PDA

View Full Version : Chiefs Where have all the QBs gone?


Direckshun
03-29-2015, 05:10 AM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

BigRichard
03-29-2015, 06:16 AM
I ain't reading all that shit.

seamonster
03-29-2015, 06:21 AM
Good article. Really awful looking visualizations though. If you're going to go all-out on stats at least use a decent looking charting tool. The NFL chews up 1st round draft picks or reverts to burn out veterans.

RealSNR
03-29-2015, 06:38 AM
This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkogb9fd7V1qi7deco1_r1_500.gif

notorious
03-29-2015, 06:54 AM
He could have written the 2004-Present part of the article with one phrase:


Defensive Holding Rule Change.

Bufkin
03-29-2015, 07:30 AM
Guys named Ty<<<<<<<<<<<<

Sweet Daddy Hate
03-29-2015, 08:21 AM
Blech.

GloucesterChief
03-29-2015, 08:30 AM
More defensive penalties and an emphasis on calling fouls committed against receivers tilt the risk/reward equation towards passing rather than rushing like it was before.

Hoover
03-29-2015, 08:37 AM
This is why nobody should ever bitch about the Alex Smith trade or contract, things could be much worse.

Dunerdr
03-29-2015, 08:38 AM
This didn't tell me where to find a Peyton manning. Wtf

ChiefRocka
03-29-2015, 08:41 AM
do do do...do do do...do do do...do do do

Hog's Gone Fishin
03-29-2015, 09:04 AM
Johnny Manziel will be the best Qb in the league 3 years from now.

Deberg_1990
03-29-2015, 09:08 AM
At any given moment in time, there are only about 10 really good, "top tier" QBs in the NFL. The rest are solid to bad.

For most of the 1990s, there were not very many "franchise QBs" drafted at all. Lots of busts.

If just anyone could play QB in the NFL, these guys wouldnt get paid so well. High demand, low commodity.


and yes, the stats are inflated in todays game because pass attempts are way up over past decades.

Sweet Daddy Hate
03-29-2015, 12:13 PM
Johnny Manziel will be the best Qb in the league 3 years from now.

Probably.

DaneMcCloud
03-29-2015, 12:17 PM
The best arm talent is in the MLB and with CTE and other head trauma being brought to light, that trend will only continue.

TLO
03-29-2015, 12:17 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.


Yes.

Baby Lee
03-29-2015, 12:40 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

Yes.

Ditto!!

ChiefsCountry
03-29-2015, 12:47 PM
Ownership groups and fans are impatience bastards that want instant gratification. Thus rookies get rushed and game mangers stay on too long. Combine that with the increase in passing which running ball should be used more especially in the development of a young quarterback.

ViperVisor
03-29-2015, 01:07 PM
No real advancements in rushing a QB.

Pressure is what causes a lot of QB trouble. It's combated by doing short passes and shotgun.

The NFL could force OTs to stop cheating back from the LOS. That would help pass rushers get to the QB.

Saccopoo
03-29-2015, 01:12 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.
Ditto!!

I agree!

BigCatDaddy
03-29-2015, 01:16 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

TL;DR

Eleazar
03-29-2015, 01:29 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

Everyone else is quoting the whole massive thing graphics and all so I wanted in on the fun.

ChiefRocka
03-29-2015, 01:35 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.
:evil:

WeathermanKumke
03-29-2015, 01:46 PM
Nice article. Wouldn't be surprised to see the resurgabce of the Running back in the NFL since the League is so focused passing wise. A good offensive line is going to be critical in this teams overall progression and development of key players as well as good coaching.

