Orton's Arm

I disagree. The game does not punish men's bodies more, today, than it had 30 years ago. But in both nominal and real terms, players' salaries have skyrocketed during that time. Does it seem reasonable to you that Mike Williams got paid as much as he did? How about Nate Clements' big contract from San Francisco? To me, these are bad things in and of themselves, and only serve to drive up the NFL's costs of doing business. The higher those costs become, the more the NFL will do to try to offset them. That means more advertising, higher ticket prices, higher concession prices, and whatever else they can think of to extract yet more money from the fans. Not only that, but over the past several years the NFL's shared revenues have remained stagnant, while the salary cap has continued to increase. That puts pressure on small-market teams such as the Bills, because they find it increasingly painful to spend up to the cap. In the late '90s the Bills could (and did) spend over the cap by amortizing bonuses. There was once a time when this team was in cap trouble, as difficult as that may be to believe! I strongly doubt today's Bills team will come anywhere close to cap trouble, because the salary cap represents a much bigger chunk of shared revenues than it had in the past. A number of players are grossly overpaid. That's bad for the players themselves. Look at the arrogance of the (ridiculously overpaid) NBA players! I don't think many of us want to see NFL players develop those same attitudes. Overpaying players is bad for the fans, because it encourages the league to squeeze more money out of us. It's bad for the sport of football as a whole, by making it more financially difficult for teams like the Bills to compete, today, than it had been as recently as the late '90s. The players got way too much with the last deal. They need to give all of that back! I don't mind seeing them get more in other areas: healthcare for retired players, a higher minimum salary, etc. But the overall salary cap needs to be significantly reduced, and there should be a rookie wage scale!

Someone pointed out that it's been 40 years or so since the Bills took a QB with their first draft pick. (Lee Evans was our first draft pick in 2004; with Losman being our second. Likewise, Jim Kelly was the second of our two first round picks in 1983.) Considering that QB is the most important position on the field, one could safely say the Bills have devoted too few resources to it on draft day. Instead, those resources have been squandered on RBs and DBs. All this being said, I see no reason whatsoever to take Newton third overall. As someone pointed out, he's a one year wonder. Add to that the questions about his ability to process information quickly and progress through his reads, and you're looking at a QB who has many of the symptoms of a bust. The Bills need a difference maker at third overall, not some QB whose three contributions to the team will likely be the use of the third overall pick, the consumption of lots of Ralph's (comparatively) limited budget, and discouraging the team from drafting some other, better QB either later in the 2011 draft or in 2012.

Wire is a backup LB and a special teams player for Atlanta. A useful part of their team, no doubt, but not exactly a guy capable of giving us above-average LB play for an extended period. That said, I agree that there were those who allowed their displeasure at Wire the SS to influence their opinion of Wire the LB. I don't recall very many posters making negative comments about Winfield. I think the general consensus with him was that he was a shutdown corner and a very good tackler, even if his hands were made of stone.

I've seen him listed at 280. That's a decent weight for a 3-4 RDE, though he'd probably benefit by adding ten pounds or so.

You're only supposed to use the model on first round quarterbacks. This is because NFL talent evaluators will generally perceive a lot of flaws the model might not capture. The idea behind the model is that if a QB has the talent to make it into the first round in the first place, and if he meets the model's three criteria, he's much more likely to be a success than a first round QB who didn't meet the model's criteria. There's a reason for this. Consider the minimum games started stat, for example. If an NFL team looked at 30 games of game tape and decided a QB belongs in the first round, that's very different from them looking at 30 games of tape and deciding he should be drafted in the fifth round! The model is designed to work hand-in-hand with NFL talent evaluations. That being said, only two of the quarterbacks listed above were originally drafted in the first round: Drew Bledsoe and J.P. Losman. The model correctly predicted Losman would be a bust, because he failed to meet its 60% passing completion criterion. I also think he failed to acquire the required number of starts, but I haven't confirmed that. Drew Bledsoe had 28 college starts. However, he failed to complete 60% of his college passes, so the model would have predicted that Drew Bledsoe would be a bust. That prediction would have looked very foolish during his first several years in New England or his first eight games in Buffalo. But it would have looked extremely prescient in light of the way he languished during his later New England years and in the 2.5 years in Buffalo he wasn't on that eight game fire streak.

Fair enough.

