QB: Questionable Business

QB’s: Questionable Business

Or

OBs: Quit Being Stupid

            The NFL dominates the American sports landscape. People bemoan its demise, but in reality, the league is so omnipresent that every scandal feels massive simply because it has to do with football. We cannot quit it, and as a result, the NFL draft feels bigger than the actual sports that are being played in-between football seasons. Prior to the draft, no player is dissected more than the incoming crop of quarterbacks, and for good reason, a good QB means victories…. right?

            Quarterbacks are obsessed over, glorified, blamed, vilified, protected, and grossly overpaid. There, I said it. It needs to be said. The amount of attention they receive is understandable because it is the most difficult position to play and the most important. Simply put, passing the ball is the most effective way to score, and scoring is the most effective way to win. Year to year, a team’s offensive output is much more stable than its defensive performance. Essentially, if you have the best defense in the league one year the chances your team will be in the top five the next year is lower than the top-ranked offense remaining elite. So far, the logic of valuing quarterbacks highly makes sense, but a deeper look exposes a massive flaw in concept.

            Supply and demand is a basic economic concept. If the supply does not meet the demand the product becomes more valuable, and as a result more expensive. For NFL franchises, quarterbacks are like NFL franchises for billionaires; there are simply not enough to go around. In sports there are tiers to players, the elite (5%), the very good (10%), the good (15%), the average (20%), the we’re kidding ourselves (15%), the hand on face emoji (20%), and the we are so fucked (15%, this includes the remaining 99.9% of the human population as well). What happens is that teams convince themselves that these percentages can change. They can’t. That’s the point. It’s the Fortune 500, not the Fortune 500 plus 200 other companies that are doing just as well! In competition it does not matter how good you are; it only matters how good you are compared to your competition. Babe Ruth is the greatest baseball player ever compared to his peers, but if he was transported to today he’d be a DH only for a JUCO before flaming out in Independent ball after ballooning up to 300 pounds. The point is that there can only be so many elite players because once there are more some stop being elite and are merely very good.

           

I don’t know if you just did the math, but 5% of 32 is 1.6. The .6 is because Drew Brees is so short that he doesn’t count as a full quarterback (I kid Saints fans). Really we should think of it as follows: there are 60-90 quarterbacks that can be reasonably expected to play in the league at any given time, which means there are 3 to 4.5 elite quarterbacks in the NFL in any given season. With a breakdown like this we should see a sliding scale of quarterback salaries based upon what tier they fit into. The problem is….we don’t. What we see is absolute insanity or idiocy or incompetence or cowardice.

            As it stands right now, the 9 largest NFL contracts, by annual average salary, and 19 of the top 23 in all of the NFL go to quarterbacks. The four non-quarterbacks are Khalil Mack, Aaron Donald, Odell Beckham, Jr., and Von Miller; you may have heard of these guys. Lists are easy. So I’m going to list the top nine and their per-year average salary, and follow it with my reaction.

1.     Aaron Rodgers ($33.5 Mil): Sounds about right

2.     Matt Ryan ($30 Mil): It’s a stretch, but he’s good, and his agent is better.

3.     Kirk Cousins ($28 Mil): LOL….. wait, it’s all guaranteed! His agent is the GOAT!

4.      Jimmy Garoppolo ($27.5 Mil): He is handsome, but has he even played 16 games yet?

5.     Matt Stafford ($27 Mil): That’s a lot of money to basically never make the postseason.

6.     Derek Carr ($25 Mil): I remember that one good year he had. I wonder if he does?

7.     Drew Brees ($25 Mil): Wow! The first bargain! No wonder the Saints should have made the Super Bowl.

8.     Andrew Luck ($24.594 Mil): He’s back baby! Let’s hope his shoulder stays healthy.

9.     Alex Smith ($23.5 Mil): Even before his leg snapped in half, it’s like paying extra for flood insurance when you live in a Yurt on the edge of the Gobi desert.

What an inspiring bunch of passers. If someone in an NFL front office ever tells you that you could not do his job, please show him this list and inform him that you could probably do it better than seven of the guys who gave these contracts. The real question is how did we get here in a salary-cap sport where so many teams have so much money tied up in not very good players at the very most important position? I think the answer is fear. Teams are so scared not to have a quarterback they will literally do whatever it takes to keep them. Even if it means making their team dramatically worse in the process. Yet, the idiocy doesn’t stop there.

            Teams will overpay quarterbacks in free agency, but they will also over draft quarterbacks until they have a guy they are willing to overpay in free agency. It’s funny, but the hot team building strategy is to have a quarterback on a rookie contract so you can build a strong roster around that quarterback. If teams struggle to hand out good contracts to NFL quarterbacks, you can imagine they have an even harder time determining which college quarterbacks will be good. Excluding the 2018 draft (it’s honestly too early to tell) let’s see how teams did when drafting quarterbacks.

·      In 2017, three quarterbacks were drafted in the first round. Mitchell Trubisky went first, followed by Patrick Mahomes, and Deshaun Watson. Good work; that’s 2 for 3 because Mitchell Trubisky has basically shown no indication of being good.

·      2016 also saw three quarterbacks go in the first round with Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, and Paxton Lynch, with Dak Prescott going in the fourth round as well. Paxton Lynch is basically out of the league, and Jared Goff and Carson Wentz have shown flashes, but there are still some concerns about them going forward.

·      2015 had a celebrated first round with Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota, and we still somehow have no idea if they’re good (here’s an idea; if you don’t know if they’re good, then they are not good).

·      2014 was an all-time first-round stink-athon with Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel, and Teddy Bridgewater. The next two QB’s taken were Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo.

·      I’m going to call it quits with 2013 because the only first-round quarterback was EJ Manuel.

This list doesn’t even show all the trades teams made to move up and get some of these guys.  While some have worked out, many have completely failed, and as a note, none of the quarterbacks taken first in these drafts has ended up being the best quarterback from that draft.

I know drafting quarterbacks is hard, but here is a novel strategy. Stop caring so much about your quarterback. Landing an elite quarterback is luck. Getting saddled with an average quarterback on a gargantuan contract is foolishness. Build the rest of the roster, and get lucky at quarterback. The Patriots did and they’ve built the greatest dynasty in the history of the sport.