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With three weeks to go before the 2024 NFL draft, we're approaching what could be an unprecedented run on quarterbacks at the top of the class. Field Yates' most recent mock draft has three quarterbacks in the first three picks, which has happened only twice in the past 25 years. Yates also has a fourth quarterback landing with the No. 5 pick, which would be uncharted territory: There has never been a draft with four quarterbacks taken in the top five. This isn't a one-year aberration, either. There were three quarterbacks chosen in the top four a year ago, when Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud and Anthony Richardson were gone before the draft settled down. In 2021, the top three picks were all quarterbacks: Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance. There have been four drafts in league history in which at least five signal-callers were selected in Round 1; two of them have taken place since 2018, and we might see a third in seven years later this month. Subscribe: "The Bill Barnwell Show" Quarterback has always been an important position, but this is a shift worth evaluating. Are teams getting too aggressive pursuing quarterbacks when the return has been players like Wilson and Lance? What has changed to make the league target quarterbacks at a higher rate than ever before? Are teams foolish to get involved when there is a run on quarterbacks in a particular draft? And what kind of player should teams expect to land when they do take that plunge for a passer in Round 1? Let's take a deeper look into those questions. There's a lot to unpack, but I'll try to resolve issues that keep coming to mind as I look around the league and see how aggressive teams have been at pursuing new solutions under center. And we'll start with one that will pop up again if this year's class is disappointing: Jump to a section:
How the tide turned on taking QBs in Round 1
Why QB value is (almost) too good to pass up
How 10 multi-QB Round 1 classes fared
What should teams expect from a Round 1 QB?  Are teams drafting quarterbacks too often in the first round?
Since the league moved to its current slotted rookie wage scale in 2011, there has been an uptick in both the draft capital used on quarterbacks and the frequency with which we've seen big quarterback classes in Round 1. From 1993 (when the league moved to an eight-round draft) to 2010, teams used an average of 8.5% of their overall capital in a typical draft by the Jimmy Johnson chart on quarterbacks. Since 2011, that mark has risen to 10.9%, a jump of more than 28%. And after seeing five classes with four or more quarterbacks drafted in the first round from 1980 to 2010, there have been five such classes from 2011 onward, a number that should rise to six this year. There are some on-field explanations for why teams have gotten more aggressive targeting quarterbacks. The league has moved more and more toward passing over that time frame, so while quarterbacks were always valuable, the position has become even more essential. Some of those passers have been taken at the expense of running backs, who were the subject of more draft capital than quarterbacks as recently as the 1990s. Teams have also grown more comfortable drafting a wider range of quarterback styles while translating what they did at the college level into an NFL offense. We're living in an era in which quarterbacks run more than ever, with players such as Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts and Josh Allen essential parts of their teams' designed rushing attacks. It's difficult to imagine the raw and inexperienced Anthony Richardson coming off the board in Round 1 a decade ago; now, it's tough to imagine many teams passing on his skill set. The biggest factor, though, is the change in how much drafting those quarterbacks costs. Before the league moved to the slotted draft system, contracts for rookie players were negotiated based off prior deals and grew faster than the cap. Matthew Stafford, Sam Bradford and Mario Williams received guarantees that made them some of the highest-paid players in league history before taking an NFL snap. That seemed untenable, and it discouraged teams from trading to the top of the draft unless there was a player they perceived to be a can't-miss prospect. After the league changed the CBA in 2011, first-round picks became far less expensive to sign. Each pick in the draft had its cost defined in advance and tied to the rise in the salary cap each season, so rookie contracts were assured of remaining bargains for the foreseeable future. Crucially, though, those rookie contracts are the same regardless of position, meaning a team drafting No. 1 overall pays the same contract for a quarterback, defensive lineman or kicker. If you've paid even cursory attention to the NFL over the past two decades, you know veterans don't get paid the same regardless of position. By average annual salary, the 14 largest contracts in football all belong to quarterbacks. Derek Carr has a larger average annual salary on his deal than any non-quarterback. Ryan Tannehill has made $195 million in his career, which is more than any non-quarterback in NFL history. Even average quarterbacks have incredibly expensive veteran deals. Because quarterbacks are more expensive to roster than players at any other position, the surplus value of drafting a quarterback is significantly higher than it is for any other position. And because teams land a more valuable player by drafting