Recent Quarterback Classes Prove Drafting One Is More of a Gamble Than Ever

A quick look at some familiar names called over the last few years highlights the many factors that go into a prospect’s eventual success … or lack thereof.

More from Albert Breer: The Colts Are Creating an Empowered Pro in Anthony Richardson | Eagles QB Jalen Hurts Continues to Prove Everyone Wrong | Trevor Lawrence’s Path: Think Brett Favre, Dan Marino and Tom Brady

Three days left. And we got the last set of takeaways before the season kicks off Thursday night in Kansas City …

The last five years of quarterback classes, which does not include the current rookies, shows how drafting one might be an even bigger crapshoot than ever. And we can start with the three most recent classes that we have the best track record on, the 12 first-rounders selected in the 2018, ’19 and ’20 drafts …

• Five (Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Daniel Jones, Kyler Murray, Justin Herbert) have landed long-term extensions with their teams. A sixth (Joe Burrow) certainly will soon.

• Three (Baker Mayfield, Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold) were traded before the end of their rookie deals, and another (the late Dwayne Haskins) was released.

• One (Tua Tagovailoa) had his fifth-year option picked up and hasn’t been extended, and another did a one-year extension of his rookie deal that equaled the option (Jordan Love).

Meanwhile, of the 25 players drafted outside the first round in that stretch, only one is a starter (Jalen Hurts), and just seven others are on 53-man rosters, with several others dotting teams’ practice squads.

And if you want to dive into the last two draft classes—of the five first-rounders from 2021—just three are their team’s starters and, really, only Trevor Lawrence, seen as a generational prospect coming out, is entrenched as his team’s long-term answer. There actually may be more promise with the ’22 class at this point, a group that was seen as dismal coming out but now has four starting quarterbacks (Kenny Pickett, Brock Purdy, Sam Howell, Desmond Ridder) in its ranks.

Meanwhile, we’ll see a couple of players that had been given up on a few years ago (Jared Goff and Geno Smith) leading contenders into the 2023 season this week.

Put all of it together, and I think what you’ll find is a very simple truth: in many ways, the “nurture” part of developing a quarterback is as important as the “nature” part. And a lot of things go into nurturing a quarterback, from the job security of the people drafting him, to the talent around him, to how quickly he has to play, to how ready he is to play, to the level of investment the people in the organization have in his success (which goes back to if the coach and/or GM that drafted him are around two or three years down the line).

Then, there’s the simple reality of the draft that one AFC exec summed up nicely for me on Sunday: “When you’re in position to take one of these quarterbacks, you’re probably either starting a new program or on the edge of losing control of it. And it’s not fair to anyone.”

Bottom line: You have to be really good to make it, even in good circumstances. It’s very, very rare that a quarterback is so good at that age that he can overcome bad circumstances. Which is to say most in bad circumstances have virtually no shot. It sounds harsh, but it’s the truth.

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T.J. Hockenson’s contract is another example of the Vikings not letting a potentially awkward situation get the best of them. There have been a lot of those this offseason. In some cases, the player in question is gone (Dalvin Cook, Patrick Peterson, Eric Kendricks and Adam Thielen). In others, the player returned on a reduced deal (Harrison Smith) or with a raise (Danielle Hunter).

But there is one commonality with each of them. And that’s the lack of much public acrimony or post-transaction score-settling from the player’s side, which is pretty remarkable in today’s NFL.

I don’t know if the Vikings are going to win the NFC North again (their 11–0 record in one-score games would suggest some regression could come). But what I do know is that a year in, all of that is a good sign for where GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O’Connell have their program. And the Hockenson situation is another example of a potentially contentious situation (with the tight end’s hold-in) proving to be pretty manageable.

Hockenson was behind only Travis Kelce in receptions for a tight end in 2022 :: Matt Krohn/USA TODAY Sports

As for the details, Hockenson got $17.125 million per year in new money, and I understand the consternation in giving the biggest deal ever for a tight end to a player whose career-highs, set last year, for catches (76), yards (914) and touchdowns (six) seem ordinary. But my sense is the Vikings are betting on Hockenson increasing his production, and because the market at his position is what is, his average per year is short of receivers such as Christian Kirk and Diontae Johnson.