The reason people loved Trent green so much was even with how good Priest and our O-Line was, he constantly took shots down the field. I believe in 2001, he was one of the NFL's leaders in INTS thrown (25 I think?). Alex smith, Grbac, and Cassel have all been short yardage QBs. Constant check downs within 5-8 yards of the line after running it 3 times. You need to be able to throw it deep and get bigger chunks of yardage during drives than constantly running a 2 back Set with PA Cross as your go to pass play. I would love it if Alex threw down field more. But again, he's just got to hit windows in the Cover 4/6

DaneMcCloud
03-29-2015, 02:25 PM
The reason people loved Trent green so much was even with how good Priest and our O-Line was, he constantly took shots down the field. I believe in 2001, he was one of the NFL's leaders in INTS thrown (25 I think?). Alex smith, Grbac, and Cassel have all been short yardage QBs. Constant check downs within 5-8 yards of the line after running it 3 times. You need to be able to throw it deep and get bigger chunks of yardage during drives than constantly running a 2 back Set with PA Cross as your go to pass play. I would love it if Alex threw down field more. But again, he's just got to hit windows in the Cover 4/6

You're basically describing the difference between the WCO (Grbac, Gannon, Smith) versus the Coryell/Zampese offense (Trent Green, Kurt Warner, Troy Aikman, Dan Fouts, etc.).

Reid wanted an accurate WCO QB and he has that in Smith. What he hasn't had is a consistent offensive line and YAC playmakers, which the WCO needs to succeed.

ghak99
03-29-2015, 02:33 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

:hmmm:

Baby Lee
03-29-2015, 02:46 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

I love this thread.

ROFL ROFL

Gadzooks
03-29-2015, 02:50 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

Me too LMAO

bevischief
03-29-2015, 02:54 PM
pooptaco.

Baby Lee
03-29-2015, 02:59 PM
pooptaco.

How are we supposed to know to what you are referring if you don't quote it?

You could be pooptacoing literally anything.

Jim Lahey
03-29-2015, 03:43 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

http://i.imgur.com/HVNBWD5.gif

Daru, please translate!

DaNewGuy
03-29-2015, 03:48 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.
Alex Smiff <3

Baby Lee
03-29-2015, 03:51 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

Would be great if Direkshun had an even more ignominious entry in the Hall of Classics than shyguyms.

FlaChief58
03-29-2015, 04:14 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

What does it mean?

tecumseh
03-29-2015, 04:23 PM
THIS is the grand irony of the NFL.

Saccopoo
03-29-2015, 04:40 PM
THIS is the grand irony of the NFL.

Are you referring to this article?:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

Easy 6
03-29-2015, 04:52 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

I have no point to make, just wanted in on the action.

Baby Lee
03-29-2015, 05:01 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

I have no point to make, just wanted in on the action.

Good point Easy, but did you ever consider?

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2408934-where-have-all-the-quarterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/337/0e6b07f4b284b4b778840651b8386e29_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/262/e9e8397370195d5001c2b6b4234e5214_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:

http://img.bleacherreport.net/img/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/252/3f0f70a9798b4a4f5158b2e90d887c07_crop_exact.jpg?w=650&h=433&q=85

In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/401/8ae7939e2f6034290f12f03cbd7f2ef1_original.jpg?1427319124

NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/408/4fae29b572517c8962db720552b4391a_original.jpg?1427319646

Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/002/018/755/1c7bcbbdcc83d18d0c1b5691c3f0ee39_original.jpg?1427339503

The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

Deberg_1990
03-29-2015, 05:09 PM
This thread needs more Bonnie Tyler

"Where are all the good QBs, and where are all the Gods??"


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVtaVrUAPK0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

tecumseh
03-29-2015, 05:16 PM
I agree not all quarterbacks are real trigger pullers. Some seem as though they are pulling something else. Still cakin' tho.

milkman
03-29-2015, 05:17 PM
Why are you dumbfucks quoting this fucking graph again and again?

eDave
03-29-2015, 05:18 PM
LOL. Took me awhile. Well done.

I will not be returning to this thread.

eDave
03-29-2015, 05:18 PM
Why are you dumb****s quoting this ****ing graph again and again?

/thats the joke

DaneMcCloud
03-29-2015, 06:14 PM
Why are you dumbfucks quoting this fucking graph again and again?

Because they're dumbfucks.