I agree there's a correlation between running the ball and victory. Any time you have a correlation between A and B, one of the following must be true. 1) A causes B 2) B causes A 3) C causes A and B 4) Coincidence If a team has the lead, it will tend to run the ball more to kill the clock. The opposite is true of teams that are behind. So does running the ball cause teams to win games? Or does having the lead cause teams to both run the ball and win games? I realize it's possible that the answer to the above is "a little of both." But that answer cannot be determined by a simple correlation between rushing yards over the course of the game and winning. The New York Times performed a regression analysis which showed the following: A one SD improvement in passing offense was four times better than a one SD improvement in rushing offense. Of the above-described measurement of passing offense, 25% was based on your effectiveness at avoiding INTs, and the remaining 75% was based on their non-turnover related measurements of passing efficiency. The mirror image was true of defenses. Passing defense was four times more important than rushing defense; with 25% of the total importance of passing defense stemming from your ability to intercept passes. The above conclusions were made on a passing/rushing yards per play basis, not by determining the number of yards a team rushed or passed for over the course of the game. All this being said, I agree that the turnovers, alone, wouldn't have killed Pittsburgh if they hadn't let those turnovers turn into Green Bay points. Green Bay was able to turn turnovers into points off turnovers because of the efficiency of its passing attack and its ability to avoid turnovers of its own.

I agree that if the Bills improve enough in other areas that Fitz is good enough to take us to the playoffs. But that's not really the point. We need to be thinking about what we have to build to have a Super Bowl winner, and Fitz as our starting QB doesn't fit into that picture. If you know you're going to need a QB upgrade before you can win the Super Bowl, you need to take advantage of any opportunity to get that franchise QB that comes your way. It would be foolish to pass up a franchise QB opportunity just because other problems remain unsolved. A team misguided enough to do that is very, very unlikely to have another chance to add a franchise QB for many years to come. As for Tampa Bay: any time you draft a Hall of Fame QB like Steve Young, it's impossible to reasonably fault that decision. Once you have that franchise QB, you then have to give him a good (or at least respectable) OL. This, Tampa Bay did not have and made no effort to provide. Instead they squandered the first overall pick on Bo Jackson; whose rights they forfeited after he refused to sign. (The following year, the Raiders drafted him in the seventh round, and managed to sign him by not requiring him to miss any baseball.) Other than Bo Jackson, nearly all the Bucs' early picks were used on defensive players. None were used on offensive linemen even though Young was getting killed. The Bucs' organization was harmed by very bad drafting, lack of sensitivity/social awareness when it came to the Bo Jackson situation, bad coaching, and by its wanton and inexcusable neglect of the OL. Drafting Steve Young and then following it up with all that is like getting a pretty girl's phone number (a good thing) and then following it up by leaving 100 messages on her machine. The idea isn't to stop drafting Hall of Fame quarterbacks or stop getting pretty girls' phone numbers. But you can't afford to be a complete idiot after you do one or the other of those things. That point seems to have escaped the attention of the Bucs' front office.

I agree that Marino was a bit better than Kelly, and considerably better than Fitz. That said, the people who created the model in question stated that it's only supposed to apply to first round QBs, which clearly excludes Fitz. One of the (many) reasons why Fitz was taken in the seventh round was because the defenses he faced while playing for Harvard weren't exactly the best college defenses in the nation! Even against those lesser defenses he was still only able to complete 59.9% of his passes; which puts him right at the borderline of the model's 60% completion percentage threshold.

In the Super Bowl, Aaron Rodgers averaged 7.8 yards per pass attempt, threw for over 300 yards, and had 3 TDs to go with his 0 INTs. He did all this while going against what was arguably the best defense in the league. He did it despite his #1 WR and #1 TE going down with injuries. If Rodgers doesn't do all that, the stop the Packers' defense made at the end of the game wouldn't have mattered. The Steelers' 25 points--none of which came off of turnovers--would have been enough to win. Likewise, if the Packers' defense hadn't made that stop at the end, Rodgers' performance wouldn't have been enough for a win. Like others have pointed out, it's a team sport. It's been said that to win football games you have to run and stop the run. The Packers won the Super Bowl even though they didn't do either. But what they did do was to win the turnover battle by not turning the ball over on offense, and by playing opportunistically on defense. Plus their defense got some key stops, especially the one you mentioned at the end. But above all, they received a dominant performance from Aaron Rodgers. Replace Rodgers with Dilfer, and the Steelers roll right over the Packers.