a quarterback than they do at any other spot, they don't need to be nearly as confident about that quarterback as they do about players at any other position to justify taking him. I did this in my article last year on running backs and Bijan Robinson, but let's update it for the 2024 draft and focus on quarterback. Consider the Patriots, who have the No. 3 overall pick in this draft. The prospect the Pats take at that selection will land a four-year deal worth $35.8 million, or just under $9 million per year. If we compare that contract value to what the average top-10 player at each position (or top-20 player for each position when a team typically has two players on the field at one time, like wide receiver or edge rusher) has landed on multiyear veteran deals, we get a sense of what the market looks like for each position. We can use that information to estimate how confident the Patriots would have to be about whomever they take at No. 3 to justify making that pick. What that evidence suggests tells us why teams are comfortable pushing quarterbacks up their board: That's remarkable. If the Patriots think Drake Maye (North Carolina) or Jayden Daniels (LSU) has even a 20% chance of turning into an NFL-caliber starting quarterback, they would be justified taking him with their pick. They would need to have more than an 80% chance of feeling confident about a running back to justify the same selection. No position is in the same ballpark as quarterback; the needed confidence rate for Marvin Harrison Jr. at wide receiver is twice as high than it would be for a player under center. Drafting isn't this simple. The Patriots will have a number of players they believe will turn out to be NFL-caliber players at No. 3, so the presence of Maye or Daniels doesn't inherently mean they should draft a quarterback. A team might be far more confident about Harrison's chances of turning into an elite wide receiver than Maye's chances of becoming a top-flight quarterback, which changes the calculations. NFL teams are also trying to build 53-man rosters as opposed to maximizing their surplus value, so they can't just draft a quarterback in Round 1 every year and laugh their way to the bank. You get the idea, though: The upside of drafting quarterbacks is significantly higher than it is at any other position. And when a team lands a great quarterback on a rookie deal, it transforms the franchise and gives it financial flexibility to take big swings. Look at what happened Wednesday. The Bills, with an expensive (and wildly talented) quarterback in Josh Allen, took a step backward by trading Stefon Diggs to the Texans for draft picks. With C.J. Stroud under contract for three more seasons on a bargain rookie deal in which he'll make less combined than Allen will make in 2024 alone, Houston had the cap space to easily afford Diggs' deal. And, as you might remember, the Bills once acquired Diggs when they had Allen on his rookie deal. They acquired him from the Vikings, who were paying quarterback Kirk Cousins market-value money on a free agent deal. While throwing around surplus value might sound like a wonky concept that doesn't matter in team building, this stuff absolutely, positively impacts how teams construct their rosters and make decisions, whether they're paying attention to it or not. Let's do an informal study. Going back through 1980, I've looked at the quarterbacks selected in the first round of each draft and charted what happened to them over the remainder of their careers. I've had to do some projecting for the future for players taken in recent years, and I left out 2023 entirely given how little we know after one season, but we're going to generally have most of these quarterbacks in pretty defined tiers. I've split them into five categories: Hall of Famers are players who have either already made it to the Hall of Fame or have better than a 50/50 chance of making it to Canton someday, like Patrick Mahomes. Franchise quarterbacks are players who locked down their team's primary job and played at a Pro Bowl level for a significant period of time, stretching well beyond their rookie deal, even if they aren't going to be a Hall of Famer one day. A good example from the past might be Drew Bledsoe or Steve McNair. More recent examples would be Dak Prescott or Justin Herbert. Solid starters are quarterbacks who were regulars for their teams without ever really challenging the upper echelon of the position, either because of a lack of ceiling, injury or other factors. These players might or might not have earned a second deal with their teams. This is the smallest group because teams are typically more aggressive in making changes under center these days. Chad Pennington and Jeff George would fit here. Low-end pro careers would include passers who bounced around the NFL as borderline starters or high-end backups without locking down a starting job for a significant period of time. Again, injuries could factor in here. Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston, the top two picks in the 2015 draft, would both fit in this category. Disappointments are players who don't fit into any of the above categories. They might have never earned significant NFL playing time, like Paxton Lynch, or struggled before ending their NFL career quickly, like Johnny Manziel. Teams might consider a solid starter or a low-end pro career as a disappointment depending on where they were drafted, but this group of players basically returned nil value given that it included all first-rounders.