Also, when the Vikings traded a second-round pick to the Lions for him in 2022, having to sign Hockenson to an extension was inevitable. So Minnesota did, taking care of another one of its own, and locking the tight end in with Justin Jefferson, K.J. Osborn and Jordan Addison in what’s become a pretty impressive, young skill-position group.

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The clock is ticking on the Chiefs and Chris Jones. We’re fewer than four days out from Kansas City’s opener against Detroit, and at this point it’d be hard to prepare the DT for that one (but maybe not impossible). The good news here is that a deal might be within reach.

We can start with the primary problem in getting a contract done. That’s the distance between Aaron Donald and the rest of the defensive tackle market (almost $8 million per year).

On Saturday, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio reported that Jones’s camp was willing to split the difference between Donald and the next highest-paid guy (Quinnen Williams), which would mean accepting a little more than $28 million per year. And on the surface, the offer of $74 million over three years would be just above what Williams got. But that’s without considering the new money average, which would be $54.5 million over two years, and that, of course, comes to $27.25 million, or less than a million short of that middle ground.

Also, there’s the three-year cash analysis here, which puts Jones in position to far outpace where the market for new deals has gone at the position. Here’s the three-year total for the top guys …

• Aaron Donald, Rams: $95 million

• Daron Payne, Commanders: $67.59 million

• Jeffery Simmons, Titans: $60.58 million

• Dexter Lawrence, Giants: $58.75 million

• Quinnen Williams, $58.34 million

Again, $74 million over three years isn’t exactly midway between Payne and Donald, but it’s well above the non-Donald defensive tackle market. And that, to me, shows that both sides are now swimming in those waters, and there’s a deal to be done here.

How quickly it gets done, to me, may come down to the team and player trading off a win or two to the other side. We’ll see if they can get there.

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The Cowboys don’t get enough credit for how consistent they’ve been in finding and developing offensive linemen. And the five-year, $82.5 million extension they did over the weekend for right tackle Terence Steele is emblematic of it.

Think about the last 15 years. The Cowboys had a line in the late 2000s, anchored by Flozell Adams, Andre Gurode, and Leonard Davis, that was widely considered to be among the very best in football. The group was eventually succeeded by another vaunted line of Tyron Smith, Zack Martin and Travis Frederick, which was probably the NFL’s best for a half decade. And as the last of those players approach the end of their career, the next group is ready to roll.

Smith is the only remaining player from his draft class in Dallas, making him the longest-tenured Cowboy :: Tim Heitman/USA TODAY Sports

Smith and Martin are both former first-rounders (2011 and ’14, respectively) who were retained on top-of-the-market extensions and could wind up in Canton. Meanwhile, Tyler Smith was drafted in the first round in ’22, is starting next to Tyron Smith at guard, and proved last year, when Tyron went down, that he’s plenty capable of becoming a top-shelf player at left tackle. So Dallas has an heir apparent there. There’s reason to believe the Cowboys have their long-term center, too, in Tyler Biadasz, who’s going into his third year as a starter and coming off his first Pro Bowl.

Then there’s Steele, who, again, might be the best example of how this assembly line keeps chugging. The 26-year-old came out of his junior year at Texas Tech in 2018 with third- and fourth-round grades from scouts. A big, long athlete (6'6", 312 pounds as a prospect), Steele decided to go back to school to make a run at the first round (which was realistic at the time). But he tore his pec, missed the early parts of the ’19 season and struggled when he came back. He went undrafted in ’20, as a result.

But Cowboys VP Will McClay and top scout Chris Hall stayed on it, digging into the kind of person Steele was—the stepson of a war veteran, who grew up with that sort of work ethic—and the circumstances of his last year. And that led the Cowboys to give him a big contract, about what (in some ways) a sixth-rounder might expect, to come to Dallas. Steele struggled as a rookie, like a lot of young players did during the COVID year, but his development’s gone to the moon since.

So much so that the Cowboys felt comfortable letting go of La’el Collins before last year.

Now, between Steele and Tyler Smith, Dallas might have its tackles for the next decade. And that’s after having Adams and Doug Free, and Smith and Collins as long-term bookends over the last couple player generations.

Anyway, that’s pretty remarkable all the way around, and it’s a good sign of how much emphasis Dallas puts on the position, going back to the great lines that the Cowboys won Super Bowls behind in the early days of the Jones family’s ownership—and especially in an era where it seems like everyone is looking for linemen, and there aren’t nearly enough to go around.

