NFL Week 16 thread -- Slippery like Jake the Snake

The same standard could probably be applied to scouting in general. Is the QB bust rate much higher or lower than other positions for first-round picks?

 

Cousins is barely a competent starter. He's not a bust and would be a decent backup, but any team with him as the starter needs to always have options in mind.

 

Quarterbacks who can’t throw might be good for the occasional fluke victory, but the Bengals saw last season that Finley isn’t a guy you want to use fir more than a spot start. He is third string fo good reason.

 

Brees didn’t lose the job to Rivers. He injured his shoulder during the final game of the season. The Chargers were probably going to hand the job to Rivers the next season, anyway, so they made no attempt to keep Brees.

 

Interesting

 

That isn't the first time this season there has been talk of Roethlisberger tossing out the game plan and calling plays on the fly. Randy Fichtner has to be fired in the offseason. He simply cannot do the job.

 

I've always thought Cousins was a perfectly average QB. He's also been one of the few perfectly average QBs to hit true free agency at an age younger than 30, and he got three years, $28M per initially, followed by a two year, $33M per extension.

I don't know. I realize all of us are talking in circles here a bit. I imagine that the higher the draft choice, the better chance you pick a quality QB, but it's unclear what that "all pro, pro bowl, average starter, below average, bust" breakdown would be, like the PECOTA breakdowns they have in Baseball Prospectus. I'm also of the mindset that teams probably stick with subpar options for longer because the decision-making within plenty of NFL organizations is risk-averse. There are plenty of examples of a QB not really getting a good chance because the coach or GM's pet project was ahead of him on the depth chart.

 

As you note, the career timing worked out just great for Cousins in going on the free agent market, plus then he did have a decent-OK season for the Vikings which swayed them into offering the extension. But now he's a C-plus level starter at an age where a steady slide seems likely.

 

True! But also, because the NFL limits player movement so much, it means that there isn't really a free market for quality QBs - even a guy like Cousins was deemed so valuable, he got franchised twice.

 

Cousins is a good QB to measure your current situation against - and one of the reasons WFT had a hard time committing to him. He's better with the Vikes than he was in DC. Had a great first full season with WFT, but was more of a third starter/innings-eater guy.
Have NFL teams figured out how to simulate how a prospective QB would fare in their system/stadium, like baseball teams do? I often think the scouting departments evaluate a QB expecting him to have an ideal coaching staff and a system perfectly suited for his skills - when clearly that ends up not being the case most of the time. I'd say a "bust" is almost always 30 percent coaching, 30 percent bad eval, 30 percent player, 10 percent front office failure to build roster.

 

The Redskins actually screwed up big time by franchising him twice. There was a point where they could have signed him to a longer-term deal for a little less money, but didn't want to commit to him for whatever reason. They played chicken with each other in negotiations, which forced them to use the franchise tag. Then it happened again. Cousins did the math and realized he could make more playing under the tag than he could by signing. He bet on himself and won, then landed the big money deal from Minnesota that he was never going to get from Washington.

 

I also have to believe that evaluating college qbs is getting even tougher with a rise of one-year wonders/transfers and the "rise" of the sub P5 QB ala Wentz, Allen, et. al.