You've made some solid points. And don't think I'm necessarily sold on the idea of Green over a front-7 defensive player. My focus right now is more on how the question should be analyzed rather than which solution we should ultimately arrive at. Let's say that step 1 is to put a grade on each player based on the kind of career you think he'll have. Then step 2 is to put a value on each position based on the importance that position has. Clearly QB gets the highest value, LT and RDE the next-highest, and so on. Then to get a rough gauge of what a player can offer, you multiply his player grade by the value of his position. If QB is worth 100 and Luck's grade is a 95 (out of 100), Luck's potential value to your team is 9500. If WR is worth 65 and Green's grade is a 95, his potential value to the team is 6175. That probably understates the gap between Luck and Green--by a lot!--but you get the general idea. Another factor to take into account is to ask, "who do we have to send to the bench to get our draft pick on the field?" Whenever you take a RB early, it usually means that you're going to have to bench your current starting RB to get the new guy on the field. If your RB is good, that means the "bench cost" associated with your draft pick RB is high. You'll notice I'm using the phrase "bench cost" rather than "need." There's a reason for that. Let's say you have two really good DEs--guys who can play on either side. You're thinking of adding another. Some might say that you don't need another DE. And they'd be right! But if you had three really good DEs--guys who could play either side--odds are you could get each DE an appropriate number of snaps over the course of the game. You wouldn't be wasting talent. So your bench cost for adding another DE is low, because you're not wasting existing talent by sending it to the bench. The bench cost for Spiller was Fred Jackson. That's a really high cost, and is one of the disadvantages of taking a RB early. But the bench cost of Green would be much lower. The bench cost of a front-7 player would likely be lower still. Whatever a player's bench cost is should be subtracted away from the value I described above. That will give you at least a rough idea as to what he's likely to offer your franchise. But there's another factor to consider as well--what you called "bust factor." If you feel there's a 50% chance a defensive front-7 player will bust, you have to multiply his value by 50%. Odds are every player will end up having his value multiplied by some percentage less than 100. Even a very low risk pick (as Peyton Manning had been) is still associated with some degree of uncertainty. To sum things up, the formula to use is: [ (player grade x position importance) - bench cost] x (1 - probability of being a bust). Finally--just because the above model isn't complicated enough!--I want to add in one last factor. What I'd call "chance of greatness." If two players had similar ratings with the above system, my bias would be in favor of whichever player had the higher chance of greatness. Players like those are the difference makers I talked about earlier.

I completely agree with everything you, NoSaint, and JohnC have written about the importance of a franchise QB. Each of you has made very solid contributions to this thread! As for Fitzpatrick: he does a lot of things well. He plays hurt. He's excellent at reading defenses before the snap. He senses pressure and gets rid of the ball in a hurry. He moves around in the pocket. He's a good leader. What he does not do is throw the ball accurately, at least not consistently. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any QB who suffered major accuracy issues this late into his career who went on to be a consistently accurate passer. So I don't think we're likely to see much improvement from Fitz either--at least not in terms of his accuracy. As for whether we're likely to see substantial improvement from Fitz in other areas: I don't think we will. He does most other things so well that there just isn't room for substantial improvement. His lack of accuracy is the only thing holding him back, but it's holding him back a lot. And it's not going to go away.

I agree that you can use statistics to predict the odds, but seldom can use them to predict the odds with 100% certainty. That being said, a few examples where a model doesn't work do not invalidate the model--unless of course the model had been intended to predict success with 100% accuracy. For example, if 80% of the new hires with engineering degrees were able to handle the technical aspects of a position, as compared with only 20% of people who had no college degrees, a hiring manager should tend to hire people with engineering degrees. (Even though you could point to individual examples of engineers who'd failed and non-graduates who'd succeeded in the position.) It's worth noting that the Wonderlic is a flawed measure of intelligence. For example, there are general knowledge questions. These types of culturally loaded questions are something one would hope to avoid on a well-designed intelligence test. (Even if there is a correlation between knowledge of such questions and g.) There are also time dump questions--an important fact to note, because test-takers are not given enough time to complete all the questions. (Unless they are very, very fast.) I could imagine, say, Dan Marino walking into the Wonderlic test without having done much, if any, prior preparation for it. He answers several normal questions correctly, then comes to a time dump question. He burns a ton of his time there, he may or not get the right answer, and finds that when the time for the test is up he's left numerous questions unanswered. Something like that would produce an artificially lowered score that would significantly understate his true level of intelligence. (Which is why it's extremely poor test design to include time dump questions on tests where participants aren't given enough time to complete all the answers.) Despite its flaws, the Wonderlic is almost certainly strongly correlated with intelligence on a broad scale. That's why it's possible to incorporate Wonderlic scores into a model designed to work most of the time; even though you obviously couldn't use them if the model had to work 100% of the time.