One other thing I want to look at as we do this study is the rise of those multi-QB classes I mentioned earlier. After 2024, six of the 14 most recent drafts will have seen at least four quarterbacks drafted in Round 1. That happened just five times in the prior 31 drafts. Are we seeing teams overreacting to the value offered by rookie quarterbacks and getting too aggressive in targeting them with first-round picks? I'm going to go draft by draft through those 10 previous classes with at least four first-round quarterbacks to see whether teams have gone too far chasing their quarterbacks of the future.
2021: Five first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Trevor Lawrence (1st, Jaguars), Zach Wilson (2nd, Jets), Trey Lance (3rd, 49ers), Justin Fields (11th, Bears), Mac Jones (15th, Patriots) This class is fresh in everyone's memory, given that three of the five quarterbacks drafted in Round 1 have been traded before the start of their fourth seasons in the league. Four of these five will have their fifth-year option declined without much of a second thought, which is a clear indicator they failed to pan out for their respective teams. Their failure is even more disappointing considering the talent that came off the board elsewhere in the top half of Round 1. If a team didn't draft a quarterback in the top 15, it generally landed a superstar. Six of the 10 other players drafted in that group -- TE Kyle Pitts, WR Ja'Marr Chase, OT Penei Sewell, CB Pat Surtain, LB Micah Parsons and OT Rashawn Slater -- have already made it to a Pro Bowl. The other four players aren't exactly leftovers: WR Jaylen Waddle, WR DeVonta Smith, CB Jaycee Horn and OL Alijah Vera-Tucker, all of whom have been standouts when healthy. If there is a draft serving as evidence that we're taking quarterbacks too high, it's this one. It's possible Fields (Steelers) or Lance (Cowboys) develops into a good player on his new team, but the only quarterback with a chance of delivering significant value for the team that drafted him is Lawrence, who has been all over the place in terms of highs and lows during his time with the Jags. The Lawrence who excelled in the second half of 2022 and helped get the Jags in position for the top seed in the AFC before getting injured in 2023 is a franchise quarterback, but whether it owes to injuries, inconsistency or middling players around him, he hasn't instantly elevated the Jaguars into a Super Bowl contender the way his college pedigree might have indicated he would. The Jags would still take him with the No. 1 pick in a re-draft, but there are a handful of other players in this class who seem closer to Hall of Fame tracks ahead of Lawrence so far. Future Hall of Famers: 0
Franchise QBs: 1
Solid starters: 0
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 4
2020: Four first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Joe Burrow (1st, Bengals), Tua Tagovailoa (5th, Dolphins), Justin Herbert (6th, Chargers), Jordan Love (26th, Packers) If the 2021 draft was an example of teams wildly projecting on quarterback value and failing, 2020 was the prototype for how landing a quarterback can transform a team's roster. In addition to these four standouts, the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts in Round 2. The decision to take Hurts seemingly sent Carson Wentz into a tailspin and led to the Eagles bottoming out in 2020, but Hurts' remarkable development pushed them to another Super Bowl two years later. Even if we focused on the first-rounders, though, all four have to be considered success stories in their own ways. Each has brought his team to the postseason, with Love doing so in his first season as the starter in 2023. Tagovailoa and Herbert haven't yet won a playoff game, with the Dolphins passer sidelined by injury in 2022 and frozen amid wintry conditions in Kansas City this past postseason, but they've each had stretches as elite quarterbacks at different times over the past two years. Burrow, of course, took the Bengals all the way to the Super Bowl in his second season. I'm a conservative grader, so I'm not yet prepared to put any of these first-rounders into the Hall of Fame. It would hardly be a surprise if at least one ended up in Canton, though, and they're all successes for their teams. Injuries are the only reason Tagovailoa hasn't earned a second contract. Future Hall of Famers: 0