Thanks for ruining this thread, buttholes.

O.city
03-29-2015, 06:15 PM
Ruined a good thread dildos

Bugeater
03-29-2015, 06:45 PM
I think I broke my scroll wheel.

Valiant
03-29-2015, 06:49 PM
Good article. Really awful looking visualizations though. If you're going to go all-out on stats at least use a decent looking charting tool. The NFL chews up 1st round draft picks or reverts to burn out veterans.

This is the number 1 reason. Teams give retreads huge contracts. They have to stick longer with them to prove they were right. Dozen teams in the nfl that keep doing it. Chiefs especially. Murray could do everything smith can for 1/50th the price. But he will never be given the chance. Same with cassel and givibg him no competition. Then Cleveland, thankfully more inept than us.

unless injuries happen in the qb spot most teams will not find out what they have.

there needs to be a development league where the players are free agents.

Mr. Laz
03-29-2015, 07:00 PM
/thats the joke

that's not a joke, it's just being annoying

some people just find annoying to be funny

Saccopoo
03-29-2015, 08:32 PM
Why are you dumb****s quoting this ****ing graph again and again?

I just pissed myself a little.

Saccopoo
03-29-2015, 08:33 PM
Ruined a good thread dildos

I just pissed myself more.

Saccopoo
03-29-2015, 08:33 PM
Because they're dumb****s.

Thanks for ruining this thread, buttholes.

Tears down the cheeks...

ThaVirus
03-29-2015, 08:35 PM
You fucking sluts

Easy 6
03-30-2015, 05:45 AM
:LOL: everyones all mad about it.

Reerun_KC
03-30-2015, 08:54 AM
I agree not all quarterbacks are real trigger pullers. Some seem as though they are pulling something else. Still cakin' tho.

What does pulling triggers have to do with throwing footballs?

MahiMike
03-30-2015, 09:34 AM
Ownership groups and fans are impatience bastards that want instant gratification. Thus rookies get rushed and game mangers stay on too long. Combine that with the increase in passing which running ball should be used more especially in the development of a young quarterback.

This. There's probably another dozen QB's sitting on the benches that we will never see because no team wants to take the time to give them a chance.

I call it the Wallstreet effect. Every company only looks to next quarter's numbers because the CEO doesn't want to get fired. No team/company is willing to try other things due to the inevitable stock dip during the transition.

Pasta Little Brioni
03-30-2015, 12:23 PM
What does pulling triggers have to do with throwing footballs?

Well when you show one the ropes you gotta kick the tires first and then you can pull the trigger.

Reerun_KC
03-30-2015, 05:24 PM
Well when you show one the ropes you gotta kick the tires first and then you can pull the trigger.

Sounds like you are gaining traction on the situation

Sweet Daddy Hate
03-30-2015, 05:27 PM
I don't know where they are, but I know where they aren't, and where they haven't been.

Pasta Little Brioni
03-30-2015, 09:33 PM
I don't know where they are, but I know where they aren't, and where they haven't been.

Sung to the tune of "where have all the cowboys gone" by sweet daddy hate....

Where is my choco penii man?
Where is my Lil Chiefy son?
Where is my happy ending?
Where have all the QBs gone?
Doodoodoo Doodoodoo Doodoodoo Doodoodoo

InChiefsHeaven
03-31-2015, 05:16 AM
This thread needs more Bonnie Tyler

"Where are all the good QBs, and where are all the Gods??"


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVtaVrUAPK0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Wow. That is truly dreadful.

Sweet Daddy Hate
03-31-2015, 07:30 AM
Sung to the tune of "where have all the cowboys gone" by sweet daddy hate....

Where is my choco penii man?
Where is my Lil Chiefy son?
Where is my happy ending?
Where have all the QBs gone?
Doodoodoo Doodoodoo Doodoodoo Doodoodoo

LMAO

That was nice.

Rausch
03-31-2015, 07:51 AM
I don't know where they are, but I know where they aren't, and where they haven't been.

