His first step towards improvement: cutting Ryan Torain.
BOLD MOVES.
This may be worth a read, and the prior article on qbs drafted outside the top 50 picks.
How unlikely is it to find a good QB once you get beyond the middle of the 2nd round? Check out these facts:
QB’s drafted after pick #50 since 1995: 148
of those who have attempted 1000 or more passes: 15
who have been/were full time starters for 5+ years: 9
of undrafted QB’s since 1995 to throw 1000+ passes – 5
of undrafted QB’s since 1995 to start for 5+ years – 4
As a comparison,
Between 1995-2010, there were 49 QB’s selected in the top 50. 18 have started for 5+ years
I prefer the 5+ years starter as a comparison point, as throwing 1,000 passes can happen if you back up a injury prone QB, or play a couple seasons for a QB needy team like the Redskins (cough Rex Grossman).
5+ year starters: Picked in the top 50: 18/49. Pick 51+? 4/148.
Looking back to all QBs drafted since 1970:
As you can see, a majority of Top 50 QB’s hit 1000 pass attempts in their career, whereas only 16% of QB’s taken after pick #50 do. In that 40 year time period, 51 Top 50 QB’s were 5+ year starters compared to an aggregate 31 from the later portions of the draft.
Going by the 5+ year starter metric, 51 to 31 doesn’t seem so bad, except then you factor in how many QBs were drafted in those picks. The 51 is out of 113 QBs, whereas the 31 is out of 364 drafted QBs.
You want a QB? Draft one highly. Or continue to draft in the later rounds, and hope you win the Tom Brady sweepstakes.
Yep. Later round QBs (past the 2nd round – although even 2nd round QBs almost always flame out, the only exception being Brees in recent memory) are drafted or signed as known risks.
The risks include:
- small school or program, so no way to project if they’ll work against higher competition
- coming off injury
- strong early performance that faded (Brian Brohm, Marc Bulger)
- lack physical tools but hope that they’re ‘good enough’
- have physical tools but expectation that coaching can fix it
There’s a direct correlation between the number of reduced variables and how high they’re drafted, but even then if you’re good enough in some areas people will overlook the question marks.
All that said, having a late round QB that you can develop behind your starter can reap results. In particular having someone with the physical tools but lacking quality coaching can reap rewards if you have them for a year or two to sort things out.
It’s still pretty early in his career, but Andy Dalton isn’t doing bad.
No doubt, and judging on ‘round’ is sort of misleading since Brees was one pick away from being a first rounder. That said, these are all the 2nd round QBs picked the past 15 years:
A. Dalton
C. Kaepernick
J. Clausen
P. White
B. Brohm
C. Henne
K. Kolb
J. Beck
D. Stanton
K. Clemens
T. Jackson
D. Brees
Q. Carter
M. Tuiasosopo
S. King
C. Batch
J. Plummer
T. Bans
T. Collins
K. Stewart
Brees is the only bona fide star out of that group, and most of the others either flamed out, had some intermittent starts, or had a couple good seasons and disappeared.
Eh, Jake the Snake wasn’t bad (and Charlie Batch is a pretty capable backup), but I do see your point. One thing I would like to see is to run each of those QB’s through how many OC/HC they had just to check if it was “they suck” or if it was multiple coaching changes that caused them to not be as good as they could have been.
You’d find that it’s not statistically different than those in the 1st round that didn’t pan out. Which makes you wonder - did the coaching changes make the QB fail, or did the lousy QB play make the coaches lose their jobs? Probably a bit of both…
Sarkus
5868
As Eightball quoted above, I specifically was talking about top of the first round QBs versus guys taken after. So after pick 10 or so. As such an article about how guys taken after the middle of the second round don’t tend to pan out doesn’t really disprove my point. Nor does looking at 2nd round only QB success.
Again, this seems relevant to me when looking at whether the Seahawks need to trade up this coming draft to get a top QB versus taking their chances with somebody after their likely middle of the first round or so pick. Luck is #1, but with Barkley out of the mix the rest of the guys are more of a risk and probably not worth trading up for.
On a different note I’m surprised there is not talk of the 49ers cutting Braylon Edwards today. As the piece on PFT points out, the only way it makes sense is if the 49ers decided there were chemistry/behavior issues with the guy and they needed to get rid of him ASAP.
