Is That Quarterback Your Guy?
Even with the rookie pay scale, teams should still identify which QB is their guy, then get him if the opportunity presents itself.
The Chicago Bears finished with the No. 1 overall pick and there are those who believe it's not a question of if, but when, the Bears trade that pick to another team.
Jason Fitzgerald addressed that in a recent Over the Cap podcast. To sum up: Fitzgerald said the Bears have to consider taking a quarterback with the No. 1 overall pick.
Fitzgerald brought up that quarterbacks taken in the first round no longer get the massive contracts they received prior to the rookie pay scale. Consequently, there's less reason to be invested in those players for the long term.
The last such quarterback to benefit from that was Sam Bradford, who not only got the last of the massive rookie QB contracts, but managed to get himself deals in future seasons that many would say paid him more than he was really worth.
Fitzgerald has a valid point but there's more to it than that. The rookie pay scale does mean that there's less risk with taking a quarterback early, given their salaries are lower now, but there can be a downside here as well.
If teams simply look at rookie quarterbacks as being on cheap contracts and, thus, keep chasing after a QB in the draft, one year after another, you still have a problem in your organization.
My philosophy is that teams should certainly draft a quarterback when the opportunity presents itself, but they need to think of it this way: "Is this quarterback our guy?"
In other words, you want teams to believe that the QB prospect they select is a prospect they are willing to build around and figure out how to give him the best possibility to succeed. While this doesn't guarantee success, I believe it gives you a better chance for success than if you take a QB just to take one.
Again, I've written about the Bills, who identified Josh Allen as their guy and got him, despite many pointing to Allen's accuracy issues in college and how analytics said that college QBs with accuracy issues almost never make it in the NFL.
Then there was the Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes, in which conventional wisdom was that the Chiefs had playoff trips with Alex Smith. There were also those questioning whether Mahomes was worth taking early in the draft that year.
Joe Burrow didn't have those questions going into the 2020 draft, but going into the 2019 season, all the talk was about "tank for Tua," particularly when it came to the Dolphins when they traded away multiple young players for draft capital.
Though Tua Tagovailoa didn't emerge as the 2020 consensus No. 1 QB draft prospect among analysts and scouts, the Bengals approach in other ways suggest that they believe Burrow is "our guy."
The "draft our guy" approach is not just about how much rookie contracts cost compared to what they did prior to the rookie pay scale. It's about identifying other factors that are important to quarterback performance and development.
Coaching is an aspect that gets overlooked a lot when it comes to the chances for quarterback success. There are coaches who do a good job of getting the most out of quarterbacks and coaches who struggle with that.
For example, Andy Reid has done a good job through the years in getting the most out of the quarterbacks who have played for him. Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick and Alex Smith weren't elite QBs, but they were productive under his coaching. Even Kevin Kolb had some success under Reid.
Thus, when it comes to Mahomes, part of his success goes back to Reid. That's because everything points to Reid being enthused about Mahomes and wanting to work with him. A coach who does a good job developing QBs, and who has a prospect he really likes, will do as much as he can to maximize the QBs success.
Therefore, if Reid was enthused about Mahomes, and the Chiefs had the opportunity to take him, the correct call was to take him. That Mahomes became arguably the best QB in the NFL isn’t the sole reason the Chiefs made the correct call.
On the other hand, if a head coach is told he is coaching for his job in a given season, he may be hesitant to develop a rookie QB. This is particularly true if he went through one such prospect and it failed.
That would likely apply to Vic Fangio, who watched as Drew Lock didn't develop into a quality starter and, thus, was reportedly unwilling to consider a QB in the 2021 draft class. Why bother with developing another rookie QB if that gets in the way of your ultimatum to get to the playoffs?
It’s true that can represent flawed thinking, but if you take a QB and the coach shows no interest in developing him, you’re wasting everybody’s time. Better to get what the coach thinks will allows him to have success, as long as you don’t utilize a lot of resources to get it. You at least have the chance to re-set if things don’t work out.
