We're gonna go right out there to the Kowa Common Spirit Health Hotline and bring
on our buddy Ryan Michael, who is as a new title now he's a
contributing writer and analyst for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. No Inside the
number is with Ryan Michael. Say, we gotta line it for everything.
Look at this, Ryan, you are now BCT official. I like that
liner. How are you guys tonight? Doing pretty good? Man? We've
been talking all day. We've been, We've been, We've been arguing back
and forth. Although I think Nick and I are actually of the same opinion,
and that is that the idea that pushing all in on a quarterback.
It sounds great in a in a vacuum, in a spreadsheet environment, Yeah,
that's what you do. You can't win without the quarterback, right,
But in reality, you can't win without good players. And trading away good
players for lottery tickets is not what I would consider common sense. But we
gave you a mission. You were out there all week churning the data,
burning the data, going through it all. What does the numbers actually tell
us on this? Well, I would start by saying that you're not wrong.
You can win without greatness at the quarterback position. You're very unlikely to
win without having a good team in totality. So what I did is I
took a dive into all of the first round and second round draft selections since
twenty ten, and I gave them my own personal subjective grade. I like
color coding things, so I went green for quarterbacks who just played well,
not necessarily slammed on qull of famers, but quarterbacks who played well within their
situation. I went yellow for quarterbacks who were okay, maybe they had a
season that was good, but overall, you know, somewhat average, and
red is just for bust, plain and simple. I'm happy to stand by
any of those selections. You know, everything is subjective. So for me,
I had RG three green, maybe you put them in yellow. I
had Colin Kaepernick and yellow. Maybe you put him in green. But overall
we're going to be looking at pretty similar percentages. So I broke it into
four different categories. The first are number one overall draft selections, and by
my measures, seventy seven point eight percent of those have been green. Eighty
eight point nine percent have been green too yellow, So those are pretty good
odds that you're going to get somebody you're not completely disappointed with. BLUs rate
eleven point one percent when you take it down to picks number two through number
ten. So for everyone talking about the three quarterbacks and the big four out
of Caleb Williams, these are the percentages I think to look at. You're
looking at a thirty one point three percent green, you're looking at a sixty
two and a half percent green to yellow, and you're looking at a thirty
seven point five percent bus rate. So that's takenificately less success, significantly less
success, and you're going to see a lot of yellow mixed in there.
So you know, do you want to draft on Mitchell Trubiski? Do you
want a draft of Marcus Mariota? Guys who had maybe a season or two
where they played Okay, I don't think that's what the Denver Broncos are looking
for at all. And if you take it outside of the top ten,
you're going to see a steep decline in performance. Where green is twenty one
point four percent, yellow is just up twenty eight point six percent, So
you're looking at about a one in four chance that you're going to get anything
that you're satisfied with. If you're drafting outside of the top ten plus rate
of seventy one point four percent, and if you expanded out to second round
quarterbacks, you're going to see green is eight point three percent, Green to
yellow forty one point seven percent. Because there were a few yellow grade quarterbacks
who are drafted in the second round. That would be Colin Kaepernick, Derreck
Carr, Andydalton plus rate fifty eight point three percent. So in totality,
the Bears can feel very comfortable at the number one overall selection. The other
three in the top four is anything but a sure bet, and if you're
drafting outside of the top ten, you better be prepared for disappointment, all
right, Ran, When we look at this quarterback position, obviously, every
single year the conversation is about quarterbacks and the guys taken in the first round.
So with this list of quarterbacks, I'm gonna give you tell me.
Are we looking at these particular quarterbacks as being anomalies When you look at maybe
a Russell Wilson, a Tom Brady, and a Dak Prescott and even Rot
Purdy, And of those quarterbacks, three of those quarterbacks have been to Super
Bowls. Only two of those quarterbacks have actually won Super Bowls. So are
we looking at this group who have been either mister irrelevant or drafted in third
rounds and below as just being anomalies when we look at playing a quarterback position.
As much as I appreciate the feel good stories, I don't put nearly
as much stock into those outliers as most people might. So if you look
at the notable exceptions meeting guys outside of the second round, third through seven,
so even undrafted in Kurt Warner's case, what you're going to find as
the common denominator is that they all played an incredible favorable situations. So Tom
Brady right the goat one ninety nine overall in two thousand. She's also a
guy who had seventeen top ten defenses in twenty one years. He had Bill
Belichick at head coach and then he downgraded to a two time head coach of
the year. In vers arians, he had Gronkowski, Welker, Moss,
Clots, Edelman, Evans Godwin, a strong offensive line up front. So
Andy played in the worst division in football, so there were a lot of
other components that contributed to his success. In the case of Russell Wilson,
he came into a situation that had Pete Carroll at head coach, Marshawn Lynch
in the backfield, and the legion of Broumont defense Dak Prescott stars all over
both sides of the football, and same with Brock Purdy, and he has
Kyle Shanahan at head coach. So if you're looking at guys who are drafted
outside of the first two rounds, and in most cases really even outside of
the top ten, think to yourself, ask yourself, how many of those
quarterbacks who have found success have done so on average or below average robsters.
