBS quarterback politics mucked up the journey. In another world, he could be Joe Burrow without transferring from Ohio State to LSU. We’ll see where we land after a 2022 with surprisingly high expectations.

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Charles LeClaire/USA TODAY Sports

Kenny Pickett, Steelers

One solid preseason outing

Pickett, the only quarterback taken in the first round, will start the season as QB3 and may very well end the season that way. If he is thrust into action, that means something has gone awry, which means the offensive situation Pickett is coming into will be less than ideal. For the Steelers, this time period should be about developing a winning script for Pickett to execute during the Steelers’ preseason outings and building theoretical momentum that can carry him into next offseason. The Steelers picked up their QB of the future this year because they were not planning to draft high enough to get one over the next few seasons. That means there is time to wait.

Malik Willis, Titans

A half dozen situational appearances, two touchdowns, at least one sustained drive

The Titans are one of the best-coached teams in the NFL, which is why I’m interested in how they develop a prospect as promising as Willis. The Liberty product was late to football compared to other pipeline QB prospects and still has some ironing out to do with the consistency of his footwork. However, his tools should not keep him on the bench. There has to be a way for the Titans to utilize him situationally this year, hopefully more effectively than other teams have done with young quarterbacks. Baseball is literally phasing out the idea of starting pitching, so it’s not impossible to see NFL teams bringing in quarterbacks who can better perform in certain areas of the field while they ease into full-time starting roles. This is the hope for Willis, who, for now, can possibly plug in the gaps for Ryan Tannehill’s shortcomings. The Titans would not have drafted Willis if they felt Tannehill was a complete player.