The Argument Against Drafting a QB in the First Three Rounds

…but I don’t think post-Young was the problem; post-Garcia was.

I remember the seventh-round scrubs! Tim Rattay wasn’t actually that bad. But as I posted lower, there were good QBs taken around those spots – we just weren’t the ones taking them or signing them as UFDAs.

If you look at the track record, the sixth round seems to be the place to gamble. I posted more of the picks below. I don’t think we should go looking for next year’s starter there; my concern is that next year’s starter likely isn’t in this draft, and I feel Baalke should be looking more aggressively at acquiring someone through trade, even though he’ll have to pay a premium for a known quantity.

This stuff fascinates me, in the same way that poker does. I can’t remember the specific quote, but I remember someone saying that although poker fortunes depend heavily on luck, there’s a reason the same people always end up at the final table.

I think that fits drafting and draft strategies as well. Pittsburgh’s usually handed (ostensibly) terrible draft position because they’re so consistently successful in the regular season. But they have the right mix of luck and expertise: the players they need keep either popping up where they need them or falling to them, and they don’t blow their chances. That’s why I couldn’t get too worked up about the Niners’ final victory costing them a couple of draft choices; there are good players available at every choice, and it’s just a matter of making the right call.

Two things with quarterbacks, however, separate the group from other players:

1: You pay a premium for quarterbacks. This might not matter as much in a non-salary-capped league, but this was an issue for years.

2: Ideally, QB is the least fungible position on your team, and you’re only drafting one every six years or so. Moreover, your pool of prospects is limited because the number of men playing QB in college football is so much smaller than at any other position save K/P, and you almost never see backup QBs drafted (Cassel being the obvious exception). But we see second-string or platooned running backs drafted – Ronnie Brown, Felix Jones, etc. There are a lot more position players, linemen, etc. out there than quarterbacks, so you have a far bigger pool.

The QB failure rate is abnormally high in Rounds 2-3, especially if you’re looking at who’s ending up in the Pro Bowl. Since I don’t think we’re taking a QB that high, and people are suggesting that we take a QB in rounds 2-3 (when it’s far smarter, historically speaking, to take a CB, WR, LB, or HB), I wanted to point out the historical precedents suggesting that we shouldn’t.

Brady : /

To be honest, I’m an advocate of trading a pick for a vet rather than using it on a prospect. Kyle Orton’s not sexy, but you know what you’re getting with him.

My original point wasn’t that your success rate is higher in the later rounds; it’s that the consequences of whiffing on a fifth-round pick are much lower than whiffing on a second-rounder, particularly when it’s as high as ours this year. In all of the sturm und drang over Nate Davis, I don’t think anyone ever bemoaned spending a fifth-round pick on him. He didn’t pan out, but who’s going to argue that the pick was a waste?

Quarterbacks outside of Round 1 are a shot in the dark; since the odds aren’t good either way (2nd-3rd vs. everything else), I’d like to pay a lower price to take that shot.

Best of the Rest:

1995: Kelly Holcomb (undrafted); a rough year for QBs overall, but both first-rounders (Kerry Collins and Steve McNair) made Pro Bowls.

1996: No one of consequence, but that may have been the worst year for QBs of all time; Tony Banks was the first one taken, and probably the best in the whole draft.

1997: Jake Delhomme (undrafted), Jon Kitna (undrafted); both exceeded Plummer’s career. The only QB taken in the first round: Jim Druckenmiller. Owwwwww.

1998: Matt Hasselbeck (sixth round; second QB taken outside of the 3rd). The Manning/Leaf draft.

1999: Aaron Brooks (fourth round). Drafting QBs this year was Russian Roulette: Donovan McNabb, Daunte Culpepper, Cade McNown, Akili Smith, and Tim Couch were the first-rounders.

2000: Year of the Sixth-Rounder. Five QBs taken: three flameouts, Marc Bulger, Tom Brady. Chad Pennington was the only QB taken in the first round. (And hey, Tim Rattay in Round Seven isn’t looking so bad!)

2001: Chris Weinke, Sage Rosenfels, Jesse Palmer in Round Four; Mike McMahon and A.J. Feeley in Round Five. None were exceptional, but all took snaps at some point. (Plus, the Eagles turned fifth-rounder Feeley into a second-rounder. That’s some rate of interest.)

2002: David Garrard in Round Four; Brandon Doman (Round 5), JT O’Sullivan (Round 6), and Shaun Hill (undrafted) were past Niners.

2003: Seneca Wallace (Round Four); Brian St. Pierre (Round Five); Brooks Bollinger (Round Six); Ken Dorsey (Round Seven – Niners); Tony Romo (undrafted)

2004: Luke McCown (Round Four); the immortal Jim Sorgi (Round Six); Cody Pickett (Round Seven). This was the year where you couldn’t screw up. The first five QBs taken were Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, and Matt Schaub. Oh, wait – J.P. Losman was in there too. So I guess you could have screwed it up, but it was hard to do.