It's a virtually invisible risk. Well, right, And that's the thing is
I'm looking over I'm actually scrolling a list of Super Bowl winners right now,
and I'm like, every one of these teams was stacked rosters. There isn't
a there isn't an example here of a team that even made not not necessarily
one, even made the Super Bowl without a stacked roster around them. And
and you know, some of these teams had middling quarterbacks. I mean,
you know, everybody likes to talk about Trent Till for winning a Super Bowl.
For me, making the Super Bowls good enough, I mean, you
want to win it. Making it is is just such a hard enough task.
Uh. And you look at the guys that have that have made the
super Bowl. I mean, Jake Deloane made a super Bowl. You know
Rex Grossman, uh made a super Bowl. We can go back and look
at some of these, you know, some of these guys that made super
Bowls, but the teams around them were absolutely stacked. And so that's that's
the thing I don't understand at the end of the day. Is it smart
roster building to trade away a sure thing, a top five guy in your
position, even if that quote unquote doesn't impact the win total, to get
a lottery ticket on on a quarterback in this particular case, in this particular
draft for the Broncos, it's either going to be the third and very much
most likely fourth crack at a quarterback. I personally don't think so there really
isn't a historical precedent to say that the odds are in your favor. So
even if hypothetically and you and I are both in agreement, realistically this is
probably unlikely to happen. But even if Denver could trade up to get one
of the top four, say JJ McCarthy is their guy if he is going
to be entering a situation where the defense is incredibly weak. Right, we
ranked twenty seventh in points per game surrendered and we lost Simmons. The offense
last year was nineteenth in points scored, and we cut a starting quarterback who
produced touchdowns at a rate greater than Patrick Mahomes. So even if JJ McCarthy
is as good as advertised, which is anything but a sure thing, right,
about a one third percent chance that he'll be really good, A two
third percents he'll at least be pretty good, a one to third percent chance
bust rate. If you look at the quarterbacks outside of number one who have
found success, almost all of them stepped into favorable situations. Think Jalen Hurts
in Philadelphia. I think Lamar Jackson in Baltimore. So even if Denver could
pull that off, there's no reason to believe that JJ McCarthy would be likely
to find success in that scenario. So when you look at some of these
quarterbacks and you have that conversation of sure thing, and I'm giving you air
quotes here, what are some of the characteristics that would make a quarterback in
your opinion, a surefire thing. There's really no such thing as a surefire
thing. I mean, you want to look at quarterbacks who have great traits
as far as preparation, So football IQ in preparation would be the top two
off the field measures that I would be looking for. Pass accuracy would be
the number one attribute I would look for in terms of physical skills. So
I'm not concerned with a quarterback needing to have Josh Allen talent, few Stafford
talent as far as throwing the football a huge bonus if you can get it,
but it's not necessarily a prerequisent. You want to have adequate armstrength.
Peyton Manning had that coming out of Tennessee. Trevor Lawrence had that coming out
of Clemson. But there's very few scenarios where you could look at a quarterback
prospect on paper and say that they're a surefire thing. John Elway, Peyton
Manning, Andrew luck and Trevor Lawrence are really the top four where you could
feel confident in that regard, and the first three were very very successful,
two of them Hall of famers. Andrew Luck I wrote an article for the
Pro Football Hall shame Achee months ago in my opinion, I feel that he
actually overachieved relatives to the situation that he stepped into. But the situation wasn't
anything like what Colt fans were hoping for. So there's really no running away
from the reality that you need to build a strong team around the quarterback when
you put this thing together. Because there's a couple of green yellows. You
know, I disagree with it. You have to get Ryan Tannehill. You'd
argie Threw is a green and tan as a yellow. I probably flopped those,
but I mean, you know it is what it is. Were what
did you put into this to determine success? Sure, So for me it's
a matter of all twenty two coaches, film study, analytics, statistics.
It's really my subjective judgment at the end of the day of onfield play relative
to context of playing situation. So using RG three as an example, he
had one great season and he was not the same after injury. But during
that one great season he led the league in yards for attempt. He was
started in the NFL in Tasse rating. He was named ap NFL Offensive Rookie
of the Year over Andrew Luck and Russell Wilson, who had great rookie seasons
in their own regards. So whether or not he would have been able to
sustain anything close to that level of play over the long run, we'll never
know. But given the strength of how good he was during the only time
he was healthy, that's why I put RG three in green. So when
we look at some of these quarterbacks coming out in it's going to be an
ongoing debate and discussion until the Broncos are actually on the clock and we see
what they do at twelve. But just for conversation purposes, let's just say
the Broncos select bon Nicks. What do you think that his outlooking projection would
be as a member of the Denver Broncos under Sean Payton. I'll give you
the pessimistic perspective, so a channel Ben in that regard, and then I'll
try to change you and give you the optimism history sense. You're looking at
roughly a seventy two percent bus rate if we take him at twelve, and
I'm not sold that I would take him at twelve. I'm on board with
trading down as long as if he is your guy, you could get him
at a later spot where someone doesn't sweep up and take him from underneath you.