True 'dat.

I also think there are a lot of talented QB's that need a year or two to sit but with how important the position has become everyone gets rushed out there year one now.

Most aren't ready for it. Even in a game manager role most rookie QB's are lucky to grab 6 wins.

The best situation to be in is to have your guy and never stop looking for the next one...

Eleazar
03-31-2015, 07:55 AM
Who is this "lil chiefy" person people keep making jokes about?

Rausch
03-31-2015, 07:57 AM
Who is this "lil chiefy" person people keep making jokes about?

It should be in the lexicon by now...

loochy
03-31-2015, 08:37 AM
This is why nobody should ever bitch about the Alex Smith trade or contract, things could be much worse.


That's a terrible reason to not bitch about something.

Sweet Daddy Hate
03-31-2015, 05:17 PM
True 'dat.

I also think there are a lot of talented QB's that need a year or two to sit but with how important the position has become everyone gets rushed out there year one now.

Most aren't ready for it. Even in a game manager role most rookie QB's are lucky to grab 6 wins.

The best situation to be in is to have your guy and never stop looking for the next one...

This is why the duration of the Smith extension is the time to pick high.

If you have a starter who isn't top 5 and back up that will never be more than a back up, you shouldn't be gold mining in the late rounds or dumpster diving.

Even if Chase were promoted to starter in lieu of an Alex injury or retirement, that roster spot held by Murray/Bray should be consolidated in to one bonafide Mariota, Winston, Luck( insert your projected 1st round favorite here), or even a developmental Geno.

These NFL jackasses say "we're going to take BPA". Well, if that BPA is Bridgewater and you took Dee Ford just to hedge a potential contract dispute, AND your QB stable "just needs more weapons", then you deserve every one and done, every Indianapolis ass-whipping, every wasted RB career, every player jumping ship to a contender, and every "Lil Chiefy" insult that comes your way.

I dare anyone, ANYONE to show me, in a motherfucking NFL rule book, where it states that you MUST start a 1st round QB selection, and I'll paypal your ass $20.00 right this goddamned instant.



Who is this "lil chiefy" person people keep making jokes about?

"Lil' Chiefy" is the natural evolution of the King Carl True Fan.

Lil' Chiefy is a mentally ill Chiefs fan who refuses to acknowledge the PROVEN track record of Chiefs building philosophy failure at the QB position.

Lil' Chiefy continuously believes, through several decades of Chiefs football now, that game managing QB "X" just needs "more weapons" and "a better line", or any other litany of excuses that absolve said QB "X".

And yet, when the cycle is repeated, Lil' Chiefy just blows it off like a summons from court then wonders why, on play off day, the good Sheriff Luck is banging his fucking door down and dragging his ass to jail again.(?)

Baby Lee
03-31-2015, 05:42 PM
This is why the duration of the Smith extension is the time to pick high.

https://38.media.tumblr.com/bea0bbe9cfa6e8c91e2490c5c46d1904/tumblr_mwlai7zBXT1s8485qo2_500.gif

Sweet Daddy Hate
03-31-2015, 05:53 PM
lol.

16. Kansas City Chiefs
Last QB Drafted (Rounds 1-4): Brodie Croyle (third round, 2006)
Quarterbacks Drafted Since 2005 (Total): Four
From Steve DeBerg, Joe Montana, Elvis Grbac and Trent Green through Matt Cassel and Alex Smith, the Chiefs have been importing their quarterbacks from other franchises for over a generation. Things may change now that Clark Hunt has taken over the family business, but they also may not: Hunt likes (http://www.kansascity.com/sports/nfl/kansas-city-chiefs/article16496696.html) Smith as his quarterback and Andy Reid as his coach, so don't expect the Chiefs to reach for their signal-caller of the future.
Then again, Reid once drafted Kevin Kolb (http://bleacherreport.com/kevin-kolb) in the second round despite his devotion to Donovan McNabb, so he'll pounce on the quarterback market if he loves a prospect. The Chiefs' depth chart is teeming with the likes of Chase Daniel, Terrelle Pryor (http://bleacherreport.com/terrelle-pryor), Tyler Bray and Aaron Murray (http://bleacherreport.com/aaron-murray). Graft Bray's arm and Pryor's legs onto Murray's body, insert Daniel's brain, and you've got a hell of a backup. The Chiefs may opt for the middle rounds of the draft instead of crimes against humanity.
Chance of Drafting a Quarterback (Rounds 1-4): 21 percent