Thongsy
5869
Eh, he wasn’t doing much for the Niners anyways. And it’s not like he was really expensive either, he signed for a million dollars with incentives. I really hoped nagging injuries that was keeping him down but I guess there might be other problems too. Especially with the shape the 49ers receiving corp is in.
So with Bradford more than likely having to learn a new offense in his third year, I guess he’s the new Alex Smith eh.
Sarkus
5870
Well here is how the PFT piece puts it, and “not doing much” is a far cry from just cutting him like they did in a whole lot of ways. It actually makes no sense to cut him unless they really saw him as a big negative.
Still, the move makes little sense, coming with only one regular-season game remaining. If Edwards was still injured, the 49ers could have put him on injured reserve. If he isn’t injured, the 49ers could have just kept him around for one more week.
Since he signed a one-year deal, Edwards would have been a free agent in March. And if/when he would have signed with a new team as a free agent, Edwards’ departure would have factored in to the compensatory pick formula.
As it now stands, the Niners could have to pay Edwards, if he files a successful injury grievance — or if he chooses to take the final game check as termination pay. (Of course, if another team claims Edwards on waivers, the 49ers will be off the hook.) Either way, it seems odd that the 49ers wouldn’t have kept him around for just a few more weeks, given that it could have .
Unless, of course, the 49ers decided that Edwards was, for example, a major pain in the butt and no longer wanted him around.
Sarkus
5871
With the Lions finally making the playoffs, I wondered who now has the longest playoff drought in the NFL. Turns out Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to longest drought NFL stats! Who knew!
Anyway, the new leader is the Buffalo Bills, who haven’t made the playoffs since 1999. Tied for second are the Browns and Raiders (who might end that yet this year).
In related droughts, the Bengals haven’t won a playoff game in 20 years. The Bengals also haven’t made a conference game appearance in 22 years. And the Lions and Browns have the longest runs without even making it to the Superbowl.
Nawid_A
5872
Aren’t the Texans second?
If it comes to that, yeah. I suppose there’s always a chance that a new OC will run the west coast offense, which is what they ran in Bradford’s rookie season.
And there’s a chance that the owner, Kroenke, will give the staff one more year. I’d rate that as less than a 50-50 chance. It may depend on who is available to coach. I’d see hiring someone who has never been a HC in the NFL before as a roll of the dice and perhaps not any improvement over the current coach. Spags is capable on the defensive side and he’s popular with the players. And they did go from 1-15 to 7-9 under him before this year.
Thongsy
5874
That’s the odd thing. For all the troubles Edwards has caused in the past, he seems to have left that in the past. There hasn’t been any signs of trouble from him and in fact with that recent story of him donating pretty much his whole paycheck from this year to keep that promise to those kids he’s probably been a net positive. I agree it’s just very odd that the Niners would just suddenly cut him with one game to go. Maybe there was trouble in the locker room with him and it never got out. It really just doesn’t make sense.
Yeah. I mean Edwards says it’s because of his knee but if it were, he could file an appeal to get paid for week 17. It doesn’t sound like he’s doing that. The best guess I have is that it was personality-related and the Niners are keeping quiet about it. They don’t want him but they don’t want to burn him by talking bad about him.
So why not just sit him due to the knee, tell him not to come to the locker room, etc.? The Niners are hardly keeping quiet about the guy by cutting him. That’s the high profile way of dealing with him. Sitting him due to injury is the low-key way.
I have no idea beyond not wanting to have him around into the playoffs. No outside source seems to have a clue.
Sarkus
5878
It sounds like they don’t want him around, period. Because if he was on IR or they just told him he wasn’t going to be active, he still would have the right to come to the facility and all of that. So the only conclusion you can reach is that they really really didn’t want him on site at all, ever.
Sarkus
5879
How the mighty have fallen - PFT says TO is considering signing with an IFL team. The IFL is one of the indoor arena leagues. This is the same league where a team from Billings (Montana) won the title two years in a row recently, had a lot of home sellouts, and then folded.
Sarkus
5880
Looks like Garret can be taken off the hot seat list - JJ seems pretty adamant he’s coming back next year no matter what happens on Sunday. So those Fisher/Norv Turner rumors can stop.