I'd like to focus here on Christian Ponder. His one "fail" is the fact he didn't get to 27 starts. Edit: I just read Ramius's post. Ponder has over 30 starts, which means he makes the cutoff for number of starts. The minimum score required on the Wonderlic for this model is 26 out of 50. Ponder scored a 34; so you have to really like what he's done there. I'm also very impressed with what Ponder has done in college. In his first two-and-a-half years there, he completed his undergraduate degree in finance with a 3.73 GPA. Then, he figured that while he was there, he may as well get his MBA--which he proceeded to do. He's now working on another graduate degree--this one in sports management. He's done all this in only four years of college. And that's with devoting considerable time to college football. His 61.2 completion percentage is good. But it might have been even better had he not been playing hurt. He injured and re-injured his throwing elbow multiple times during his senior season, and that elbow's bursa sac had to be drained on three separate occasions. But neither that nor the other injuries he experienced during that season kept him off the field. All told, Ponder is a pass/pass/pass QB according to this model, so you have to take a much closer look at him.

Over the course of his career, Aaron Rodgers has averaged a stunning 7.9 yards per attempt; and this past season he averaged a commanding 8.3 yards per attempt. In contrast, Trent Edwards' career average is 6.5 yards per attempt, Ryan Fitzpatrick's career average is 6.0, and this past season Fitzpatrick averaged 6.8. There's clearly a very significant gap between the Bills and the Packers with respect to the QB position. Unfortunately, that's not the only position about which that could be said. As others have pointed out, the Packers have considerably more talent on both sides of the ball than do the Bills.

I'll grant that the Bills thought very highly of Whitner. But their decision to take him eighth overall was not due solely to the bad player evaluation that implies. They went into the draft with the mindset that they needed to come away with a SS and a DT with their first two picks. That right there gave them much less flexibility than a team with as many holes as the Bills should have had. The benefit of flexibility is the following. Let's say you're focused in on position A, and the best player there is a 70. But there's a guy at position B who's a 90. The flexible team will take player B; the team that's dialed into a few specific needs will take player A. Over the course of several years, having a bunch of 70s on your roster (who could have and should have been 90s) will create a talent gap between your team and the best teams in the league. You correctly pointed out another reason why Marv's drafting approach lacked flexibility: players were chosen to fit the Tampa 2 scheme. Vic Carucci noted that he personally didn't have Whitner rated as a first round talent, but a team that ran a Tampa 2 could have a significantly higher grade on him. Likewise, McCargo was also seen as a good fit for the Tampa 2. Marv and Jauron went into that draft looking for a SS and a DT. But not just any old SS or DT: they had to be a specific type of SS and DT to fit into the Tampa 2! Because they gave themselves so little room to adapt to the actual player talent available, they set themselves up for failure.