So historically speaking, it's not a probable situation, but if you want
it to be optimistic, I would say this in favor of Bonex. His
sixty one starts are an all time NCAA record, so we're talking unprecedented experience
as a starting quarterback. He played college football so long that he faced both
Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert during his first year of college football, and Joe
Burrow will turn twenty eight years old before the end of the regular season,
so he's had a lot of experience. Last year, he set the NCAA
single season completion percentage record at seventy seven point five percent. So we know
that Drew Brees set the NFL single season completion percentage record four times in two
thousand and nine, twenty eleven, twenty seventeen, and then he broke his
own record in twenty eighteen. So the strength of what I see from Bonnicks
on tape is past accuracy and information processing are his two greatest strengths, and
that's something that you want to look for in a system similar to what Sean
Payton runs. He has good course skills. There are no individual traits that
you would say pop off the charts. But if you're looking for a guy
who on paper is coachable, bo Nix would be the guy. Yeah,
it's interesting. He has been around a really long time. As a matter
of fact, he shared a quarterback room with Jared Stinham, who's already here
on the roster here in Denver, back when they were both back when they
were both at Auburn. You go back quite aways. I think I'm trying
to remember his recruiting class was twenty eighteen, I believe it. I'm trying
to remember what the other quarterbacks were that were in that class. I'm blanket
at the moment, but it was. You know, it's just it has
been a long time, and you know that's the thing. I think,
if you've got that much experience, I think that can be a good thing.
I thought that would benefited Mahomes when he was coming in the league,
even though he sat for a while, because he'd had that many dropbacks to
kind of, you know, understand what defense were thrown at him. My
I guess diving a little deeper on this, is there a success rate with
getting more reps at college versus a bus rate with getting least, is there
any correlation in that data. Off the top of my head, I wouldn't
be able to tell you, because you have quarterbacks like Cam Newton who played
significantly little college football, then he stepped right into the league and was a
playmaker as a rookie in twenty eleven. So you're going to find examples on
both ends of the spectrum of quarterbacks who did well without a lot of college
football experience and quarterbacks who did well having a lot of college football experience.
So I think you need to look at each quarterback on a case by case
basis and evaluate them for who they are and all defer to what you've been
saying for the past few weeks. If Sean Payton believes that bo Nix is
his guy, you could take him at twelve. If you want to be
smart, you could trade back a little bit and get him there. But
I think, in my opinion, that would be a safer move versus mortgaging
your future for the possibility of getting a JJ McCarthy, because even if JJ
McCarthy is everything that we hope for him to be, it's not probable that
he would find success If he's walking into another awful situation. Worst case scenario,
the Broncos don't have one of these top quarterbacks and they decided to like
I told ben im Nat Shimlana's and do something entirely different. Can this team
be successful without a top ten quarterback? And they yes? Are they likely
to? No? But we could even look back to last season as an
example. Look at what Pittsburgh did. Tenny Pickett was amongst the worst performing
quarterbacks in the NFL. He finished the year twenty seventh and passer rating twenty
seventh and adjusted net yards per attempt, but the defense ranked sixteen point surrendered.
So that's a great way to remedy limitations at the quarterback position. If
we go back to our twenty fifteen Super Bowl winning squad, Peyton Manning was
a shell of his former self. We know about the lack of touchdown passes,
We know about the interceptions, and that's familiar territory. What people might
not be as familiar with is that Peyton Manning led the league in fourth quarter
comeback his final year if you include the postseason, he had a perfect one
hundred and fifty eight point three passer rating on fourth down attempts. He ranked
eighth in the NFL and TAC percentage, So there were a lot of situational
splits where Manning real did deliver in the clutch. So, with the support
of a great defense, if you have a quarterback who's able to come through
in big moments, sure it's possible that you could win. It's not likely,
but it's possible. Ryan. One of the things I has fascinated me
before we let you go here is is worse to first turnarounds? Could the
Denver Broncos do that? I mean, right now they're projection five and a
half wins next year. Is there any data out there you can maybe acquire
for us that kind of gives us what common denominators there are and teams going
from worse to first in their division, you know, a year over year.
Absolutely, damn, let's do it all right? That sounds like to
play. Ryan Michael, writer analysts the Pro Football Hall of Fame, always
love having him on the show.