In some ways, this will be the weirdest NFL draft in modern league history. Last year's at-home experience might have been the strangest in recent memory, but this year, teams will be picking players who just finished a scattered, bizarre college football campaign. One prospect, North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance, had his final college season consist of one single game. Others, like Oregon offensive tackle Penei Sewell and LSU wideout Ja'Marr Chase, opted out of the 2020 season altogether.
Something else that is unique about the 2021 draft, though, is becoming more common: A lot of quarterbacks are coming off the board, and fast. Back in the legendary Class of 1983, six quarterbacks were drafted in Round 1. Over the ensuing 34 years, only the 1999 draft delivered as many as five passers in the first round.
Well, over the past four years, quarterbacks have been in style. In 2018, five teams drafted quarterbacks in the first round. In 2019, there were two picked in the top six. Last year, three went in the top six. Now, three drafts later, we're expecting five more quarterbacks to hit the stage in the top half of Round 1. By his draft value model, Chase Stuart expects this to be right next to 1999 for the most pick capital spent on quarterbacks in a single draft in league history.
Is it possible that we're just in some golden age for quarterbacks and this is a short-term aberration? Yes. At the same time, we've now seen a handful of years in a row where quarterbacks who weren't expected to rise up the draft charts have made themselves into top-five picks with one year of impressive performance at the college level. That list includes Mitchell Trubisky, Kyler Murray and Joe Burrow, and will likely add Mac Jones on Thursday night.
What I think we're seeing is that organizations are more desperate to find a long-term solution at quarterback than ever before. Teams have always wanted great quarterbacks, of course, but if they're significantly more aggressive in solving those problems now than they have been in years past, it changes the way we need to think about the NFL. Player time frames, salary-cap construction, the hiring and firing of coaches and general managers -- we need to rethink a lot of what we know to account for the league's new quarterback math.
Let's look into what has changed, why it matters and what it means for the future of the league, which starts forming later this week:
Why are teams drafting more quarterbacks?
1. The league is moving more and more toward the pass. If someone stopped watching the NFL in the 1980s or 1990s and tuned in last season for the first time in decades, the league would be virtually unrecognizable. While teams like the K-Gun Bills and run 'n' shoot Oilers were exceptions, this used to be a run-first league. In 1980, for example, 49.4% of offensive snaps resulted in a rushing attempt. Passing was still more efficient than running, but those running plays still generated 39.4% of the offensive yardage across the season.
Nowadays, teams such as the Ravens and Titans and their run-heavy attacks are the exceptions. In 2020, just 41.8% of snaps produced a rushing play, and those runs produced less than one-third of the overall offensive yardage in the NFL. (Some of those runs were also scrambles, which should arguably belong on the passing side of the ledger.) The league as a whole set passing records last season for completion percentage, interception rate, passer rating and adjusted net yards per attempt.
Naturally, the move toward passing makes quarterbacks more valuable. It also makes one position far less valuable, and we can see the shift in how teams have approached that position in terms of draft capital over the past 50 years. You're probably already aware of how running backs have been devalued, with most teams hesitant to use premium picks on them, but you might have forgotten just how common it was for teams to use their most valuable picks on guys who stand behind the quarterback.
Here's a table that which uses the Jimmy Johnson draft pick value chart to measure what percentage of draft capital has been invested leaguewide at quarterback and running back over the past five 10-year windows. (The Johnson chart is instructive here because it more heavily weights selections at the top of the draft.) I've also included a column that considers what percentage of draft capital between the two positions alone has gone to quarterbacks:
As recently as the 1991-2000 window, teams drafted more running backs (13) in the top 10 than quarterbacks (12). Over the past 10 years, though, teams have drafted 22 quarterbacks in the top 10 against just six running backs. We could see as many as five quarterbacks come off the board in the top 10 this year, while ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper's most recent mock draft has just one running back -- Alabama's Najee Harris -- being picked in the first round. With some of the decreased spending on running backs going to receivers, the shift toward investing in pass resources in the draft doesn't seem likely to arrest itself in the years to come.
2. The 2011 CBA made the floor and ceiling of drafted quarterbacks more valuable. Within two years of the 2011 CBA, it was clear that the quarterback market had irreparably changed. It has taken a while for some parts of the league and the public to catch up, but the value proposition for quarterbacks at the top of the draft is totally different than it was 20 years ago.