I agree with a lot of what you've written. The Bills' OL clearly needs improvement, as does its defensive front-7. If a given player is too small and weak to play his position effectively, I'd consider that position a hole. It's very difficult to get away with holes on your OL in particular, because the defense will exploit those holes to get to your QB or RB. Not only does this team have a lot of holes, but it's almost completely lacking in difference makers. I categorize difference makers into three different categories: 1. If a player can still be productive at a high level while using up two of the other team's players, he's a category 1 difference maker. Bruce Smith could still get sacks when being double-teamed. Jerry Rice could still be a very productive part of the passing game when being double-covered. Both players are category 1 difference makers. 2. If a player can, on his own, largely offset someone else's category 1 difference maker, he's a category 2 difference maker. Tony Boselli was able to negate the impact of Bruce Smith without help from his teammates. A guy like Revis can single-cover the other team's best WR and keep him under control throughout the game. Players like that are category 2 difference makers. 3. If a player exerts the same impact on a game as a category 1 or category 2 difference maker, but doesn't play a position which lends itself to those first two categories, he's a category 3 difference maker. Joe Montana falls into this category. The Bills' first round pick in this draft needs to be a difference maker. If it's a defensive front-7 player, it has to be a guy who can get to the quarterback even when being double-teamed. If it's a WR, it needs to be a guy who can be very productive despite consistent double coverage. Obviously the pick shouldn't be a DB, because he'll just go first contract and out. Nor should the Bills seriously consider a RB. But other than that, the Bills should be more focused on getting a difference-maker than on filling one specific position. If (for example) Bowers turns into the next Bruce Smith, and if Green becomes the next Larry Fitzgerald, I'd rather have Bowers. (Though I'd put a very high value on both players.) The problem with this is that Bowers only has one really good season under his belt, whereas Green has produced at a high level for three seasons. What should the Bills do if they decide that they're much more confident of Green becoming a difference-maker than they are about any of the available defensive front-7 players becoming difference makers? If you want to add a good, solid football player to your front-7, but who isn't good enough to be considered a difference maker, you can do that later in the draft. You don't need a first round pick! But I don't like the idea of trading down to increase the pace at which guys like that are added. Your opportunities to add difference-makers are very limited, as shown by the fact that with the possible exception of Kyle Williams, the Bills don't have anyone on either side of the ball I'd label a difference-maker. That's something that has to change if this team is going to get serious about winning some Super Bowls. Let's say the Bills are on a four year plan, with last year having been year 1 of that plan. If they use one first round pick on a difference maker for the next three years, then at the end they'll have three difference-makers. That's probably not enough. But if they use their picks in rounds 2 - 7 wisely, they'll have the chance to fill their existing holes with good, solid football players. Guys like Moats. If their OL and defensive front-7 picks are focused on the kinds of bigger, stronger players you tend to favor, then that will help gradually solve the problem you identified. What I'm getting at is that over the next three years, the lack of competent football players in the front-7 and on the OL will be a much easier problem to solve than the lack of elite difference makers. Where possible, first round picks should be used to try to solve the latter problem; with picks in later rounds used on the former.

You seem to be suggesting that the Bills draft for need. Drafting for need or perceived need will generally cause your team to choose mediocre players at need positions over difference-makers at positions of lesser need. To give an example of this, consider the 2006 draft. Marv and Jauron wanted to start fixing the defense right away, which for them meant taking a DT and a SS with their first two picks. Other positions were considered to be of lesser need. For example, the Bills had just signed Melvin Fowler at center, so center was considered a position of non-need. (And those two--and Jauron in particular--probably considered center to be far less important than DT or SS anyway.) The emphasis on that draft was on need, and on creating a quick improvement to one specific area of the team. (The area it was felt was most urgent to upgrade over the short-term.) That mental approach led the Bills to use the eighth overall pick on a SS who shouldn't have been taken until the second round, and another first round pick on a DT who shouldn't have been taken until after the seventh round. A team with as many holes as the Bills can afford to take a far more flexible and long-term approach to the draft. Rather than, "the run defense must be fixed now, in this draft, starting with our first round pick," why not do the following? First, imagine your team as it should be. A good OL, a franchise QB, a go-to WR, a good defense. Then when there's an opportunity to draft a player who fits into your "should be" vision for the team, you take it. If you have a choice between two or more such players, you take whichever one is more talented, likely to have the better career, and plays a position that's harder to fill in the draft. (For example, it's harder to find a franchise QB than a franchise player at any other position.) The above approach may not produce the kind of instant, one-year improvement in the Bills' run defense or overall record you hope to see. But if that kind of disciplined approach is maintained over the course of several years, and if it's combined with good player evaluation, it will ultimately result in a much better and far more complete football team than the one we have now.

I just watched a good video about the Steelers/Ravens playoff game. For the most part the video focused on the flaws of Baltimore's offensive play calling in the second half. But toward the end, they mentioned how the strength of the Steelers' receiving corps was pivotal to winning that game. They seemed to feel Baltimore's receiving corps was not nearly as good; a fact which harmed its offensive efforts in the second half. I personally feel good receivers can be a very important part of a good offensive unit. Think of how much the Cowboys' offense of the '90s would have been harmed had Michael Irvin been lost. Or what the Bills' Super Bowl era offenses would have lost if they hadn't had Andre Reed. Or what the Cardinals' Warner-era offense would have been like without Larry Fitzgerald. If you can force the other team into double coverage, you're taking away a lot of that defensive coordinator's freedom of action. Think of all the ways that extra defensive player could have been used if the defensive coordinator hadn't been forced into double coverage! With an elite WR, you're getting the benefit of his production and the benefit of a defender being used up in double coverage. That's why it's so nice to have an elite go-to guy. Of course, to maximize that benefit you need a good QB who can get him the ball, and a good OL which can give him the time he needs to get open. Toward that end, the Bills could justify taking Green in the first, Ponder in the second, and a RT in the third. Then their two fourth round picks could be used on LBs. I'm not wedded to the idea of the above draft, and I'd be perfectly willing to go in a different direction with the Bills first round pick if they had some other player more highly rated than Green. But if Green is the best player available, they shouldn't dismiss the idea of drafting him just because he's a WR.

