Newly selected first-round draft choices Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel and Teddy Bridgewater have been mentioned as candidates to sit and watch at the start of the 2014 season, and their new teams have made the usual comments about not wanting to rush their young prospects onto the field. Moreover, nearly every evaluator I've encountered thinks the 2014 quarterbacks aren't ready to play at as high a level as rookie stars Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson and Matt Ryan did just yet.
But here's an important stat to remember amid that discussion: 14 of the last 16 first-round quarterbacks started more than eight games as rookies, and 10 started at least 14 games. The trend is clear. NFL quarterbacks have made 243 starts as rookies over the past four seasons, up from 131 from 2006 to '09 and 133 from 2002 to '05.
So, while no one knows how much Bortles, Manziel or Bridgewater is going to play in 2014, precedent justifies considering how well their teams might fare with them in the lineup. One of the projects I've worked on this offseason could help along these lines. I started by dividing NFL defenses into performance quartiles, then looking to see which teams play the most games against the best defenses. Some of the disparities uncovered were striking. St. Louis and Cincinnati have big decisions to make about their quarterbacks, but the Rams play a league-high eight games against defenses that finished 2013 ranked in the top quartile, as measured by defensive expected points added, while the Bengals play only one game against a defense in that category.
What do similar dynamics say about how Bortles, Manziel and Bridgewater might fare as rookies? What types of recent performances by other rookies might these three first-round choices need to approximate for their teams to reach the playoffs? The numbers offer some answers.
Bortles has an advantage
The Jaguars went 4-12 last season with a league-worst 23.8 QBR score. They played five games against teams that finished among the top 10 in defensive EPA even when games against Jacksonville were excluded. That 23.8 QBR score was similar to the 19.1 former Jaguars quarterback Blaine Gabbert posted while going 4-10 as a rookie starter in 2011. It's reasonable to expect Bortles to outperform Gabbert while playing for a Jaguars team on the rise in general.
The schedule should help as well. The Jaguars play only two games against teams that ranked in the top quartile for defensive EPA last season. Buffalo and Cincinnati are the only teams scheduled to play fewer (one each). After matching up against the NFC West last season, the Jaguars play a league-low five games against defenses that were in the top two quartiles.
That could be significant. Of course, studies relying upon strength of schedule in any form invite questions about whether past data applies to the future. It probably does in this case. Several of the best defenses from 2013 have remained consistent year over year, and all of those defenses appear strong still. San Francisco, Seattle, Arizona, Carolina and Cincinnati will not suddenly implode on defense. Since 2009, defenses that finished the previous season ranked in the top quartile have posted a 45-19 (.703) record against rookie starting quarterbacks, including 24-11 (.686) against first-round picks. Defenses from the bottom three quartiles have gone 122-95 (.562) against rookie QBs.
Too many variables exist to say exactly how well Bortles would have to play for the Jaguars to, say, double their 2013 victory total. Ryan Tannehill and the 2012 Miami Dolphins stand out as one potential comparable. That Dolphins team played to a defensive level straddling the second and third tiers, a somewhat optimistic projection for the Jaguars this season. Tannehill completed 58.3 percent of his passes with 12 touchdowns, 13 interceptions and a 50.4 QBR score. The Dolphins finished 7-9.
The opposing QBs matter, too. The Jaguars play a high number of questionable ones. For context, I separated starting quarterbacks into five tiers to see how many games each team faced against the top ones. Picking the very best and very worst quarterbacks was relatively easy. There were gray areas in the other categories, so I clumped together the first two groups and the last two groups, creating three classifications: Tier 1-2, Tier 3 and Tier 4-5.
Jacksonville plays six games against teams with Tier 4-5 QBs, and every one of those QB-deficient opponents has a defense in the third quartile. Five of those six games are against QBs in the fifth tier. Meanwhile, four of Jacksonville's six games against Tier 1-2 QBs fall against opponents whose defenses were in the bottom two quartiles. That leaves only two games against teams featuring Tier 1-2 QBs and defenses in the top two quartiles, although some of the lower-quartile defenses appear upwardly mobile. Houston's comes to mind.
Teams with quarterbacks performing at a middling level win when their defenses shine. Joe Flacco's Ravens went 11-5 during his 2008 rookie season (43.1 QBR) because their defense was far and away the NFL's best, as measured by defensive EPA. In 2011, Andy Dalton's Bengals went 9-7 despite his 49.8 QBR score; their defense ranked seventh. With the Jags unlikely to get that level of performance out of their defense in Bortles' rookie season, the QB will need to outperform what Tannehill produced his rookie year for Jacksonville to have any shot at playoff contention.
