NFL Week 16 thread -- Slippery like Jake the Snake

The last 3-4 years has seen another wave of QBs go from draft to starting, as well.

 

The Redskins are historically bad at drafting QBs. I think Baugh was the last good one they drafted. I’m not exaggerating. Rypkin was one year.

The Redskins are also historically great at taking a cast off, or trading for a QB, and having him be the missing piece. Jurgensen, Kilmer, Theissman, Williams, Schroeder...

That said, the WFT of the last 20 years are a clown show, but Rivera does seem to be wiping off the makeup.

 

If they know he’s a goner next season (and it was pretty clear that Rivera didn’t want him around before he gave him one last shot due to injuries), it’s a great way to rally the team for one week.

 

This is my thought. And considering he had some OSU friends on the team (Chase Young, Terry McLaurin), the fact that Haskins was THAT toxic in the locker room amazes me. Those dudes are young too and they've gone about their business in a much more professional manner.

The line swung a full three points, by the way, on the Haskins news. Opened at Philly -1.5 and is now Washington -1.5.

 

Earlier in the thread there was a good point about drafting a qb in the second half of the draft - the 32nd pick in the most recent draft signed a $10.8 guaranteed contract (four years) with a $5m signing bonus - you aren't going to be able to get a credible veteran starter for that kind of bread. Professional clipboard holders make $1-2m a year, but a QB you expect to play costs about t $10m a year, not including a signing bonus. Teddy Bridgewater is making $14m as a point of reference (and there are no QBs in the league making more than $9.8m or less than $14m). That said drafting a player in the first round doesn't make them any better than they'd be if drafted in the 2nd or 3rd. It only raises expectations.

 

re: Haskins, I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that he was always viewed as a "high ceiling, low floor" kind of player. Those type of guys always go earlier than they "should," because if you want a guy like Gardner Minshew - can make some throws, probably has a low chance of leading a team to the playoffs over 16 games - they're available late in the draft. There's about a dozen examples of this type of pick failing, but it works enough - see Buffalo and Josh Allen, who wasn't super accurate in college and played for a small program, usually the kind of guy you don't want to pick - that teams keep making the pick. (The NBA version of this - In the 1990s and early 2000s, if you were 7-foot and had a pulse, you always went earlier than you should, whereas a solid pro like Jared Dudley would go 22nd overall.)

I think Washington probably should have had a better #3 option heading into the year than Alex Smith, but I also realize the optics of cutting him would have been pretty awful. (That's never stopped Snyder before, but still.) Haskins was essentially a development QB that shouldn't have been playing.

 

If I wanted a QB, I’m getting in the top 15, maybe 12, picks.

People might say look at Wilson or Hurts or Dak or Brees or Brady, but those are lightening strikes.

The diminishing return on waiting for a QB in the draft is probably staggering. And college football has changed so much in the past 7-8 years that college QBs are coming into the NFL more ready to play than ever.

I’ll try to go back through the last five drafts by round to see if there is a dramatic trend, but I think I will know what I’m going to find.

 

On top of everything else, how can Haskins be doughy (fat)?
I remember seeing Matt Barkley shirtless. He had a dad bod at 22. How can that be?

 

Where does Gardner Minshew end up? 16 tds to 5 picks (37/11 career), 66 completion pct (62) and a 95.9 passer rating (93) (this year better than Roethlisberger, Mayfield, Trubisky, Stafford, Murray, Tua and Fitz, Ryan, Goff, Burrow, and Garoppolo). PR has its flaws of course, but that's a solid TD/INT ratio. Plus he's still got three years under a rookie deal.

 

Other than maybe Wilson and Brees, they also took over the job by happenstance. Hurts got in because Wentz sucked. Dak and Brady became starters because of injuries. IIRC, the Seahawks were very high on Wilson but they had also signed Matt Flynn to a big contract that offseason and weren't expecting Wilson to seize the job the way he did.
I think Brees started right away, but lost his job to Phillip Rivers.
Not many mid-round QBs are seen as franchise QBs when they're drafted, and no matter how good they turn out to be there's probably a reason for that.

 

By saying this, you imply that the NFL scouting of QBs is somehow competent, and I don't buy that for a second.
SVP last night listed all of the 1st round QB picks since 2015 and you would have to be very generous to say that even 50% haven't been busts.

 

The best one of recent vintage was an afterthought, and then they screwed it up -- Kirk Cousins. He's not a Hall of Famer or anything, but he's certainly a capable starter and better than anything they've had in the last 20 years. For whatever reason, though, they never saw him that way and totally FUBAR'd his contract situation.