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This may be my own pet peeve. But it comes up every year, and it’s worth addressing here: The waiver wire rarely bears much fruit for NFL teams in early September. And I know, I know. On cutdown day, there’s a tendency to see someone cut, and immediately think, I’ve heard of him! He should be claimed!

The thing is, that’s just not how it works, because just as teams had to cut their rosters down to 53 players last Tuesday, that limit of 53 was still there on Wednesday. Meaning that if you were going to pick a player up, that would mean dropping someone who made your team.

And if we really think about that—the time that goes into a team cutting its roster from 90 to 53, giving up on failed draft picks, and deciding which positions to short, and which position to stock—then you can conceptualize why a team might not act like a kid in the candy aisle at CVS in grabbing players off the waivers shelves.

Don’t believe me?

Well, believe this then—of the 823 players that were cut, and are still eligible for waivers (players who don’t yet have the service time to be vested), only 24 were claimed. Over the whole week, just one quarterback, Matt Corral, was claimed, and he was a third-round pick a year ago. That, of course, isn’t an indictment on the players available. It’s the reality that teams aren’t going to boot a player right after the cutdown, unless it’s for a significant upgrade.

O.K., so now that you’ve let me vent, we do have a few more notes on the activity on the waiver wire over the last week …

• The Cardinals claimed a league-high six players on waivers Wednesday. That means only 47 guys who went through camp with them are on the 53. And I think it’s fair to say it’ll be that type of year in Arizona, with new GM Monti Ossenfort likely to keep churning.

• The next highest claim number was three, a mark that both the Colts and the Panthers hit. Among the six total players they claimed were three offensive linemen, which further illustrates an NFL-wide depth problem at offensive line, an issue we’ve written on a bunch over the last month.

• Personnel departments often take pride in having a high number of players claimed. The Niners and Bills tied for the league high with three apiece. The Niners and Jets are the only teams in the league to have multiple players claimed at the cutdown the last three years in a row. The Eagles have had multiple guys plucked the last two years running.

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While we’re on the topic of silly narratives—it’s time we stop pretending that franchise-tagged players are going to miss real games. Let’s start with a story from the year I graduated high school, 1998. That winter, the Chiefs put the franchise tag on DT Dan Williams. It was the year after Sean Gilbert’s wild-card strike, and Williams responded to Kansas City’s action by moving to Atlanta, Ga. and not giving the Chiefs his new phone number.

He then proceeded to sit the entire season out. It worked out for him—the Chiefs gave him a five-year, $28 million deal in ’99 to get him back. But since, the action he took has become a relic of the past.

It’s been 25 years. Since then, two tagged players (only two) have carried holdouts into a season. One was in 2002. That year, Hall of Famer Walter Jones ended his holdout and signed his tender after the Seahawks’ second game. The other was in ’18, when Le’Veon Bell sat out an entire season after the Steelers tagged him a second time, a move he’s since said he regrets, and one that didn’t lead to the payday he expected in March of ’19.

Outside of that, just two additional players (Dunta Robinson in 2009 and Orlando Pace in ’04) have even carried such strikes past Dec. 1.

I am, of course, bringing this up now because Josh Jacobs reported to the Raiders last week, on a one-year deal that sweetened the franchise tender similarly to how Saquon Barkley’s was by the Giants. Both running backs’ agents (presumably) floated the idea at one point that they would miss games if their teams didn’t give them long-term deals by the July 15 deadline for tagged players.

That sounds good, of course, but it’s an empty threat, because it just about never makes sense for a player to go through with missing parts or all of a season under the franchise tag. It sucks, but the rules make it so it’s just not beneficial. No matter how long these players hold out, they cannot get blockbuster, multiyear deals until the following year, and staying away won’t put them in a better position to get one when they are there.

So my advice? When you hear these things come out again next July, don’t listen.

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That said, it’s really important for the Raiders to have Jacobs back. If you don’t believe it, just pay attention to what Josh McDaniels told the team play-by-play man, J.T. The Brick, at a Raiders’ kickoff event last week.

“I’ve said the same thing the entire spring into the summer,” McDaniels said. “I love the player, and I love the person, and he’s come back ready to go, which I figured he would. Jumped right back in, and you just see the impact that he makes right away. It’s just different. He’s the best back that I’ve been around, and I’ve been coaching for 23 years. So, he’s a special player, he’s a special guy, he has a special impact on our team when he’s here, and he was just named a captain today.

