FanPost

An experimental ranking of all the QBs you could ever hope to draft in 2017

Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports

I've had a personal pet project that I've put some time into each of the last few years, which is kind of like an amateur version of what Football Outsiders has been developing with QBASE. I started by scraping college stats for every QB who has completed at least 1 pass in the NFL and was drafted after... I think I went back to 1998. Then I compare those stats to the QBs who are eligible to be drafted this year to create a list of historical comps.

These comps are often weird at a glance -- and they come bearing a serious survivor's bias because they assume anyone being held up to them is good enough to throw a pass in the NFL, which is patently false -- but they can also be suggestive in interesting ways, and help me see what a typical college QB with x numbers does in the NFL -- and they certainly guarantee against ever making an awful Deshaun Watson to Vince Young comparison, as just one example.

I also use several stats that I've identified as key numbers in predicting NFL success to supplement the comps in building a ranking. Some of these will be familiar in different ways. I useL

  • age, because all else being equal, younger is better.
  • height and weight (pulled from Sports Reference, which is sometimes inaccurate) as a measure of an NFL ready build (height alone isn't that useful until you start getting shorter than 6 feet, but being overly slim or thick is a problem at any height).
  • pass attempts rather than games started -- though I think in the future I will use both to help differentiate between a 3 year starter with 1200 attempts and a 4 year starter with 1200 attempts. I've generally favored pass attempts because it's a bigger number, and I always prefer big numbers.
  • career completion rate, for the known and obvious reasons
  • A number I call adjusted yards per game (I prorate career AY/A to the last season's attempts per game). This gives me a sense of how much a guy was asked to do, and how much he depended on an offensive system (too low and the offense clearly doesn't run through him, too high and it's probably a system offense that could run through any QB).
  • Career adjusted yards per attempt, as a gauge of career efficiency, for the obvious and known reasons
  • A measure of year over year growth, based on annual AY/A -- no growth and you may be looking at a guy who doesn't develop in the NFL, too much growth and you may be looking at something outside the QBs control inflating his numbers in a key year.

I weigh these factors... well, not very scientifically. But, listen, I said at the start I was an amateur. And I consider the rankings my spreadsheet spits out as raw, which is to say they need to be weighed against scouting reports to count for much (for instance, my sheet absolutely LOVES Greg Ward Jr because of his raw numbers, but I, as a person with a brain, knows that a 5'11" 185 lb QB would literally not survive an NFL game).

So what were the results this year? I have an exhaustive list for you. I'm not going to write an ordered list because I'm not sure how useful that is, but I am going to organize the list for you into tiers, and give you relevant information to help you understand and interpret the groupings.

TIER 1

DeShaun Watson: Top career similarity: Geno Smith. As comps go, that's not especially reassuring, but I want to temper it by mentioning that Andrew Luck's career passing numbers were also similar, and Watson brings an extra element with his legs that neither displayed in college. Watson is a little slender according to SR and it's not ideal that his efficiency regressed last year, but those are the only minor knocks in his numbers. His experience, accuracy, efficiency, and involvement in the offense all land right around the sweet spots for future NFL success, and he's the only guy in the draft without a glaring hole across the board.

Mitch Trubisky: Top career similarity: Alex Smith. Trubisky is particularly hard to comp because of his lack of experience, and his similarity score with Smith not actually very high -- it's just higher than his similarity score with anyone else. He's definitely the right size, and his numbers hit A LOT of sweet spots, and if he had even one extra season of equal or greater value he'd be my tier zero. But even film is unreliable when you're working with so little of it, so he's stuck here thanks to uncertainty.

DeShone Kizer: Top career similarity: Ryan Tannehill/Carson Wentz. Both of these are weird comps to see because they're both special cases (Wentz's small school experience and Tannehill's late move to QB), but a guy could do worse than two current NFL starters. Possibly the best comps among the three, Kizer also has the most warning signs. He's only thrown a hundred odd passes more than Trubisky, and he's done it without Trubisky's stellar accuracy or efficiency. But he's done it in a more pro-ready system and at a younger age, so you give and take.

TIER 2

Brad Kaaya: Top career similarity: Eli Manning. I think Kaaya is a good tier 2 option, and I predict that he's going to rise in esteem again through the combine. Honestly, his raw numbers rival Kizer's, except he's more experienced. He was a scout favorite before the season and fell out of favor during a miserable stretch of losses in the middle of an otherwise very good season.