You also have to consider the quarterback's mental aspects, from work ethic to a willingness to take criticism. Paxton Lynch, for example, didn't put in the work necessary in his time with the Broncos. Part of that goes back to the Broncos essentially naming him the backup in 2016 while Mark Sanchez and Trevor Siemian competed for the starting job.
Compare that to Trevor Lawrence, in which what has made him successful is his willingness to learn and the fact he seldom tries to force the issue. We saw that in the wild card round of the playoffs this year -- despite Lawrence throwing four interceptions in the first half, he didn't get frustrated and try to do too much in the second half. Had he thrown caution to the wind, it's not likely the Jaguars mount a comeback.
Going back to Lynch: My belief is that he should have been put into a competition for a job, whether that's to be the starter or the backup. This ties into Fitzgerald's point about first-round rookie QBs no longer getting massive contracts from day one. Because you haven't committed a massive chunk of cash, you can make it known to the rookie that he has to earn his job.
To be sure, that doesn't guarantee the rookie QB will succeed. However, teams would still be correct to either anoint a veteran as the starter while the rookie competes for a backup job, or to have the rookie compete with a veteran for the starting job. Either way, you make it known that the rookie must earn his job and you willl see how he responds to that.
Finally, you have to make sure that whoever is supposed to have final say in personnel has made the decision based on input received from everyone on the team. That person should not force a player upon coaches -- and you especially don't force a player upon coaches if you hired somebody else to have final say.
The Cowboys and Bengals have owners who serve as general manager, but you would expect that they visit with their coaches to ask them about what they think about QB prospects. Compare that to, say, the Dolphins, in which owner Stephen Ross -- an owner who doesn't serve as general manager -- reportedly told his coaches that they were going to take Tagovailoa in the 2020 NFL draft.
When you have a QB prospect that is forced upon coaches, those coaches aren't going to invest their time in developing the QB. And while it's true that Mike McDaniel did a good job of getting the most out of Tagovailoa this season, the question becomes what happens if Tagovailoa regresses or if Ross talks himself into the idea that "Tua is fixed" and gives him a big contract next season.
I won't say that every QB prospect who teams identified as "our guy" has succeeded. For example, the Jets reportedly loved Zach Wilson when the consensus among draft analysts was that Justin Fields was the top prospect behind Lawrence. I don't blame the Jets for taking Wilson if they truly believed he was their guy.
What needs to happen next, though, is that if a QB prospect that a front office and coaching staff loves doesn't pan out, the front office and coaches need to ask themselves "what did we miss?"
One thing about the 2021 QB draft class is that some of them may have looked better than they were because the 2020 collegiate season was played under COVID-19 restrictions. That meant that a lot of teams didn't have their best players on the field all the time.
In the case of Lawrence and Fields, they had successful collegiate seasons prior to 2020 and didn't show any signs of regression in 2020. With Wilson, he played poorly in 2019, then looked great in 2020, but faced weaker teams, some which had too many players out because of the COVID-19 restrictions.
Thus, it may have been a good idea to ask if Wilson's 2020 season was an outlier and, thus, he shouldn't be rated so highly as a prospect.
With all that said, teams should still work to identify the QB prospect who they love and, when the opportunity presents itself, to take that QB if their current one isn't clearly the long-term guy.
Getting back to the Bears: If they truly love Fields, they should keep him and trade the No. 1 overall pick. But if they see one of the 2023 QB prospects and say "that's our guy," then they should take that QB with the No. 1 overall pick.
Furthermore, they should take the QB they identify as "our guy," not the QB who draft analysts like the most. If the consensus is that Bryce Young is the best QB prospect for 2023, but the Bears love everything about CJ Stroud, they should take Stroud and not worry about the consensus.
Teams do have less to risk when it comes to QB draft prospects than they did in the past, but they still need to do as much work as they can to ensure they have their guy. They need to be enthused about the QB they draft, not just take one because any analyst said so.
Analysts can raise valid points about drafting QBs, but in the end, they aren't the ones who will be tasked with developing the QBs and building the teams around them. Therefore, teams should keep asking themselves this question: "Is this quarterback our guy?"