What is a successful quarterback draft?

How often do the first through the sixth quarterback drafted become a success? Let’s look at history.

When a quarterback is drafted, particularly in the top half of the first round, the team that is drafting them wants them to become a long-term starter. This happens much less frequently than most teams would like. It is not uncommon for the first second and/or third quarterback drafted to be “failures”.

See the table below in my tweet.

Most NFL fans can quickly look at the table above and call “success” or “failure” and just about every pick shown above. There are some debatable points though – How would you define Baker Mayfield at this point in his career? What about DeShaun Watson? Derek Carr? Cam Newton? Geno Smith? The black and white quickly becomes grey.

So I chose to look at a very defined metric, games started. Since a full regular season used to be 16 games, I chose to use 32 GS as the baseline definition of “success”. Obviously this doesn’t look at any higher level performance metrics, hence baseline.

Above is the “now-look” career GS for the first through sixth QB drafted over the past 30 drafts. Some drafts have had more than six QBs taken, but it’s exceedingly rare for the seventh of later QB to be a “success” by this defintion.

Bo Nix was the sixth QB taken and in the 2024, for the first time in history, there were six QBs taken in the first twelve picks. For comparison, there were only four QBs drafted in 1996. Before you get too down, remember that there have been some really good QBs taken as the sixth QB in the draft: Dan Marino, Tom Brady, Colin Kaepernick, Matt Hasselbeck and Russell Wilson. There have also been some absolute duds: Chuck Clements, Rohan Davey, Bronco Draftee Tom Brandstater, Connon Cook and Kyle Lauletta – all of whom started zero regular games during their brief NFL careers.

The table below shows the average career GS (as of now) for the first six QBs taken in every draft back to 1995.

By averages, the 2004 draft blows them all away with Eli Manning, Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger all starting 234 or more NFL games during their careers. Their average is 143. The only class that comes close is the 1983 class with an average of 137. The class of 83 is dragged down by Todd Blackledge (29 GS) and Tony Eason (51 GS). While the class of 2004 is dragged down by JP Losman (33 GS) and Luke McCown (10 GS).

I only carried this to 2019 since the QBs drafted in 2020 and beyond have not really had enough seasons in the NFL to make this average meaningful. That being said the top six from 20 have started an average of 39 games in their careers so far in four seasons. A decade from now we may be talking about the 2020 QB class in the same breath as the 2004 and the 1983 classes.

The 2020 class has Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert, Jordan Love and Jalen Hurts – all of whom are slotted to be their team’s primary starting QB for 2024. At this point no other draft (not even 2024) can say that. That even bests the 2004 class because JP Losman (33 GS) didn’t really have a successful career despite topping the 32 GS plateau (barely).

For fun I went all the way back to 1980. See below. The yellow highlighted guys are QBs who were NOT drafted by Denver but played for the Broncos. The orange are QBs drafted by the Broncos.

Looking specifically at the sixth QB taken there have been many more failures 1980-2019 (29) than there have been successes (10). Other successes not previously mentioned are (don’t laugh) Trevor Siemian, Trent Edwards, Kyle Orton, Gus Frerotte and Doug Flutie. In fact there have been more sixth QBs who had zero career GS (12) than there have been sixth QBs who started 32 or more games (10). So the odds of success for Bo Nix are not great, but if you look at the successes as the 6th QB, they all how two things in common.

1. They all were undervalued in the draft (duh!)
2. They all landed on teams that were great fits for them

You could argue that Marino would have flourished on any NFL team, but he had a head coach in Don Shula who was a master at maximizing the talents of his best players. Hasselbeck was drafted to sit behind Brett Favre in Green Bay then was traded away to Seattle where he flourished. Tom Brady was able to sit behind Drew Bledsoe and then was aided by a great defense and a great running game (also a superb OL). Colin Kaepernick found himself on a team with a head coach that wanted a dual-threat QB, had a good OL and a great defense. Russell Wilson had the same minus the solid OL. Most of the OLs he played behind in Seattle were poor.

Bo Nix has a great head coach for developing young QBs. Sean Payton got the most out of Teddy Bridgewater, Jameis Winston and Taysom Hill. He is also partly responsible for the development of Tony Romo. Nix is playing behind a veteran OL that is mostly intact (save for the center position) relative to the 2023 Bronco OL which was better than most realize. The only thing missing is a strong defense. The 2023 Bronco defense was average on its best days and terrible on its worst.

Some of the changes on the DL and in the ILB group could lead to improved ability to stop the run, but it won’t matter if the pass rush is as tepid as last season.