My thoughts had been along the same lines as yours. Reed, Kelly, the offensive line--they all came together to make the offense function like a perfect machine. I miss those days.

The problem with Peterson is that the Bills have a long history of letting their best DBs go first-contract-and-out. I don't think they should consider going with a DB at third overall unless they make a rock-solid commitment to ending that first-contract-and-out nonsense once and for all!

I strongly disagree with the above post. It's true that Elway was originally drafted by the Baltimore Colts. But he was traded away without having played a down of football in the NFL in large part because he threatened to pursue a baseball career full-time rather than play for the Colts. What the Broncos did had a lot more in common with trading up for a draft pick than with trading for an established player who'd proven himself at the NFL level. That's even more true of the Eli Manning/Philip Rivers trade, which was made on draft day, shortly after the Giants had used the 4th overall pick on Rivers. None of those three players--Elway, Eli Manning, or Philip Rivers--had been signed by the teams which originally drafted them. To lump the acquisition of those three players into the same general category as the Bills trading for Drew Bledsoe would result in a highly erroneous understanding of the fundamentals of the situation. The latter was a real trade for an established NFL player, not a "let's trade our draft picks shortly after they've been used" trade. I agree that the Dilfer example represents a case where a team won a Super Bowl despite mediocre QB play. More generally, any time you build one of the three best defenses in NFL history, with players at or near the Pro Bowl level at literally every defensive position, plus a very good OL led by Hall of Fame-level LT Jon Ogden, plus a very good running game with Jamal Lewis, you can get by with mediocre QB play. As for Brad Johnson: while he wasn't a franchise QB, he was a solid starter. In the year the Bucs won the Super Bowl, Johnson played well enough to get selected to the Pro Bowl. Even though Tampa Bay had a very good defense, it's not like that defense had to compensate for mediocre QB play the way the Ravens of 2000 did. You mentioned Favre as an example of a franchise QB who'd been available in free agency. But there was a reason that guy was available: he looked old and past his prime with the Jets. He bounced back with the Vikings, at least for a while. But it's not like he was close to his old self; and his mistakes in the playoffs played a pivotal role in the Vikings' playoff loss. The problem with signing a franchise QB in the sunset years of his career is that if you're lucky, he'll give you a good year or two of solid play. (Though not nearly as solid as what he could have given in his prime.) Then there will likely be another year when he gives you lousy/washed-up play as your team's starter. Possibly dividing the locker room if you try to bench him. Once you finally get rid of him, you'll be right back where you started: looking for a QB once again. It's true that Drew Brees is a franchise QB who was acquired in free agency. But the circumstances which led to his availability were highly anomalous. First, the Chargers made the mistake of giving up on him too early; thus causing them to acquire Rivers (taken 4th overall). Secondly, there were injury concerns associated with him--injury concerns which led the Dolphins to (foolishly) choose Culpepper over him. Those concerns both reduced what other teams would be willing to trade away for him as well as the Chargers' own perceived value of him. Sure, it would be great if something like that happened again and the Bills were the beneficiary of it. But I don't think it's sound strategy to rely on something like that happening again. If you see the situation differently, then please identify your target QB. By that I mean a guy who a) either is or has the clear potential to be a franchise QB in the mold of Brees, b) whose team has either given up on him or is in the process of giving up on him, much like the Chargers did with Brees, and c) would be willing to sign with Buffalo as a free agent. If you can point to a guy like that, relying on a Drew Brees free agent strategy would be within the realm of credibility. You mentioned Tom Brady as an example of a late round QB who both proved to be a franchise QB and helped take his team to a Super Bowl win. But Tom Brady was drafted back in 2000. From 2001 to the present, no quarterback taken in rounds 4 - 7 of the draft has turned into a franchise QB. None. Taking a QB in round 4 or later and hoping he becomes the next Brady is an extremely low percentage play! If you're okay with taking a QB in round 2 or 3, you could point to Drew Brees (32nd overall) and Matt Schaub (3rd round) as examples of other non-first rounders who turned into franchise QBs. But those two players, plus Brady, are the only three franchise QBs found outside the first round in the last decade. That means that the average NFL franchise should expect to acquire a non-first round franchise QB about once every 106 years. As for whether a franchise QB is necessary to winning a Super Bowl, let's look at past Super Bowl winners 2000: Baltimore Ravens (Dilfer) 2001: Patriots (Brady) 2002: Bucs (Johnson) 2003: Patriots (Brady) 2004: Patriots (Brady) 2005: Steelers (Roethlisberger) 2006: Colts (Manning) 2007: Giants (E. Manning) 2008: Steelers (Roethlisberger) 2009: Saints (Brees) Of those ten Super Bowls, seven were won by teams with franchise QBs like Brady, Peyton Manning, Brees, or Ben Roethlisberger. Another was won by a team whose QB is on the cusp of becoming franchise: Eli Manning averaged 7.9 and 7.4 yards per attempt these last two seasons, which is definitely franchise QB territory. Another (the Bucs Super Bowl) was won by a QB who had a Pro Bowl year the season his team won. That leaves just one Super Bowl out of ten that was won by a team that received mediocre QB play. To compensate for Dilfer's mediocre play, the Ravens had to be insanely good on defense. Much better than any team has the right to be! If you don't have a franchise QB, it's very, very difficult to win the Super Bowl; and the odds will be heavily against you. Look at all the active franchise quarterbacks taken in the first round: Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, arguably Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, arguably Joe Flacco. Compare those six guys with the three active franchise QBs taken outside the first round (Brees, Brady, Schaub)! QB is the single most important position on the field. This desire to not use a first round pick on a QB (presumably so the pick could be used on some other position of lesser importance) is difficult for me to understand. Shouldn't you be most eager to use a first round pick on the most important position, second-most eager to use it on the second most-important position, and so on? If someone said, "Don't take a strong safety before the second round," it would make sense, because strong safety is typically not all that important. But don't take a quarterback before round 2? I just don't get that. If you wanted to argue that you should never reach for need at any position, and that you should only take a QB in the first if you have a first round grade on him, I'd agree with that. Wholeheartedly. But if a team needs a QB, and if it has an appropriately high grade on a QB when its first round pick comes up, the idea of preferring not to take a QB with that pick is, for me, unfathomable.