Remember: Before the league instituted a draft pool and limited player salaries with the 2011 CBA, the first overall pick routinely became something close to the highest-paid player at his position in league history. When Matthew Stafford got a six-year, $72 million deal from the Lions in 2009 as the first overall pick, his contract guaranteed him $41.7 million, which was more than the highest-paid free agent from that offseason, Washington DT Albert Haynesworth. Two years earlier, JaMarcus Russell took home six years and $61 million after holding out from the Raiders.
These deals dwarf the rookie contracts we see now after adjusting for the growth in the salary cap. Using the 2020 pre-COVID cap figure of $198.2 million, Russell's six-year deal translates to $110.9 million, for an average of $18.5 million per season. Stafford's six-year pact was worth $98.2 million in modern dollars with more than $67 million in guarantees. Drafting a quarterback with a top-five pick was downright dangerous for a team's cap.
After 2011, those quarterbacks became much cheaper propositions. Cam Newton was the first quarterback taken after the new CBA, and he signed a four-year, $22 million contract. Translate that to 2020 cash and it would be a four-year, $36.4 million deal. Joe Burrow's deal as the first overall pick last year was in the same ballpark at four years and $36.1 million. These deals are fully guaranteed -- and there's a fifth-year option attached -- but the risk with these deals is a fraction of what it looked like with quarterbacks such as Russell and Stafford. Top picks have gone from making upper-echelon quarterback money before ever playing a snap to something more like competent backup cash.
The reward is also greater. If your draft pick turns out to be a competent starter like Baker Mayfield or Kyler Murray, you're ahead of the game; those guys make a fraction of what veterans like Stafford, Matt Ryan and Kirk Cousins made this past season for similar production. If you can somehow coax a season like Lamar Jackson's 2019 or Josh Allen's 2020 out of that rookie passer, he's going to be one of the two or three most valuable players in all of football.
Teams can use those cost savings to invest elsewhere on their roster, with the Seahawks famously using the space afforded by Russell Wilson (and other star draftees) to sign veterans Cliff Avril and Michael Bennett and round out their Super Bowl team. Teams can also use the newly created space to roll over cap room for years to come, allowing them to spend around their starter when the right opportunity arises.
We can see that those picks at the top of the draft are more desirable than they were before, especially when quarterbacks are involved. Over the last 10 drafts before the 2011 CBA kicked in, there were only two instances of a team trading into the top five, both by the Jets (for Dewayne Robertson and Mark Sanchez). Across the 10 ensuing drafts, though, we've seen eight instances of teams trading up and into the top five. Assuming that the 49ers draft a quarterback at No. 3 on Thursday night, five of those moves will have been for quarterbacks.
How has that changed the league?
3. Highly drafted quarterbacks generally get more time to prove that they're the solution. I have to admit that I found this one to be surprising. I looked at the performance of every quarterback who was drafted in the first round between 1983 and 2000 across their first three seasons. Then, to compare with a more modern group, I did the same thing for the quarterbacks drafted between 2001 and 2018. (I can't look at seasons past 2018, naturally, because those passers haven't yet compiled three seasons of football.)
The modern quarterbacks have typically been given more opportunities. Over their first three seasons, the 52 first-round picks at quarterback started an average of 32 and a median of 37 games. Even though the first group includes that famous class of 1983, the 39 quarterbacks in the prior group started an average of 25 games, with a median of 24.
If you think that those quarterbacks were getting into the lineup later, that wasn't really the issue; if we expand it out to five-year windows, we see similar results. First-rounders from 1985-2000 started an average of just under 40 games (with a median of 42), while the ensuing 15 years of first-rounders started just under 49 games (with a median of 50). As much as it might seem like quarterbacks get squeezed in the modern game, they're typically getting more time than the quarterbacks of the past.
In part, that's because there are fewer "disaster" picks now than there were in the past. Of those 32 quarterbacks from 1985-2000, five started fewer than 10 games, or just under 16%. This group includes quarterbacks like Jim Druckenmiller and Akili Smith. Just over one-quarter of the passers -- 28% -- started 20 games or fewer across their first five seasons.
Look forward, and just about every first-rounder in the modern era gets a season or more to prove himself. There will always be exceptions here and there, but just 5% of the passers drafted in the first round between 2001 and 2016 started fewer than 10 games over their first five seasons, with the list consisting entirely of Paxton Lynch and Johnny Manziel. Less than 14% of the quarterbacks were given 20 games or fewer.
What does seem to be true, though, is that guys who struggle early in their careers might get written off more quickly in the modern era. I looked at quarterbacks who had at least two subpar seasons across their first three years as a pro (with at least 200 pass attempts and an adjusted net yards per attempt index of 90 or less). Most of the quarterbacks who fit that list from the 1983-2000 group got more chances and time to emerge as a solid quarterback; it includes Troy Aikman, Drew Bledsoe, Kerry Collins, Trent Dilfer, Jeff George and Vinny Testaverde.