Pasta Little Brioni
03-31-2015, 06:14 PM
The shitloaf is getting colder by the day

Rausch
03-31-2015, 06:16 PM
If you have a starter who isn't top 5 and back up that will never be more than a back up, you shouldn't be gold mining in the late rounds or dumpster diving.

Even if Chase were promoted to starter in lieu of an Alex injury or retirement, that roster spot held by Murray/Bray should be consolidated in to one bonafide Mariota, Winston, Luck( insert your projected 1st round favorite here), or even a developmental Geno.

Couldn't agree more.

These NFL jackasses say "we're going to take BPA". Well, if that BPA is Bridgewater and you took Dee Ford just to hedge a potential contract dispute, AND your QB stable "just needs more weapons", then you deserve every one and done, every Indianapolis ass-whipping, every wasted RB career, every player jumping ship to a contender, and every "Lil Chiefy" insult that comes your way.

This as well.

And this is what "was" business in KC.

I have some, small, but alive hope. That said we've run this team like it had already won 3 or 4 SB's and not like we're fighting to remove the stink of DECADES of playoff failure...

Rausch
03-31-2015, 06:16 PM
The shitloaf is getting colder by the day

Nom nom...

Sweet Daddy Hate
03-31-2015, 06:26 PM
The shitloaf is getting colder by the day

Tell ma' to reheat in microwave. Sooooo tasty!

Couldn't agree more.



This as well.

And this is what "was" business in KC.

I have some, small, but alive hope. That said we've run this team like it had already won 3 or 4 SB's and not like we're fighting to remove the stink of DECADES of playoff failure...

Now this I like, and this is how it should be.

MahiMike
03-31-2015, 07:11 PM
This will all be over once we draft Bryce Petty.

milkman
04-01-2015, 08:06 AM
"Lil' Chiefy" is the natural evolution of the King Carl True Fan.

"Lil Chiefy" is the most stupid fucking name anyone has ever come up with.

But then a stupid fucker came up with it.

Sweet Daddy Hate
04-01-2015, 12:20 PM
"Lil Chiefy" is the most stupid fucking name anyone has ever come up with.

But then a stupid fucker came up with it.

Why you gotta' hate on SNR like that?

Pasta Little Brioni
04-01-2015, 12:23 PM
Where have all the QBs goooooone?? Yippee aye yippee a yippee aye yippee a

RealSNR
04-01-2015, 12:34 PM
Why you gotta' hate on SNR like that?

I don't think that was me.

"Larry Lunchpail" was me, but not "Lil' Chiefy"

Hootie
04-01-2015, 01:04 PM
no one uses that dumbass methheaded nickname other than the methhead himself

you'd think it was part of the lexicon but, no, it isn't

the dipshit method just parades it around, himself, every thread and tries to make it stick

...god he's awful

Hootie
04-01-2015, 01:09 PM
as for the thread ...

In the last 5 years, which QB's are we jealous of?

Andrew Luck.
Russell Wilson.

Cam Newton?

So out of the 100+ QB's selected in the draft ... there have been THREE guys taken that are DEFINITELY better than Alex Smith.

THREE.

THREE.

Two of them were #1 overall picks.

One of them was 5'10" so he went overlooked despite "being a top 5 pick if he was 6'3"

...

So it is absolutely hysterical to me when guys like SNR and BossChief say, "well we should just draft 1 every year, give them a tryout, and then move on to the next one next year!"

Cuz yeah, that's super realistic!