Good post! A few weeks or months ago, I did some research about the rate at which franchise QBs enter the league. One of the things I found (or think I found) was that 7.2 yards per attempt seems to be a sort of cutoff point. A quarterback with a significantly lower average per attempt than that does not deserve to be considered franchise even if he's a household name. A quarterback with an average well above that should be called franchise even if he's not a household name. Matt Schaub, with his 7.8 yards per attempt, clearly comes to mind as a guy whose numbers put him in the franchise QB category, whether he has a big name or no. To address an earlier poster's point about the offensive system in which Schaub plays: yards per attempt is a fair way to compare a QB who's only asked to throw 20 times a game against a QB who's asked to throw 40 passes per game. Cassel's career average is 6.7 yards per attempt, which makes him closer to Trent Edwards (6.5 yards per attempt) than to a franchise QB. Guys like Hasselbeck (6.9) and Garrard (7.0) have the numbers to be considered solid starters, but fall short of what you'd expect from a franchise QB. Kyle Orton's career average is 6.5 yards per attempt, which is Trent Edwards territory. But he had a good year in 2010 with 7.3 yards per attempt. Of QBs still in the league, the only franchise QBs found in rounds 2 - 7 were Drew Brees (7.3 yards per attempt), Matt Schaub (7.8 YPA) and Tom Brady (7.4 YPA). None of those players are particularly gifted physically. But they're all gifted mentally, and they're all good, accurate passers. There's typically a lot of pressure to play first round QBs their rookie years. Conversely, QBs picked after the first round are generally chosen by teams which feel less of a sense of urgency about the QB position. Back when the Patriots drafted Brady, their plan A at QB was Drew Bledsoe. When the Falcons took Schaub, their plan A at QB was Vick. And even when the Chargers took Brees, they felt that Doug Flutie could play well enough to get them by for a while. As a general rule, I still think it's significantly better to take a QB in the first round than later on in the draft. But it's good to take a flexible approach to the actual circumstances that pertain to the draft. If there are no QBs you like in the first round, and if a second round pick like Ponder seems to offer the same pocket passing ability, accuracy, and mental acuity that previous later round franchise QBs have had, there's nothing wrong with taking him!