Look ahead to the quarterbacks from 2001-2018, though, and the future wasn't quite as promising. Three passers had three subpar seasons to start their career: Kyle Boller, Christian Ponder and ... Sam Darnold. (Uh-oh, Panthers fans.) Of the passers with two subpar seasons out of their first three years, the majority either were not able to launch as pro starters afterward or don't appear to be on that track. Blake Bortles got a couple of more years in Jacksonville, Vince Young did the same in Tennessee, and Sam Bradford got chances in Philadelphia and Minnesota, but this list of names is almost entirely guys who became backups or bounced out of the league. It includes David Carr, Josh Freeman, Blaine Gabbert, Joey Harrington, Mark Sanchez, Mitchell Trubisky and Brandon Weeden.
Two bad seasons in three have generally been enough to doom a quarterback's chances since the turn of the century, and that's probably not going to change. The league has also indirectly created a three-year window for evaluating young passers ...
4. Teams typically have to make their big decision on their young quarterbacks after Year 3.
Whether indirectly or by design, the NFL has put teams in a position in which they are making critical decisions about their young quarterbacks after their third pro season. As part of the 2011 CBA, the league prevented teams from negotiating extensions with newly drafted players until after they completed their third pro season. Players drafted after the first round are on four-year contracts, so if they impress, teams typically sign them to extension after Year 3. Russell Wilson is the most prominent example for recent quarterbacks.
When it comes to first-rounders, though, teams have continued to be aggressive about signing the signal-callers they like to extensions after Year 3. Eight quarterbacks who have been drafted since the 2011 CBA have signed extensions with their original teams; five of them, including the four most recent passers, have inked those deals after their third pro season. Teams don't need to necessarily get those deals done after Year 3, but to leave the maximum runway of cap space available, an extension after then has become more common.
For those quarterbacks who haven't been impressive through Year 3, another decision looms. Teams have to decide on fifth-year options after first-rounders have completed their third NFL season. Under the 2011 CBA, those option years were only guaranteed for injury, so a team could pick up that fifth-year option and then cut a player after Year 4 with no repercussions, as long as he was able to pass a physical.
When the league signed its new CBA in the spring of 2020, the rules for fifth-year options changed. They're now fully guaranteed at the time of signing, meaning that a team facing down a struggling quarterback now has to decide whether it wants to pay him for both his fourth and fifth seasons. That fifth season comes with a significant raise; Lamar Jackson's fifth-year option, for example, will cost the Ravens $23.1 million. That's more than twice as much as he is set to make across the first four years of his deal ($9.5 million) combined.
Even before the league made fifth-year options fully guaranteed, declining a fifth-year option was basically a breakup letter from team to player. None of the quarterbacks who have had their fifth-year options declined stuck around with their drafting teams after Year 4. The only two quarterbacks who have even played out their fifth-year option are Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota, both of whom left after the season.
Now that the league is making those fifth-year options fully guaranteed, Year 3 is going to become an even harder stop for teams. We saw it with the Darnold situation in New York. Under the 2011 CBA, the Jets could have picked up his fifth-year option for 2022, brought him back as part of a quarterback competition or as their 2021 starter, and moved on after the season if he struggled one more time. With the Jets understandably afraid to commit to Darnold for two additional seasons, it both encouraged them to move on from Darnold and likely limited their leverage in trading the former USC quarterback.
The fifth-year option situations around the class of 2018 are pretty clear outside of Darnold, who might have to wait to see whether the Panthers draft a quarterback at No. 8. (I suspect Carolina is posturing and hoping for someone to trade up into their spot.) The 2019 class has its own question marks. Murray seems like a sure thing to get a fifth-year option and an extension. Dwayne Haskins has already been cut by Washington.
The other first-rounder is somewhere in the middle. Daniel Jones has shown virtually no development so far as a pro; he has feasted in a few friendly matchups and otherwise spent most of this first two seasons taking hits in the pocket. He already comfortably qualifies for the list of players with two subpar seasons we mentioned in the prior point; it would take a big leap forward or a desperate act from Giants general manager Dave Gettleman for Jones to get back on track and earn a fifth-year option pickup.