Oh, but according to our Clay wannabe OTWP, "passing on Bridgewater is a fail to BIBLICAL proportions!" That's right, BIBLICAL.

LMAO

Sure, Bridgewater VERY WELL MIGHT end up being a gem. He showed some potential.

BUT OF COURSE THIS BOARD HAS ALREADY ANOINTED DEREK CARR AS A STUD BECAUSE HE 'FLASHED' FOR THE RAIDERS LAST YEAR ...

even though he was one of the most putrid starting QB's in the NFL

My money? My money says neither Carr nor Bridgewater have a career as good as Alex Smith.

But this website will keep on thinking AARON RODGERS' grow on trees.

Hell, Russell Wilson isn't even elite according to this website. I can't imagine what it would take for our rookie QB to be considered elite. He'd have to come in and immediately be Tom Brady otherwise BossMayock would throw him away and draft another one next year.

Yes!

Pasta Little Brioni
04-01-2015, 04:27 PM
Carr looked awful for the most part yet CP slurped him dry

Sweet Daddy Hate
04-01-2015, 05:20 PM
I don't think that was me.

"Larry Lunchpail" was me, but not "Lil' Chiefy"

I distinctly recall a long analogy about leftover, warmed-up meatloaf in the conversation, but maybe it was someone else.

no one uses that dumbass methheaded nickname other than the methhead himself

you'd think it was part of the lexicon but, no, it isn't

the dipshit method just parades it around, himself, every thread and tries to make it stick

...god he's awful

Did you miss your AA meeting today, boo?

Sweet Daddy Hate
04-01-2015, 05:22 PM
Yeah, Carr flashed on the shittiest team in the NFL while Smith fizzles surrounded by fucking Pro Bowlers.

I'm sorry, did someone say Hootie has good football takes? Ever?

And why?

Pasta Little Brioni
04-01-2015, 10:26 PM
Pretty sure you coined Lil Chiefy Sweets

Hootie
04-01-2015, 11:26 PM
Yeah, Carr flashed on the shittiest team in the NFL while Smith fizzles surrounded by fucking Pro Bowlers.

I'm sorry, did someone say Hootie has good football takes? Ever?

And why?
Derek Carr was about the worst QB in the NFL last year. Maybe the worst. Whoever is seeing this "potential" is hilarious

Sweet Daddy Hate
04-02-2015, 04:45 AM
Pretty sure you coined Lil Chiefy Sweets


Perhaps I should coin "Lil' Shithead":


Derek Carr was about the worst QB in the NFL last year. Maybe the worst. Whoever is seeing this "potential" is hilarious

Chiefnj2
04-02-2015, 06:51 AM
Derek Carr was about the worst QB in the NFL last year. Maybe the worst. Whoever is seeing this "potential" is hilarious

Yet if you compare Carr's first 16 games to Smith's first 16 games, Carr's numbers are much better.

Sweet Daddy Hate
04-02-2015, 07:22 AM
Yet if you compare Carr's first 16 games to Smith's first 16 games, Carr's numbers are much better.

THEN JUST GO BE A RAIDER FAN!/Hootard.

Rausch
04-02-2015, 07:27 AM
Derek Carr was about the worst QB in the NFL last year. Maybe the worst.

Not even close...

Sweet Daddy Hate
04-02-2015, 07:29 AM
Not even close...

Hootard has severe Carr butt-hurt. Probably because Carr is already better than Romo.

Baby Lee
04-02-2015, 09:24 AM
Perhaps I should coin "Lil' Shithead":

Yeah, that's the ticket.

The more tantrums you pull and the more derogatory name-calling you engage in, the smarter you look and the more everyone respects you.

Why, you're just a hop, skip and jump from being crowned 'All-time King Genius' around here.

