What do NFL GMs want at QB?
or Let’s Stop Worrying About Age and Focus on Production
Constable Echelon
Why are there only a half dozen decent pro quarterbacks? Quarterback is the most glamorous position in American sports. Thousands of kids want to play qb, and sure most of them aren’t 6′2+” or blessed with a cannon for an arm, but enough people are that the Dolphins shouldn’t have been barely able to fill the position last year.
I think a major reason that quarterbacking is such a disaster in the NFL is that GMs have become infected with a couple of ideas that impose artificial restraints on qb development. For some reason, teams throw in rookie quarterbacks and expect them to produce right away. When they inevitably don’t become Tom Brady they are branded failures and sentenced to a lifetime of third stringdom unless a highly unlikely string of injuries provides them with playing time somewhere down the line. Second, NFL GMs appear to value a balance of performance and potential more than pure performance.
Is there any chance that Matt Hasselbeck would be a successful NFL quarterback if he were given the opportunity to play right away? No. He was a pedestrian producer at Boston College who possessed just slightly above average measurables. The Packers drafted him, gave him a playbook, and told him to watch. When Hasselbeck finally got his chance a few years down the line he played so poorly that a Seahawks crowd was screaming for Trent Dilfer (who I’ll get to shortly).
It took two years of watching football and one year of sucking before faith in Matt Hasselbeck started to pay off. And he only eventually got his chance because of a fluke preseason injury to Trent Dilfer. Contrast this with a John Beck or Alex Smith who are both already out of their starting gigs. How do they know that neither of these guys can actually play? Both Beck and Smith were thrown into terrible offenses and asked to immediately improve them as rookies.
The reason these rookies are playing in the first place is because the worst thing that an NFL team can possibly have is an “old” quarterback. Having an old quarterback is worse for a gm than losing games.
I was talking with Tubby recently and he raised this question, “If you had a quarterback who threw for 28 TDs with 15 INTs and almost 4200 yards last year, would you want him back?” Um, yes.
So what gives, Green Bay? You’re bringing back a team that is loaded with young talent on both sides of the ball. As a bonus this young talent after last year’s run to crunch time of the NFC championship game is now PROVEN young talent. You are one of the few teams at the beginning of this season that can legitimately say “Our goal this year is to win the Super Bowl.”
Why give the keys of this potential juggernaut to a Jeff Tedford quarterback? Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, and Kyle Boller don’t exactly predict NFL success for the new man in Wisconsin. And I recognize that Brett Favre’s 2007 season was likely an unrepeatable statistical anomaly. But still, at least you know whatever the rare quality is that makes a winning QB resides somewhere in Favre.
You have no reason to believe it resides in Aaron Rogers, for the simple reason that factor apparently doesn’t exist in 99% of quarterbacks. Throw in the fact that if the number one rule of holding an NFL front office gig is “Keep Your Job”, and I just can’t understand the logic behind running out the unquestionable greatest player in the modern history of the franchise coming off of a vintage campaign.
Also unique to the Favre situation is the fact that he has been facing the retirement line of questioning since the early part of this decade when he was still in his early 30s. You could argue that the media artificially created the critical mass that forced Brett Favre to prematurely announce his retirement after last year. But enough about that tired story.
More heartening news on this front coming out of Arizona of all places, where QB of the future Matt Leinart has lost his starting gig to Kurt Warner. Why? Because Kurt Warner consistently outproduces Leinart, and that is all that should matter. Does this mean Leinart is damaged goods and should never get another shot in the NFL? No! The NFL more than any other pro sport changes so much from year to year that your only concern should be to win right now.
Which brings me to Trent Dilfer. In his 4th and 5th seasons in the NFL with Tampa Bay, Trent Dilfer started 32 games throwing for 42 TDs against 26 INTs. In his 7th season for Baltimore the team went 7-1 in games he started and won the Super Bowl. He was promptly run out of town to clear the way for Elvis Grbac, Jeff Blake, Kyle Boller, and Anthony Wright. Brian Billick was under pressure to recreate some semblance of the record breaking offenses he presided over in Minnesota that got him his starting job, so he sacrificed a solid-not-spectacular starter/proven winner in 28 year old Trent Dilfer for….well nothing, as it turned out.
Dear NFL, you are not fielding fantasy teams. Good enough has to be good enough at some point. No one will have anything negative to say to you if you are winning. This idea of playing to win now is often irreconcilable with the goal of building for the future. So while first round qbs may briefly fire up the fan base, it’s probably a better idea to enlist the “past his prime” player another team has cast off because of the perception that they’re middling.
You hear me Oakland? Play Tui!
(Stats courtesy of Pro Football Reference)