Franchise QBs: 4
Solid starters: 0
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 0
2018: Five first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Baker Mayfield (1st, Browns), Sam Darnold (3rd, Jets), Josh Allen (7th, Bills), Josh Rosen (10th, Cardinals), Lamar Jackson (32nd, Ravens) I wrote about this class at the time in a two-part look on how and why it's so difficult to judge quarterbacks. The performances from this class have only reinforced how little we know about passers as they enter the league. Consider what has happened here. The quarterback with multiple MVP awards is Jackson, whom the Ravens traded up to acquire with the last pick of Round 1 amid a climate in which some former NFL executives believed he should have moved to wide receiver. The player who has shown a similarly lofty ceiling is Allen, who had middling college numbers and looked overmatched early in his pro career before making spectacular, virtually unprecedented strides with the Bills.  The other three quarterbacks in this class had much more traditional résumés, and they're the ones who haven't lived up to expectations. Darnold did little with the Jets, and Rosen flamed out after one season with the Cardinals. Mayfield is somewhere in between the two groups, having led the 2020 Browns and 2023 Buccaneers to the postseason while also posting replacement-level play in 2019, 2021 and 2022. He just earned a three-year deal from the Buccaneers, but given that he was the No. 1 overall pick and didn't net the Browns much when they traded him to the Panthers, I lean toward putting him more in the low-end bucket than the solid starter group for now. Future Hall of Famers: 2
Franchise QBs: 0
Solid starters: 0
Low-end pro careers: 1
Disappointments: 2
2012: Four first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Andrew Luck (1st, Colts), Robert Griffin III (2nd, Washington), Ryan Tannehill (8th, Dolphins), Brandon Weeden (22nd, Browns) This was technically the first draft class under the league's new collective bargaining agreement, and these quarterbacks' early success led me to write about how quarterbacks on rookie deals had immediately become the most valuable players in football. Who would have thought the only one still in the league more than a decade later would be Tannehill, the college wide receiver who moved up the board late in the process that cycle? The Colts took Luck, a player regarded as a prototypical quarterback prospect, while Washington sent three first-round picks and a second-rounder to move up from No. 6 to No. 2 and grab Griffin, who was coming off a Heisman Trophy win. The early returns on both were spectacular, but injuries sadly sapped their potential. Griffin suffered a serious knee injury at the end of a promising rookie season and never returned to the form he showed while leading Washington to a playoff berth. Luck started his career with three straight playoff runs, but a penchant for taking big hits eventually wore him down. He missed half of 2015 and all of 2017, and after a Comeback Player of the Year campaign in 2018, a mysterious calf/ankle injury led him to retire before the 2019 season. I'd call him a franchise quarterback by virtue of earning a second significant deal. Tannehill signed a second contract with the Dolphins, but his best seasons came with Tennessee, where he found new life as a play-action maestro in a backfield with running back Derrick Henry. Weeden was a bizarre pick as he turned 29 during the middle of his rookie season and had two years of college success. Jared Goff played his age-29 season last year, if you want a comparison for how far behind Weeden was when he entered the NFL. Future Hall of Famers: 0
Franchise QBs: 1
Solid starters: 1
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 2
2011: Four first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Cam Newton (1st, Panthers), Jake Locker (8th, Titans), Blaine Gabbert (10th, Jaguars), Christian Ponder (12th, Vikings) While these quarterbacks were the first to sign contracts under the current rookie wage scale, they actually were drafted before the specifics of that process was firmed up by the new collective bargaining agreement, which wasn't signed until that summer. Newton was hit the hardest by the new rules; one year after Sam Bradford signed a six-year, $78 million pact as the first overall pick by the Rams, Newton's four-year rookie contract with the Panthers was worth $22 million. Newton more than made up for it after winning an MVP award in Carolina; he ended up taking home $133.5 million across his 11-year career. He started 144 games in the NFL, comfortably topping the combined efforts of Locker (23), Gabbert (49) and Ponder (36). Locker and Ponder were done in football after their rookie deals, while Gabbert held on for a long time as a backup, winning a pair of Super Bowl rings with the Bucs and Chiefs. Future Hall of Famers: 0