Hootie
04-02-2015, 10:03 AM
you can't compare a 2015 NFL QB as a rookie to a 2005 NFL QB

it's fucking hilariously stupid

Hootie
04-02-2015, 10:04 AM
the game has changed so much to favor the QB position and offense guys like Cam Newton and Andrew Luck and Andy Dalton and Russell Wilson etc... can walk in and shatter previous rookie records

Peyton Manning was the exception to the rule and he still put up a 26:28 ratio back in that era

RunKC
04-02-2015, 10:05 AM
Carr and Bridgewater had flashes last year, but coining either as "biblical fuckups" on our behalf after one season is hilariously stupid

Hootie
04-02-2015, 10:10 AM
Carr flashed exactly when?

Carr is going to be terrible. His organization certainly doesn't help.

Bridgewater? Maybe. I could see him being Matt Ryan good, tops, or totally flopping. Right now, I'll lean towards flop.

Sweet Daddy Hate
04-02-2015, 11:33 AM
Yeah, that's the ticket.

The more tantrums you pull and the more derogatory name-calling you engage in, the smarter you look and the more everyone respects you.

Why, you're just a hop, skip and jump from being crowned 'All-time King Genius' around here.

And it's about goddamned time.

ViperVisor
04-02-2015, 01:36 PM
Derek Carr had the 10th lowest YPA with 300 passes 1990 to present. 649 QB seasons of 300+ passes.

And 10 of his TDs were 4th Quarter. 5 of those were pure garbage.
such as
Trail 10-41
Trail 6-31
Trail 7-30
Trail 6-23
Trail 17-30 *under 2 min*

Hootie
04-02-2015, 01:49 PM
Derek Carr had the 10th lowest YPA with 300 passes 1990 to present. 649 QB seasons of 300+ passes.

And 10 of his TDs were 4th Quarter. 5 of those were pure garbage.
such as
Trail 10-41
Trail 6-31
Trail 7-30
Trail 6-23
Trail 17-30 *under 2 min*

Yep. Thanks for doing that research for me. He was abysmal. His "stats" always came in garbage time.

It's HILARIOUS to me people were pining for him during last season.

Bridgewater? Sure. I can understand. He "flashed." I still don't think he turns out any better than Alex Smith but I could at least see it.

Carr? Ha. He was AWFUL. He flashed NOTHING.

Pasta Little Brioni
04-02-2015, 04:27 PM
Carr is a turd. Teddy we will have to wait and see on.

Jiu Jitsu Jon
04-02-2015, 04:31 PM
Yep. Thanks for doing that research for me. He was abysmal. His "stats" always came in garbage time.

It's HILARIOUS to me people were pining for him during last season.

Bridgewater? Sure. I can understand. He "flashed." I still don't think he turns out any better than Alex Smith but I could at least see it.

Carr? Ha. He was AWFUL. He flashed NOTHING.

His best receiver was James Jones. Remember Jones? The guy who caught the pass in Oakland to make the score 24-20? Did you watch that game?

OnTheWarpath15
04-02-2015, 04:43 PM
His best receiver was James Jones. Remember Jones? The guy who caught the pass in Oakland to make the score 24-20? Did you watch that game?

Those excuses only apply to 10 year vets that have Arrowheads on their helmets.

Chiefnj2
04-02-2015, 05:05 PM
the game has changed so much to favor the QB position and offense

All the more reason why it is inexcusable for a 10 year vet not to be able to find a WR all year and have so many few big plays and TD's.

OnTheWarpath15
04-02-2015, 05:12 PM
All the more reason why it is inexcusable for a 10 year vet not to be able to find a WR all year and have so many few big plays and TD's.

http://www.mematic.com/_/gifs/applause/applause-gif-3.gif

BossChief
04-02-2015, 06:39 PM
Who knows, maybe they made a bunch of moves in free agency so they could package picks to move up for a QB to develop.

According to draft value charts, it would cost us our second to move up to 11 if one of them gets there.

Hootie
04-03-2015, 08:50 AM
ok guys

feel free to bump this thread in 3 years when Bridgewater and ESPECIALLY Carr are thought of as good QB's

Carr has NO CHANCE

he's putrid