Patrick Mahomes: Top career similarity: Chad Pennington. This is another "weak" similarity. It's hard to get a good gauge on Mahomes's NFL potential because almost nobody who has thrown a pass in the NFL in the last decade and a half played in a system that enabled them to throw for 400+ yards a game in college. Some other "top" comps for Mahomes range from Derek Carr to Brian Brohm. There's not much precedent for him, but people seem to like him and except for being a severe system quarterback all of his numbers are exactly in the centers of the sweet spots. So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as a tier 2 guy for now.

Chad Kelly: Top career similarity: Aaron Rodgers. Kelly's top comps are actually a who's who of successful NFL QBs, and he's juuust on the low end of every sweet spot in the numbers game. 200 more pass attempts. .3 more career adjusted yards per attempt, one year younger, a slightly better senior season - just marginal upgrades across the board and we'd be talking about him in the first group. But it's one thing to say one area is a little low and a different thing to say every area is. I like Kelly, but there's reason to wonder.

TIER 3

Jerod Evans: Top career similarity: Carson Wentz. Evans is the Mitch Trubisky of guys that scouts aren't drooling over. He has less experience than anyone and he's built pretty heavy, but he also had a very good year. I don't know anything else about him and I'm honestly not sure if this is the right tier for him, but my sheet likes him so I'll suggest him as a possible diamond in the rough.

Davis Webb: Top career similarity: Chris Redman. I personally do not like Davis Webb in this draft. I don't like that he wasn't very efficient in a system that should have made it easy, his build is not ideal, and he's not particularly accurate. But I've heard his name spoken as high as the second tier from people who know better than me and my sheet doesn't suggest I should have him any lower than this, so.

Zach Terrell: Top career similarity: Teddy Bridgewater. But maybe not Teddy Bridgewater in a good way. Terrell's even slimmer than his top comp, not as quite accurate, and not as prolific. But that doesn't mean his numbers are bad. He was extremely efficient in an offense that didn't ask him to do as much as some others out there. He's not deserving of Bridgewater's draft pedigree, but he could be a sneaky good pickup later on.

Cooper Rush: Top career similarity: Matt Barkley/Brady Quinn. Cooper Rush is a guy I liked A LOT more before he played the 2016 season, and his 2016 season shows why he wasn't good enough to leave a year earlier. His aggregate career numbers are fine, actually, which is why I can still rate him as high as this group (and, listen, is Davis Webb gets to be in this tier so does Coop), but the fact that he grew less efficient two years in a row is troubling.

Ahem.

So at this point you can probably see that the quality and interest of the guys we're talking about is deteriorating. That being the case, I'm going to mention a couple of guys who I like for no good reason, and then list the rest with their top comps in spreadsheet order.

TIER GUYS I LIKE FOR NO GOOD REASON

Joshua Dobbs: Top career similarity: Jake Rudock. I don't know why I like Dobbs as much as I do. His size isn't great, he isn't asked to do much, and he kind of killed his prospect status in 2015. But he used to be fairly well regarded and he had a genuinely decent 2016 season. So there you have it. Maybe he can be a quality NFL backup and make a little money for a while without getting his head kicked in.

Seth Russell: Top career similarity: Akili Smith. But... not Akili Smith in a good way. Man, Russell has looked good at times, but he's had a few devastating injuries now that stole a lot of developmental time away from him, and he just hasn't been very accurate in college. Personally, I'd love to see what a healthy Russell could have done/could do, but I doubt we ever see it now.

Sefo Liufau: Top career similarity: Charlie Whitehurst. I like Sefo Liufau because one of my cousins used to play WR for Colorado. That is all. But, hey: Charlie Whitehurst.

TIER A BUNCH OF OTHER DUDES

  • Greg Ward Jr. --> Pat White
  • Brady Gustafson --> Brock Osweiler
  • Nick Mullens --> Luke McCown
  • Ryan Higgins --> Garrett Grayson
  • Wes Lunt --> Dan Orlovsky
  • Mitch Leidner --> Craig Krenzel
  • Dane Evans --> YES, THAT CODY PICKETT
  • Nathan Peterman --> Stephen McGee
  • Patrick Towles --> Logan Thomas
  • Taysom Hill --> Tee Martin
  • CJ Beathard --> Matt Mauck

And I would like to give honorable mention here to CJ Beathard both for having the best name in the draft by far if you mispronounce it (you're welcome, everyone who stuck with me this far) and for having the most draft-stock-crushing season of 2016 by far. He was just awful this year.

So what do you think? I figured at the very least I would give you some names to think about outside the top 3, and maybe create room for a discussion about players who might be worth targeting in the middle rounds if we use our top pick elsewhere.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Niners Nation's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Niners Nation's writers or editors.