Franchise QBs: 1
Solid starters: 0
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 3
2004: Four first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Eli Manning (1st, Chargers), Philip Rivers (4th, Giants), Ben Roethlisberger (11th, Steelers), J.P. Losman (22nd, Bills) What, you don't have your Rivers Giants jersey hanging up in your closet? Manning's famous decision to force a trade out of San Diego worked out in the long run, as he won two Super Bowls with the Giants under Tom Coughlin. Roethlisberger also won two during an 18-season run in Pittsburgh; he lasted slightly longer with the Steelers than the next quarterback Pittsburgh drafted in the first round, Kenny Pickett. If we treat Manning as a Giants draftee and Rivers as a Chargers pick, this draft is basically the ideal for what teams are hoping to land when they take a quarterback in Round 1. Manning, Rivers and Roethlisberger combined to spend 50 seasons with the teams that landed them on draft day, with Losman as the lone disappointment in the bunch. There's a debate to be had about whether Manning or Rivers should end up in the Hall of Fame, but that's another column for another day. Future Hall of Famers: 3
Franchise QBs: 0
Solid starters: 0
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 1
2003: Four first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Carson Palmer (1st, Bengals), Byron Leftwich (7th, Jaguars), Kyle Boller (19th, Ravens), Rex Grossman (22nd, Bears) This was decidedly not the ideal. The lone standout from Round 1 would have been Palmer, who had the sort of star-crossed career nobody could have anticipated when he went No. 1. Palmer sat for a season, was an MVP candidate by Year 3, tore an ACL on his first pass attempt in the postseason and never hit those heights again in Cincinnati. He forced a trade to the Raiders in 2011, got stuck on a floundering team for two seasons, was salary dumped to the Cardinals and then played the best football of his career after turning 35. He's somewhere between solid starter and franchise quarterback, and more of a what-could-have-been story than either.  Things didn't otherwise work out with this class. Leftwich, who would eventually become Palmer's quarterbacks coach in Arizona, was the leading quarterback on a 12-win team before losing his job to David Garrard and bouncing around the league. Grossman struggled to stay healthy, and while he made the Super Bowl in his lone 16-game season with the Bears (2006), it was with an offense that ranked 18th in DVOA and 27th in passing DVOA. Boller was a desperation pick from general manager Ozzie Newsome, who gave up a future first-rounder to the Patriots to land the quarterback. The Patriots eventually used that selection on Vince Wilfork. Oops. Hall of Famers: 0
Franchise QBs: 0
Solid starters: 1
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 3
1999: Five first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Tim Couch (1st, Browns), Donovan McNabb (2nd, Eagles), Akili Smith (3rd, Bengals), Daunte Culpepper (11th, Vikings), Cade McNown (12th, Bears) Like the 2021 draft, this was a top 12 where bucking the quarterback trend paid off. In between Smith at No. 3 and Culpepper at No. 11, teams landed running backs Edgerrin James and Ricky Williams, wide receiver Torry Holt, cornerback Champ Bailey, wideout David Boston and cornerback Chris McAlister, all of whom made at least one All-Pro team. Three of those six became Hall of Famers. None of the quarterbacks in this class came particularly close. Three of the five signal-callers flamed out almost entirely and failed to play beyond their rookie deals, as Couch, Smith and McNown were massive disappointments. McNabb had a long career with the Eagles, but after finishing second in the MVP balloting in his sophomore campaign, his only other great season was in 2004. Culpepper was drafted to break the cycle of veteran quarterbacks in Minnesota, and he put together brilliant seasons in 2000 and 2004. He struggled with interceptions and had his career irreparably altered by a serious knee injury in 2005, though. Hall of Famers: 0