“It didn’t take him very long to figure out who the leaders are. So, we have nine great ones, which is a high number, but the team votes for it, and J.J. is certainly deserving.”

Jacobs and the Raiders agreed to a one-year contract worth up to $12 million :: Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports

I remember talking to McDaniels last season, after Jacobs ground out 229 yards on 33 carries in a late-November overtime win over the Seahawks, with the game-winner coming on an 86-yard touchdown run from the All-Pro. Here’s what he said that Monday about Jacobs: “He’s a football player. It’s obviously been a lot of good stuff for him, and look, he’s deserving of all of it. He’s been great. He’s a tremendous practice player. He’s a tremendous competitor, and he wants to f---ing win.”

The affection McDaniels had for Jacobs was obvious, and I’ll just say I knew that day there was no way the Raiders would let him get to the free-agent market, based on his place on the team.

And, to me, that reflects his place in the locker room. When long-term negotiations fell short in July, it was always going to be important that the Raiders not have a disgruntled Jacobs coming back, because if other players saw that, given their respect for him, it would be a pretty bad deal for the people in charge. So the extra money they gave him was money well-spent, and it’ll put them in position to build on what was a pretty good camp, with more depth, balance and football intelligence on the roster than they had last year.

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The Patriots backup quarterback situation was worth paying attention to this week—and it might be going forward, as well. New England came out of the 53-man cutdown with just one single-caller, and that’s the one Mac Jones, whose position as the starter (even if it’s obvious he is the starter) hasn’t been affirmed officially by Bill Belichick, who left open the idea that there was a legitimate quarterback competition afoot all offseason.

Bailey Zappe, who flashed last year as the Patriots’ own Mr. October, and Malik Cunningham were cut and re-signed to the practice squad. The team claimed Matt Corral off waivers to bring a second player at the position to the 53-man roster. And days later, how all this shakes out behind Jones remains a TBD.

So what happened? My sense is that, initially, the Patriots wanted to look at using the roster spot on a veteran with a lot of experience who could be a resource to Jones. They explored names like Case Keenum (who’d have to have been acquired via trade) and Colt McCoy (who is recovering from an elbow injury). Then Corral landed on waivers, after the Patriots had inquired with the Panthers on him, which changed the course and pushed a decision on it forward.

Corral’s got potential, as a player who fell in the draft due to character concerns, and one that the Patriots have background on: senior personnel advisor Pat Stewart was with the quarterback last year as a Panthers VP, and OC Bill O’Brien has a good relationship with Lane Kiffin, who coached Corral at Ole Miss. So, sure, grabbing him makes some sense.

But a year after Belichick yo-yoed Jones in and out of the lineup, it does make you wonder if the coach is trying to keep the heat on Jones, just a little bit, with another quarterback who is, like Zappe, younger than him with untapped upside. If Jones plays well, of course, this amounts to nothing. If he doesn’t, well, Corral’s got enough talent to where some teams thought two years ago, absent the character questions, he was a borderline first-round player.

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If Deion Sanders can build off Colorado’s upset win at TCU Saturday, and turn the Buffaloes around, the NFL will take notice—and it should. Just look around. Mike Vrabel is among the league’s top 10 coaches. Dan Campbell has swiftly changed the face of the Lions. O’Connell is off to a roaring start with the Vikings. Doug Pederson made the playoffs with a second team last year after winning a Super Bowl with his first.

There’s a building track record for ex-players as coaches, and Sanders’s ability to galvanize and change the face of a dead college program is reflective of why—these guys understand locker rooms and individual players and football in general.

And there was a moment in Sanders’s press conference after the Buffaloes knocked off the Frogs that, as I see it, raised a point that a lot of the aforementioned coaches would agree with. It came up with a question on Colorado’s two-way star, Travis Hunter.

“I tried to tell you,” Sanders said. “But you ain’t wanna believe me, because I’m just a lofty ol’ young coach. I don’t know nothing about football. I just played in the NFL for 14, played at a high level in college for four, and been coaching youth all the way on up for a long time. How do you think we got [running back] Dylan Edwards? I coached him when he was seven years old. That’s why we got Dylan Edwards. Travis is him, as the young folks say.”

