Always Draft A Quarterback

If you do not have a good quarterback, you should always draft a quarterback, and you should try to do it as early in the draft as possible. It is better to draft a bad quarterback than to go with another position, because you need a quarterback. Everybody is terrified of drafting the next Ryan Leaf, but when it comes to building a roster, I would rather have the boom or bust players than wallow away in mediocrity.

You will know that a quarterback is not going to work out within two years. That means you are only ignoring that position for one year.

Think about the Texans. They drafted Jadeveon Clowney, and even had Clowney been what was expected of him, they would have snuck in the playoffs and been ousted in the first round as they simply didn't have the quarterback necessary to be a threat. Now that they are a good, but not great team, it is going to be much more difficult to find their answer at the quarterback position.

Hell, you could even take the Rams. They drafted Aaron Donald who was the best defensive rookie this year, and maybe the best rookie overall (I know Odell Beckham Jr. was a rookie, but Aaron Donald really was that good), but even with their defensive line playing like the best unit in the league down the stretch, what is their ceiling with their current quarterback situation?

Now, obviously the Donald pick worked out, but wouldn't it have helped to take a chance on a guy in round two? Jimmy Garoppolo is the type of high-risk, high-reward player that would have been worth the Rams taking a chance on in the second round? While admitting that I was higher on Garoppolo than most, I still think he would have been fairly rough this year, but that experience could have helped make him the quarterback they needed in 2015 and beyond. If he showed to be truly awful, you can still give him another year to prove himself while taking a chance on a mid-round guy like Shane Carden of East Carolina.

Although I advocate taking a quarterback as early as possible, there are a few exceptions as Russell Wilson fell to the third round, Tony Romo was an undrafted free agent (although the Cowboys went above and beyond with their signing bonus to make sure he went to Dallas), and Tom Brady famously fell to the sixth. Tom Brady is the ultimate outlier, so expecting your team to be that brilliant lucky is delusional. Tony Romo came out in 2003, and the NFL has gotten SOOOOO much better at recognizing talent from smaller schools that he would likely have been at least picked in the top three rounds if he came out today (just look at Jimmy Garoppolo for proof). Wilson is the best example, as he is the most recent, but the Seahawks lucked out that the Eagles didn't trade up to ensure that they were able to draft him, as the Eagles and Russell Wilson were in love with each other going into the draft (Daniel Jeremiah, who was a scout for the Eagles at the time, mentioned that Wilson would text him about how excited he was for the Eagles to draft him so he could bring a Super Bowl title to Philadelphia).

But looking at all the good teams from the last few years, nearly every one of them drafted their starting quarterback.  Nobody is trading away good quarterbacks, so a team has to wait for the perfect storm to hope the team lets a good quarterback walk away in free agency. Those outliers are Drew Brees and Peyton Manning. Brees was a late bloomer (so the Chargers drafted Philip Rivers, making Brees obsolete) coming off of a major shoulder surgery. Manning had a serious neck injury where people thought that he would never regain enough arm strength to be effective and that he may just be one weird hit away from retirement. Even with the Broncos signing Manning, they still drafted a quarterback in the second round.

Yes, a team can hope a quarterback falls in their lap in free agency, but hope is not a plan. Scouting a quarterback and finding ways that you can accentuate his positives while minimizing the negatives is a far more likely path to success.

With all that being said, it is much easier to take quarterbacks in the draft in theory than it is to actually go through that plan in practice. General managers can't afford to whiff on a quarterback, because it is such an important decision. No decision will get scrutinized more, and the GM will primarily be judged off that single decision, so if it doesn't work out, he's likely going to lose his job. That is why everybody has to be on board with the plan, so a general manager can take the risks necessary to pursue greatness as opposed to goodness.

Everybody talks about what a bust Ryan Leaf was, but was it really a bust for the Chargers? His incompetence led them to LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees. They took one step back to take one giant leap forward. If that's what a bust looks like, then sign me up.

Jadeveon Clowney is Still a Beast

Jadeveon Clowney is still a beast. I know his stats have not shown that. Honestly, even the tape can fool people. Teams have watched tape, and they have found what Clowney’s weaknesses are, and they have done an excellent job of exploiting that.

This is where people get confused. Technique is the most underrated aspect in football. In football, how you get the job done really is far more important than getting the job done in predicting future performance.

People forget how young Clowney is. He was a rotational piece during his Freshman year, and he was still figuring things out last year in his first year as a full-time starter. As the season progressed, he got better and better. As he was getting better, coaches had limited time to prepare for him and limited resources to do it. Now, coaches had a full offseason, and every offensive line that is on South Carolina’s schedule spent more time studying Clowney than any other defensive player they would see the rest of the season. Honestly, many teams probably spent more time on Clowney than they spent on the rest of the SC defense. And no player is perfect, so they have found ways to neutralize his impact. SC has lost a lot of talent these past couple years, and the rest of the team is not making opponents pay for focusing on Clowney.

But this guy is still the best. A great example is how Ndamukong Suh dominated in his rookie year of the NFL, and his next year was not nearly as good. Suh didn’t get soft or lazy; he just did the same things that had always worked for him before. NFL teams adapted, and it hurt Suh’s performance. They were able to focus on stopping Suh and take their chances with the guys around him. Now that Detroit has more talent around him, teams can no longer completely focus on Suh, and he is once again seen as one of the most dominant defensive linemen in the entire league.

Any defensive player's impact can be neutralized by an offense's gameplan. Darrelle Revis has never led the league in interceptions, but that's because teams don't throw at him. Whenever you see a player have a great sack season, there is almost always another guy who has a very good sack season on that team. Anthony Spencer with DeMarcus Ware, Brooks Reed with JJ Watt, Justin and Osi with JPP and Strahan. They need those other guys in order to put up historical numbers. Right now, Clowney is so much better than his teammates that teams would rather take chances on the other 10 guys on the field, and it's really tough to put up stats if that's the case.

I always want to look at a player’s best plays, because it lets you look at the ceiling of a player. There is no defensive player with a higher ceiling than Clowney. That hasn’t changed, and that is the type of thing I want to acquire if I’m an NFL team. 

6 College Football Thoughts For Week 2

1. Marcus Mariota is fast. That is my analysis, but what he could mean to the NFL is very interesting. He's not a great passer, but he's good. If Chip Kelly is really bringing his offense to the professional level, does Mariota have first round value for him, yet only mid round value for another team (I still don't think he would draft him in the first, but he could be that kind of impact player for his team)? Kelly stayed away from his players in his first draft, but it will be interesting to see how he builds his team for the future.

2. I was never that big of a fan of Aaron Murray, but he was very impressive. He did a great job of leading his receivers and throwing strikes down the field.

3. Clowney is amazing. It doesn't matter that it isn't showing up on a stat sheet, because everyone is designing a game plan around minimizing Clowney's impact.

4. Devin Gardner should not be underestimated as an NFL prospect. He's got a good arm, is mobile, but still needs to refine his decision making. Still, there's stuff to work with, and I would rather develop him than Logan Thomas.

5. I still have a huge crush on Kyle Van Noy. He is just always around the ball and can make plays in the running game and affects the passing game both with pass rushing and in coverage. I wish I had a gif of the spin move he put on Texas's left tackle during the third series on third down. It was a thing of beauty, and it made me emit a noise that sounded a little too much like me having an orgasm. Also, despite not being a big linebacker, he was able to bull rush lineman and collapse the pocket.

6. Marqise Lee can't catch anything this year, not even punts. That was like the only play I watched, so those are my only thoughts on Lee.