Franchise QBs: 1
Solid starters: 1
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 3
1987: Four first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: Vinny Testaverde (1st, Buccaneers), Kelly Stouffer (6th, Cardinals), Chris Miller (11th, Falcons), Jim Harbaugh (26th, Bears) Yes, it's that Jim Harbaugh, whose best seasons came after leaving the Bears and joining the Colts in 1994. He didn't enter the league until he was 24 and wasn't a regular starter until his age-27 season, so he was on a later path than most other passers. His breakout with the Colts wasn't until after he turned 30. Testaverde, Miller and Harbaugh all made it to the Pro Bowl, but Miller was the only one to do it for the team that drafted him, as he posted then-gaudy numbers in the run-and-shoot offense for the Falcons. Testaverde posted a 24-48 record in six seasons with the Buccaneers before beginning the itinerant phase of his career; he was a much better quarterback with the Ravens and Jets in his 30s. Stouffer never played for the Cardinals and was traded to Seattle, where he struggled across 16 starts. Hall of Famers: 0
Franchise QBs: 0
Solid starters: 2
Low-end pro careers: 1
Disappointments: 1
1983: Six first-round quarterbacksThe QBs: John Elway (1st, Colts), Todd Blackledge (7th, Chiefs), Jim Kelly (14th, Bills), Tony Eason (15th, Patriots), Ken O'Brien (24th, Jets), Dan Marino (27th, Dolphins) Our look back finishes with the greatest quarterback class in NFL history, an honor that seems unlikely to be threatened by any of the other overstuffed draft rooms mentioned above. This draft delivered three no-brainer Hall of Famers in Elway, Kelly and Marino, although Elway never played for the Colts, and Kelly spent three years in the USFL before moving to the NFL. It's remarkable that the Dolphins, perennial contenders at the time, were able to expand their window by drafting Marino as the sixth quarterback off the board at the end of Round 1. Even the lesser-known quarterbacks from this class had productive careers. O'Brien was the best quarterback the Jets had in the post-Joe Namath era, starting in New York for seven seasons. Eason had Pro Bowl-caliber seasons in 1984 and 1986 and played well in the postseason during a run to the Super Bowl in 1985, although the Patriots were routed by the Bears once they got to the title game. Blackledge was the only real disappointment of the group, and that's mostly because there were two Hall of Fame passers chosen after he went off the board at No. 7. Hall of Famers: 3
Franchise QBs: 1
Solid starters: 1
Low-end pro careers: 0
Disappointments: 1 In these classes in which teams drafted four or more quarterbacks in Round 1, the chances of landing someone special were about as good as the chances of taking a player who would set the franchise back. Seventeen of the 45 quarterbacks drafted (37.8%) turned into a Hall of Famer or a franchise-caliber passer. Twenty of the 45 (44.4%) were disappointments who never became their team's regular starter and failed to earn significant time elsewhere in the league. The other eight fell somewhere in the middle. While we have to do some projection for recent years, 22 of the 45 -- about half -- were good enough to land a deal to serve as their team's starter after their rookie deals. Expand that out to all drafts from 1980 to 2022, and we'll actually find that the drafts with multiple first-round picks were more likely to produce a superstar with each individual pick than the drafts in which only one or two quarterbacks went off the board in Round 1. On the whole over that time frame, 27.5% of quarterback selections in the first round produced a Hall of Famer such as Patrick Mahomes, or a longtime franchise signal-caller like Drew Bledsoe. In total, 28.4% were in the middle as solid starters who never threatened the elite ranks or players who bounced around on the border between starter and backup. The remaining 44% were players who didn't have significant NFL careers. Those numbers are about in line with what seems right. The chances of finding a starter with a first-round quarterback are better than whiffing on a bust, but the chances of striking out are better than