5. These quarterbacks are generally a little better than the guys from the past when they enter the league. Despite the arguments that college quarterbacks aren't as sophisticated as they were in the past, there's not much evidence of this in reality. Whether it's the move toward more modern, college-esque schemes at the pro level, changes in league rules, or the fact that quarterbacks are simply better now than they were as prospects 30 or 40 years ago, the increase in first-round picks under center hasn't produced any appreciable decline in quality.
From the previous point, we know that teams are more likely to give their first-rounders a meaningful shot under center in the modern era. When they do, those passers are generally more productive on a pass-by-pass basis. Over their first three seasons between 1983 and 2002, the average 200-plus attempt season from quarterbacks chosen in the first-round between 1983 and 2000 produced a net yards per attempt index of 95. The median figure was 92. We're using an index stat here to account for the quality of quarterback play around the league; this measures net yards per attempt, a superior version of passer rating, versus others in the league at the same time.
Even given that quarterbacks chosen after 2000 have played more often, they've generally been better across their first three years. Their average 200-plus attempt season has produced both an average and median net yards per attempt index of 96. There's not a significant difference, but when you consider that more quarterbacks have been chosen since 2000 and those passers have played more frequently, the fact that there hasn't been any sort of drop-off is interesting. It hints that NFL teams aren't wrong for pushing more QBs into the first round than they have in decades past.
6. Teams are reconsidering the value of the midtier quarterback. It has taken a decade and some bad contract decisions along the way, but this was the offseason in which teams that were paying for expensive, competent quarterback play made big moves to get out of their situations. The Rams ate more than $30 million in dead money and packaged two first-round picks to get away from Jared Goff and swap the former first overall pick for Stafford. The 49ers traded three first-rounders to move up and (almost certainly) find the successor for Jimmy Garoppolo. The Panthers took a shot on Darnold to replace Teddy Bridgewater. The Eagles, in part because of the schism between quarterback and organization, moved on from Carson Wentz to start over with Jalen Hurts.
Other teams, locked into situations by bad or unwieldy contracts, are generally stuck with what they have. Would the Vikings have moved on from Cousins if they could? The Steelers with Ben Roethlisberger? The Falcons with Ryan? The Raiders could have cut or traded Derek Carr, but otherwise, the teams who kept midtier starters generally didn't have a choice in the matter.
For this middle class of quarterbacks, the ascension of rookies might be fatal. Take Garoppolo, who is due $25 million unguaranteed this year. He has one full, healthy season under his belt after seven pro campaigns. In that year, he posted a 107 NY/A+ and made it to the Super Bowl, but that was also with a great running game, a brilliant coordinator and an excellent defense. Does he have MVP-caliber upside? Can he stay healthy? If he can't do either of those things, can the 49ers plug in another player out of the college ranks and get average numbers for a third of the cost while using the $17 million or so they save elsewhere on the roster?
In 2018, a reader pitched me on the idea of teams trading young quarterbacks at the end of their rookie deals to perennially have a strong roster surrounding a young quarterback. Done properly, a team could even use the quarterback they developed to acquire the draft capital needed to get the next guy. Three years ago, talking about guys like Goff and Wentz, it might have seemed outlandish. Now, it seems inevitable.
What does it mean for the future?
7. Teams can't really afford to give their quarterbacks a redshirt season. Given that three-year window of opportunity, organizations need every evaluation rep they can get to figure out whether their quarterback is the man of their dreams. Taking their rookie season off the table to get adjusted to the speed of the pro game or to make mechanical changes is almost a non-starter. It pushes the development cycle back; the missteps you would expect a quarterback to make as a rookie instead pop up during his second pro campaign, meaning that a team would then really have only one year to see whether their first-rounder is worth a significant extension (or a fifth-year option).
For whatever teams say about what they want to do with quarterbacks coming out of school, the reality is that they're almost always going to get inserted into the lineup quickly. The Jaguars wanted to use Bortles' rookie season as a redshirt year and had him in the lineup by Week 3. The Eagles kept Bradford around, signed Chase Daniel and then drafted Wentz; when the opportunity arose at the end of the preseason, despite Wentz sitting out most of the summer with broken ribs, they flipped Bradford for a first-round pick and pushed Wentz ahead of Daniel on the depth chart. The Texans sat Deshaun Watson to start the year behind Tom Savage, while the Bills did the same with Allen behind Nathan Peterman. Both passers were in the lineup before the end of Week 1.
The notable exception here: Patrick Mahomes. The Chiefs star sat out nearly all of his rookie season, making a lone appearance in Week 17 before blowing away the league in Year 2. That was a scenario in which everything was in line; the Chiefs were a competitive team with a very solid quarterback (Alex Smith) who stayed healthy all season. Mahomes was a player with incredible upside who, by just about everybody's opinion, needed some work as he entered the pros. Maybe there's a scenario where that plays out again in the future -- if the 49ers actually do draft Lance behind Garoppolo and the veteran stays healthy, as an example -- but it seems like a rare exception to an otherwise solid rule.