2005: Bay Area QB Draft: Alex Smith/Aaron Rodgers/Jason Campbell. Kyle Orton (Round 4); Dan Orlovsky (Round 5); Derek Anderson (Round 6); Matt Cassel and Ryan Fitzpatrick (Round 7)

This gets sketchier as you get closer to the present day because these guys just haven’t been around very long:

2006: Bruce Gradkowski (Round 6)

2007: Troy Smith (Round 5), Tyler Thigpen (Round 7)

2008: Dennis Dixon (5th), Josh Johnson (5th), Matt Flynn (7th), Caleb Hanie (undrafted)

2009: Stephen McGee (4th), Brian Hoyer (undrafted)

2010: Who knows? They were all rookies. Joe Webb could be a starter next year, but I can’t imagine Minnesota won’t pick someone else up.

If anything, this makes it look like drafting and developing your own QB isn’t worth it.
Undrafted QBs suddenly start looking more attractive…

I guess we can hope this is like the 2005 draft, where no one’s truly excited about the first round options available; two will become serviceable but unspectacular and one will hit it big. The third round was barren, but every round after it yielded at least one QB who started at some point.

But plenty of those guys who were drafted in Rounds 2-3 seemed intriguing too. Almost no one yells at a GM for drafting QBs in those rounds. It just feels appropriate. But it isn’t. If past is prologue, spending one of our 2nd-/3rd-rounders on a signal-caller won’t work…and we have very high picks in both rounds, picks we can use on other needs (which our team certainly has).

…but what’s done is done, and I don’t blame Smith for needing to move on; the more psychotic elements of the fanbase had become ridiculous.

Whichever quarterback we have next will benefit from offensive line continuity (never our strong suit), an offensively-focused coaching staff, and a nice collection of offensive talent that will hopefully live up to its potential with the presence of the aforementioned offensive coaches. If it’s a young guy, I hope he does well enough to keep the crazies at bay for a while.

I used to think the “we have to draft a QB in the first round!” thing was hype, but it’s actually fairly valid. It’s just that, as you said, I don’t think we should draft any of these QBs in the first round.

And in your worst-case scenario: Amukamura all the way.

Don’t know what to think about Dalton, honestly. I’m less concerned with whether he can throw the deep ball (in a game, you almost never throw a football more than 40 yards in the air, and it’s not like the WCO is Air Coryell 2.0) and more concerned with consistency. I’m watching him with interest.

I just haven’t seen many Delaware games, so I don’t really know what to think about Devlin. McElroy’s never really impressed me, considering the talent he had at his disposal at Alabama; the accuracy stats are attractive, however. I’m interested to see what folks say about Ponder after he’s interviewed.

The “throw them to the wolves” thing is less consistent than I expected for QBs. I used to think that you really, really needed to give QBs some extra time before playing them. Now I’m noticing that some people really can step in and look more competent than you’d expect; McCoy’s 2010, for example, shocked the heck out of me. What I’m trying to determine is whether there’s a common element that makes it possible to throw a young QB out successfully. I haven’t found one yet.

The closest I came was “offense that’s played in the system before + offensive line continuity” – i.e., the coordinator’s been there for at least one season prior to the new guy’s arrival, and the line played together in that system. But even that’s not a silver bullet; the QB affects line play by shifting protecting schemes, calling audibles, releasing quicker, buying time, etc. David Carr alluded to this when discussion his problems in Houston, saying that he should have shared some of the blame that was directed at his O-line because he wasn’t good at shifting protection schemes at the line yet. That’s one of the reasons Sam Bradford made a mediocre Rams line look better than it was; he reads defenses well from under center, then takes short drops and gets the ball out quick. The Rams’ offense seemed boring to watch because it rarely took shots down the field, but their pace – the time between snap and whistle – on offense was actually pretty fast.

Assuming this Niners staff gels and excels, this is actually a pretty good situation for a young QB. But I’d rather keep investing in the rest of our team with the high picks, or move the 2nd/3rd rounder for someone we’ve scouted and know can at least be competent.

…but we don’t pick in the ‘teens, and I don’t know who would trade up for our pick who’s located there now. If you don’t take someone at #7, you’re drafting again at #39; is there really a QB who makes you think, “Yes, this would be a great get at #39”?

…although I would have been happier had Kaepernick kept flying under the radar. Now I’m afraid he could move into the late-late-late-late first round. I’d like to see some more tape on Devlin – watch him identify defenses, progress through his reads, move his feet, etc.

I mentioned earlier that he should have done far more considering the talent he had at his disposal. The fact that he didn’t blow everyone in the SEC but Newton out of the water statistically while leading an absolutely loaded Alabama offense concerns me greatly.

By and large, teams should draft QBs in the first round – assuming the players available justify the pick. In 2004, Roethlisberger’s just sitting there at #7. You draft him. Smart pick.

But that’s my problem with this year’s crop: I don’t see anyone in it that’s worth the #7 pick, particularly given our other needs. Are we really trying to talk ourselves into picking Blaine Gabbert, Cam Newton, Jake Locker, Ryan Mallett, or (apparently?) Colin Kaepernick there?

No, of course not. Very few people want us to draft a QB at #7. But those same people who object to such a pick often add that we should pick a QB in the 2nd or 3rd rounds. That’s what I’m arguing is foolish.