the chances of hitting a home run and locking down the quarterback position for the next decade. What should the Bears and other teams expect when they take a quarterback in Round 1?Being an NFL fan who pays close attention to the draft requires you to keep two entirely different realities in mind. One is the universe we're all collectively in right now, a few weeks before the draft, in which everybody is excited. The players at the top of the draft are can't-miss generational prospects. Every player is going to be a hit. Every team is going to fill its needs. April is the most optimistic month of the NFL calendar. And yet, I just showed you the data. It's not going to be much different at other positions than it is at quarterback. Nearly half of the quarterbacks who get drafted in Round 1 turn out to be bitter disappointments. For all the advancements we've made in analytics, access to film, historical knowledge and context, that hasn't changed. The 2021 quarterback class might turn out to be the most disappointing in league history, and it's not going to stop the teams at the top of the 2024 draft from taking as many as four more in the top five picks. The reality that about half the players will turn out to be busts shouldn't discourage us from caring about the draft or make you write off the idea of draft picks as wastes of time. After all, veteran free agents can also be disappointing, and the value gained by drafting a player on a rookie deal and having him succeed outweighs the downside of failing, even if Round 1 prospects turn into viable starters only 50% to 60% of the time. Bears fans understandably have spent the past three months comparing Caleb Williams (USC) to Burrow and Peyton Manning as past first overall picks who transformed their franchises, and for their sake, let's hope Williams becomes that player. In the big picture, though, what should fans realistically expect when their team drafts a quarterback in the first round? What should qualify as a satisfying, successful pick? So much of this depends on where teams are drafting, and so I'll split this section into groups by range. Again, I'll be injecting my opinion and some projection for the more recently drafted passers, and I'll be weighing this toward performance from these players early in their careers as opposed to what they might have done later for another team. Going back through 1980, let me try to contextualize what fans should be expecting when their team takes a Round 1 passer. I'll include that expectation as the "average" return below. I'll also include the best and worst quarterbacks taken in each range, as well as the 80th percentile and the 20th percentile options, which serve as reasonable targets for upside and floor without getting into once-in-a-generation outcomes:
When teams take a QB first overall, they get ...Best: Peyton Manning
80th percentile: Joe Burrow
Average: Jared Goff
20th percentile: David Carr
Worst: Jamarcus Russell Would Bears fans be satisfied if Williams had Goff's career through eight seasons? My guess is probably not, but maybe they should be, because he's probably the closest comparison for what an average first overall QB pick performs like in the NFL. The guys right around him, by my estimation, are Trevor Lawrence and Michael Vick. Goff probably doesn't have the sort of ceiling Bears fans are hoping for from Williams, but it also seems hard to argue that the Bears wouldn't be thrilled with Goff's level of success. He has made three Pro Bowls, won five playoff games, went to the Super Bowl with the Rams and helped rebuild the Lions into legitimate contenders, all before turning 30. Is Williams a better quarterback prospect than Goff was in 2016? Is Williams better than the majority of the other No. 1 picks when they were coming out of school? It's tough to say. We talk ourselves into that story more often than we should, if only because it's easier to get excited about what we haven't seen than appropriately contextualize what we have seen. If Williams struggles or even plays the way that Lawrence has in Jacksonville, he'll quickly lose that pedigree as a generational quarterback prospect and we'll put it on the next guy to come up instead. As it stands, Williams projects to be better than the typical top quarterback pick, but not so much so that Chicago fans should set their average expectation to be something like Burrow.