The road is tougher for Manziel
The Browns played well enough on defense last season to sit atop the third tier. Mike Pettine's arrival is interesting because his presence in Buffalo last season played a role in the Bills' ranking sixth in defensive EPA, right behind San Francisco. The better Cleveland becomes on defense, the less the team will need from Manziel (or Brian Hoyer) to compete in the AFC North.
In a best-case scenario, Manziel would put together a rookie season similar to the one Robert Griffin III produced when the Browns' new offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan, was featuring Griffin in Washington's offense two years ago. Griffin finished that 2012 season with a 71.8 QBR score for a team that went 9-7 with a fourth-tier defense. More realistically, the Browns would get into that victory range with more modest production from Manziel and superior play on defense.
The schedule isn't much help. Cleveland plays four games against first-quartile defenses. That is the average number, but it's still twice as many as the Jaguars and Vikings will play. Three of the Browns' four games against these rugged defenses are on the road. The overall total includes two games against Cincinnati, one against Carolina and one against Buffalo. The Bills' defense could regress without Pettine and safety Jairus Byrd, but Cleveland faces five additional games against the three highest-ranked defenses from the second quartile: Baltimore twice, Pittsburgh twice and New Orleans once.
The Browns' schedule is eighth toughest when we sum the 2013 defensive EPA totals for all the opponents on each team's schedule. The corresponding ranking is 18th for the Jaguars' opponents and 30th for the Vikings' opponents.
One key for the Browns will be maximizing opportunities to win on the road. Cleveland plays three road games against quarterbacks I placed in the fifth tier (Chad Henne, Jake Locker, EJ Manuel). Of course, the Browns are likewise in that fifth tier for now.
Bridgewater will need more help
The Vikings play six games against defenses from the worst quartile. That is tied for the second-highest total in the NFL behind Detroit. The total includes two games against Green Bay, two against Chicago, one against Washington and one against Atlanta. One of Minnesota's two games against defenses in the top quartile falls against Buffalo, which might not be a strong bet to remain near the top.
As nice as that sounds for the Vikings, they'll need to improve significantly on defense to get Bridgewater within striking distance of a winning record. Minnesota ranked last in defensive EPA last season with a unit that cost Minnesota about 7.4 points per game in relation to what an average defense would have yielded in the same situations. That was the fourth-worst performance by any defense over the past five seasons.
Carolina's defense was slightly worse in 2011, when Cam Newton was a rookie. Newton passed for 4,051 yards, ran for 706 yards and accounted for 35 total touchdowns. Nineteen turnovers and 35 sacks pushed down Newton's QBR score to 56.2, and with the defense performing so poorly, the Panthers finished 6-10. The Vikings would certainly accept from Bridgewater a debut season as productive as the one Newton produced, as it'd offer plenty of promise for the future, but it isn't likely to make them a contender in the NFC North absent a significant defensive improvement.
Another word of warning for the Vikings: The six games they play against defenses from the second quartile could be tougher than they appear on the surface. Those games feature matchups against defensive minds such as Gregg Williams, Bill Belichick, Rex Ryan and Rob Ryan, plus two games against the division-rival Lions, whose defensive profile remains a little tougher to project. Meanwhile, one of the Vikings' two games against third-quartile defenses falls against Tampa Bay, which should improve.
Also, Minnesota plays seven games against Tier 1-2 QBs (eight games if you would put Flacco into that group, something I did not do). That total includes four games against QBs in the very top tier, tied for the highest total in the league. The Vikings face one game against Tom Brady, one against Drew Brees and two against Aaron Rodgers, plus four more against Matthew Stafford and Jay Cutler, who sometimes perform at an upper-tier level.
A closing thought
Draft analysts and NFL talent evaluators were correct in years past when they called Andrew Luck and Matt Ryan especially pro-ready as drafted quarterback prospects. Luck, Ryan, Russell Wilson and RG III own the highest rookie Total QBR scores in the eight-year history of the metric. They were all at 65.0 or higher, the level generally associated with Pro Bowl-caliber play. No one else was close.
This year, nearly every evaluator I've encountered thinks the 2014 quarterbacks aren't ready to play at such a high level just yet. If any of these 2014 first-rounders winds up starting extensively this season, smart people will advise against rushing to judgment. They could be right, but when Bill Polian and I studied the 41 quarterbacks who made their first 16 starts since 2006, we realized the vast majority of them performed similarly in the beginning as they did ultimately. What we see in 2014 might be what we get.