Colorado pulled off a 45–42 win over TCU Saturday :: LM Otero/AP

Sanders’s point is: all those years, and especially the ones spent as a player, gave him great perspective for the job, if a different one than that of guys who take the traditional path.

One thing I’ve learned about the NFL is that if you can’t carry the room (meaning the locker room, the meeting room, etc.) and capture the attention of the players, you have zero chance to succeed. It doesn’t matter how good you are developing talent, or calling plays, or anything else. Leadership comes first.

And most players who have been plucked for coaching jobs already have that in spades.

So that’s not to say, of course, that guys who didn’t play in the NFL shouldn’t be hired as head coaches. There are dozens and dozens of examples that’d prove that false. But it is interesting, and something to consider for next year, if those four retired players have success again this season, and Houston’s DeMeco Ryans breaks through.

There are lots of good candidates too, with Jerod Mayo, Kellen Moore and Aaron Glenn among those that’d be at the top of the list for me.

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This, of course, is the last MMQB before we actually get to react to games. So the quick-hitters, as part of the takeaways, will look different next week. But for now …

• Hunter does seem to be, as the kids say, him. The No. 1 player in the 2022 high school class, he was billed as perhaps the country’s best corner and receiver. And none of that was dispelled in his FBS debut on Saturday. (He went to Jackson State last year, then left for Colorado with Sanders.) Hunter played 129 snaps against TCU, becoming the first player in over 20 years to have more 100 yards receiving and an interception in the same game at the FBS level. So, we’ll see him in April of ’25.

• How the Lions use Jahmyr Gibbs on Thursday night bears watching. My sense is Detroit’s kept a few things under wraps. And with Jameson Williams out for the next month-and-a-half, they’ll need someone to generate explosive plays—which makes me think we’ll see Gibbs deployed creatively in the opener.

• Stefon Diggs being named a Bills captain after the drama of June isn’t insignificant. That Buffalo team is still plenty good enough to win a championship, even if there’s much less hype over that this year than there was in 2022.

• So too is Deshaun Watson’s election as captain in Cleveland, with Watson set to play in an offense this year that’ll much better tailored to what he does well, rather than what the Browns had to do last year in building an offense for two different quarterbacks.

• It’d be a good story for the Buccaneers to get a new deal done with Mike Evans by the weekend, given that he was a cornerstone of their 2021 championship and the very first draft pick of 10th-year GM Jason Licht. That said, he just turned 30, and the team is retooling a bit, so it’d be understandable if there was a limit on how far Tampa Bay would go.

• There is risk involved in the Colts’ decision not to trade Jonathan Taylor. They’re on the hook to pay $4.3 million for, at most, 13 games, for a player that may or may not be engaged when he’s eligible to play again in October. And then … they franchise him? I’m on record as saying they should’ve just paid him. But if that ship has truly sailed, best case here might be he plays great in October and they can get better value at the deadline, if there’s a big injury or something somewhere else.

• Great story this week on Bill Parcells giving $4 million to a group of 20 former Giants players who are struggling to make ends meet. There are lots of retired players in these spots, and it’s good to see someone who profited from the game helping to eradicate the problem. The story is part of Gary Myers’s new book, Once A Giant, which focuses on the post-football lives of the Parcells era Giants players. Got my copy the other day. Can’t wait to dive in.

• My sense is the Jets are pretty happy to get the Hard Knocks cameras out of the facility. The NFL Films and HBO people were, as they always are, pros with the football folks there. But after all the hysteria of the last four months, with fans and cameras all over the place through training camp, there is a feeling of getting their building back with the normalcy of the regular season coming.

• A quick note on Nick Bosa: There were a bunch of aggregation posts on social media Friday claiming some context I wanted to add to the story in my mailbag qualified as a news report. In a nutshell, what I said was that Bosa will be the highest-paid edge rusher in football when this is over. The question will be whether he’s also the highest-paid non-quarterback, and the sides have been trying to bridge the gap there, between those two pay thresholds. Either way, this week’s a big one for Bosa and the team.

• Caleb Williams made a couple throws on Saturday night that I’m not sure five other people on the planet could. Here’s one of them. Suffice it to say, his wait in Detroit on the night of April 25, 2024 won’t be a long one.

👀 pic.twitter.com/kYEaCm5BPx

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) September 3, 2023