When teams take a QB in the top three, they get ...Best: Peyton Manning
80th percentile: Eli Manning
Average: Jim Everett
20th percentile: Joey Harrington
Worst: Ryan Leaf Let's expand the group and include every quarterback taken with the first, second or third overall picks, because we expect to see three passers chosen in that range later this month. There's a handful of quarterbacks taken at Nos. 2 or 3 who outperformed or are outperforming many of the first overall picks, with Matt Ryan, Steve McNair and C.J. Stroud as examples, but many of the players added to the mix here lean more on the disappointing side. You can see how the expectations are diminished as a result. Goff is a three-time Pro Bowler with a significant playoff résumé. Everett, a fellow former Rams quarterback, made it to the Pro Bowl once and took Los Angeles to the conference championship once, where it was blown out by the 49ers in 1990. He was a 10-year starter in the NFL, but only six of those years produced an above-average passer rating after adjusting for era. If Everett is a little too far into the past for your preferences, a more modern example right around him in average ranking would be Carson Wentz. Most of Wentz's value came in one season, when he was among the favorites to win MVP in 2017 before tearing an ACL in December. Wentz didn't play the rest of the way, but he did enough to get the Eagles in position to win the top seed in the NFC, and Nick Foles carried them the rest of the way to a title. Wentz had two more solid seasons as a starter in Philadelphia and an underrated year in Indianapolis, but it ended poorly in both stops and then again in Washington. Is that short peak better than that of Vinny Testaverde, who played forever while mostly posting below-average numbers? If a team is drafting a quarterback in the top three, it likely would prefer what Wentz did, even given how his tenures ended.
When teams take a QB in the top 10, they get ...Best: Patrick Mahomes
80th percentile: Drew Bledsoe
Average: Kerry Collins
20th percentile: Jake Locker
Worst: Art Schlichter Given how good Mahomes has been over the first seven years of his career, I'm willing to project out the rest of his career as being better than any other top-10 quarterback going back through 1980. Yes, that means putting him ahead of John Elway, Peyton Manning and Steve Young. It's also not really the point here; we're trying to figure out what the average expectation for a draft pick looks like, not who's No. 1 or No. 2. Expanding the group to include the entirety of the top 10, Collins shows up as the average passer, albeit with a unique career. He made the Pro Bowl in his second season with the Panthers as the quarterback on a 12-4 team, but two years later, he wanted out of the organization and was released. Collins briefly joined the Saints before heading to New York, where he led the Giants to a surprise Super Bowl run in 2000. He then had a long run as a starter with the Giants and Raiders before another Pro Bowl year at age 36 with the Titans in 2008. Collins was never great, but he had a few good seasons mixed in with average quarterback play. Other options in this range would include one-year wonders like Griffin and Daniel Jones, whose big year didn't reach the same heights as that of Wentz in the prior group, as well as the likes of Trent Dilfer and Jim McMahon, who won Super Bowls as the caretaker on defense-first teams.
When teams take a QB in Round 1, they get ...Best: Patrick Mahomes
80th percentile: Donovan McNabb
Average: Jason Campbell
20th percentile: EJ Manuel
Worst: Art Schlichter Let's finish up by looking at all the first-round picks over that time frame and see what fans should expect as an average return. On the high end, we have Mahomes. On the low, there's Schlichter, who threw 11 interceptions on 202 career passes, averaged 5.0 yards per attempt and sat out a season after being suspended for gambling. You can see how hard it is to land a truly elite quarterback with a later first-round pick when you consider that the 80th percentile option is McNabb, who was closer to good than great for most of his career in Philadelphia. The other players around him were Goff, Herbert and Vick. The average quarterback from the first round looks something like Campbell, who was taken 25th by Washington in 2005. He went 20-32 as a starter and had years when he put together elements of impressive play, including a league-best 1.2% interception rate in 2008, but he was never able to combine all of that into a breakout season. He was close to a league-average quarterback for five years and then had a couple of years as a backup and rotational quarterback in the Midwest before retiring after the 2014 season. In the big picture, what we think of as the typical first-round quarterback is a lot more impressive than what teams actually project to land, especially after adjusting for where they're being selected. As we approach the 2024 draft and what might be an unprecedented run of quarterbacks from Nos. 1 to 4, history tells us it would be a pleasant surprise if two of them turned into franchise-caliber passers. We're more likely to see two players who wash out of the league than two future Hall of Famers. And yet, at the same time, knowing history shouldn't stop teams from drafting quarterbacks. Taking a quarterback in Round 1 is more valuable now than it has ever been, arguably, in the history of the game. If the Bears, Commanders, Patriots or any of the other teams linked to signal-callers have a quarterback they love in the first round, they should do what they need to do to land them. Just have a healthy expectation for what might happen next.
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