Earlier when I was doing some research about franchise QBs, I was quite surprised to find out exactly how good Schaub's stats really are. Let me throw some numbers at you. Trent Edwards has averaged 6.5 yards per attempt for his career. Ryan Fitzpatrick's career average is 6.0, but this past season he averaged 6.8. Peyton Manning's career average is 7.6. Jay Cutler's career average is 7.2, and this past season he averaged 7.6. Donovan McNabb's average is 6.9. And Matt Schaub? . . . His career average is 7.8 yards per attempt--better even than Peyton Manning's--and his career QB rating is 91.5. His TD/INT ratio is a solid 1.6. I know he's not a household name. But those numbers are so good that I just didn't see how I could label Schaub as being less than a franchise QB based on my or others' preconceptions against him. If I don't label him a franchise QB even after he puts up 7.8 yards per attempt, what would he have to do to change my opinion? 8.0 yards? 8.2? At some point you start to realize that demands like that are a little ridiculous, especially when Peyton Manning's career average is 7.6, and Tom Brady's average is 7.4. What makes quarterbacks like Schaub and Brees interesting is that they were both taken because of what they'd shown as pocket passers, and not because of their physical gifts. I realize that your odds of getting a franchise QB outside of round 1 are very slim. But if you want to maximize those odds, you need to focus on QBs in the Schaub/Brees category: guys who are accurate passers and who have shown the ability to read defenses and process information quickly associated with NFL-level franchise QBs.

I agree with the logic that you either a) take the best quarterback available or b) don't take a quarterback at all. That being said, I think Ponder may well be the best quarterback available in this draft. There are serious question marks about Gabbert, at least according to some draft experts. Newton is a one year wonder who may lack the ability to quickly process information necessary for success at the NFL level. Mallett is known more for his arm strength than he is for being a polished pocket passer. Locker is also far less polished and NFL-ready than Ponder. Prior to the start of the 2010 season, a number of draft experts had Ponder rated as either the best or one of the two best quarterback prospects in the 2011 draft. (They were assuming, correctly, that Luck would not declare.) These experts noted that while Ponder's physical tools may not have been as exciting as those of some other QBs available in the draft, he made up for that with good accuracy, good decision-making, and the ability to read the field quickly. As far as I can tell, the consensus is that Ponder is the most NFL-ready of this year's crop of quarterbacks. "NFL-ready" is an interesting phrase. Back when people were debating whether the Colts should take Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf, Manning was described as the more "NFL-ready" and Leaf was described as the quarterback with the higher "upside" due to his better physical tools. To me, the phrase, "NFL-ready" means "this guy has gone a long way toward proving he can handle the mental aspects of the NFL game." Those are the quarterbacks I want. Being "NFL-ready" isn't just about a quick transition to the NFL--it's about whether the quarterback has the mental aptitude and bandwidth necessary to truly take command of a football field. Ponder has that mental ability, or at least he seems to. Not only that, he has the throwing accuracy Fitz sorely lacks. Knowing where you're supposed to throw the football is of only limited value when you don't have the ability to make consistently accurate throws. I agree with you that the biggest risk in taking Ponder is that the Bills might pass up some other potential franchise QB in the 2012 draft. On the other hand, I did an analysis of the rate at which franchise QBs enter the NFL. It turns out that less than one franchise QB appears per year. Obviously some years see more than one franchise QB enter the league, and there's a chance 2012 might be one of those years. But at least at first glance, it appears that the only bona fide franchise QB likely to be available in 2012 will be Andrew Luck. Luck will almost certainly be taken first overall, which means the Bills are very unlikely to be in a position to draft him. I'd be very surprised if we ended up even with a top-5 pick in that draft! But if by some miracle the Bills are in a position to take Luck (or some other equally good QB) the smart move would be to simply ignore Ponder's presence on the roster and take Luck anyway. (In the unlikely event Ryan Fitzpatrick is reading this, he's probably thinking to himself, I'm glad this guy isn't the Bills' GM!) The idea behind taking Luck or a Luck-like quarterback would be that the Bills would have to content themselves with having used a 2nd round pick on their backup QB. At least over the short-term. Of course, if the Bills found themselves in that situation, they should then sit the rookie Luck while playing Ponder. If Ponder played well, the Bills would have the option of either trading away Luck, trading away Ponder for a very good pick, or keeping both guys. Having two good QBs on your roster creates a lot of options.