Keeping this in mind means that teams can't plan on getting their quarterback and then surrounding him with talent in the subsequent years. They don't want to run the risk of a David Carr situation, where a talented prospect was lit up by years of terrible offensive line play in Houston and developed awful tendencies. (You might call this a Darnold situation in years to come if things don't correct themselves in Carolina.)
If a team is planning on taking a quarterback in the first round, it has to plan for that passer to play as a rookie. And when that happens, it's their job to have the right pieces around that quarterback from the moment he steps on the field, not a year or two after the fact. Some teams can get away with this, as we saw with Allen from his first season in Buffalo, but it's a dangerous game to play.
8. Coaches and general managers are incentivized to reset the process. Some coaches and executives will make the best of things with the quarterback they inherit from a prior regime, but when it comes to a young passer, most NFL personnel people want to find their guy. Drafting a quarterback you scouted and committed to might make you sleep better at night as you try to keep the job of your dreams.
It also serves to help those executives keep their job for longer periods of time. Coaches are getting less time on the job than they have in the past, which discourages them from sticking with a subpar signal-caller for that extra season.
Furthermore, when you draft a new quarterback, most coaches and personnel people are essentially using that new passer to reset the scene for their franchise. If they land on the right guy, that promising new prospect might earn an embattled executive an extension. If they fail, well, the coach and the general manager are probably getting fired, anyway. Better to start the process over and earn yourself another year or two.
9. We still don't know whether these quarterbacks will be any good. For all the advancements we've made, the idea that we can sort between these five quarterbacks with any sort of effectiveness or pre-draft insight is probably naive. When I wrote about the class of 2018, I wrote about how bad we are at evaluating passers before the draft and how the stories we've told or been told about these players heading into April often don't hold up under much scrutiny.
The 2018 class hasn't made things any clearer. After the draft, the league ranked them pretty clearly in order: Mayfield went first, two picks before Darnold. Allen was off the board next at No. 7, three picks before the Cardinals traded up to grab Josh Rosen. The Ravens finished the class off by trading up to draft Jackson at No. 32.
After their first year in the league, how would you have ranked those same passers if you were re-drafting them? I'd have said Mayfield-Jackson-Darnold-Allen-Rosen. The following year, Mayfield struggled mightily, Jackson won MVP and Allen took a step forward. Maybe you would say Jackson-Mayfield-Allen-Darnold-Rosen. Now, after a huge third season, is Allen No. 1? You could credibly rank them Allen-Jackson-Mayfield-Darnold-Rosen without too much controversy. I'm not sure the argument is settled, but it's clear that the order bears little resemblance to how the league perceived them on the whole before the draft.
When it comes to the 2021 class, maybe you would argue that Trevor Lawrence is such an overwhelming can't-miss prospect that he should be treated separately from the rest of the class. That's fine. If you think we can pick between Zach Wilson, Mac Jones, Lance and Justin Fields right now, though, you're kidding yourself. So much of their futures will depend on where they land on Thursday and who they're surrounded by in the years to come.
We can see that from the class of 2018. Allen, who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at times at Wyoming (even after you adjusted for his average depth of target), was one of the most accurate quarterbacks in the league for stretches last season. Rosen was supposed to be the most pro-ready quarterback and looked overmatched from his first start. Darnold has barely budged from the guy he was in college, mostly for worse. Mayfield has been three totally different quarterbacks in three different seasons. We're still not done figuring out the class of 2018, let alone the class of 2021.
10. This habit isn't going away. With regards to many of the arguments presented above, the league is only bending even further toward a universe where it makes sense to move up for quarterbacks. It is not about to suddenly encourage teams to run the football 40 times a game again. The arbitrary distinction between college offenses and pro-style attacks is long gone. Fans and owners aren't getting more patient with coaches and general managers. The league as a whole is relying more and more on players on rookie contracts while cutting out the veteran middle class.
More than anything, though, rookie quarterbacks represent the most valuable of entities in 2021: hope. This is still a league where having a true superstar quarterback is almost always a prerequisite to winning the Super Bowl. If you don't have one of those guys, you're trying to get lucky or you're wasting your time. The easiest way to create meaningful, earnest hope within your organization -- from ownership down to the most casual fan -- is to draft a quarterback in the first round.