NFL Week 4 Thread

You should take a look at who some of those quarterbacks were that caused teams to think they didn't need one.

The Dolphins, who picked second in 2005, started Gus Frerotte for 15 games. The Saints, picking 13th, started Aaron Brooks. The Redskins, picking ninth, had 35-year-old Mark Brunell.

ETA: One thing that I think was happening then was every team trying to copycat the Patriots. There was definitely a feeling that the first round was no place to find your quarterback, not just because of Brady but Delhomme, Bulger, Warner, Hasselbeck and even the extraordinarily winnerish Kyle Orton.

 

I mean, some of the scouts quoted were probably dead on.
For example, if you think you shouldn't take a player who isn't ready to start right away in the first round, it makes sense that Rodgers had a second-round grade from that scout.
Scouts quoted generally seemed to love his arm, but hate his mechanics, which seems fair, since his mechanics were changed once he got to the pros.
Think it points to the danger of overlooking the QB just because of the system he was in.

Rodgers is just an interesting case because it's possible he would have been REALLY bad if he started right away, and may never have become the Rodgers we know now.

 

Yeah. And in some fairness to the scouts and to Alex Smith, starting too early and dealing with the 49ers' circus for six years before Harbaugh arrived was a career killer. I don't think Rodgers would have been a Pro Bowl quarterback in that environment either.

 

The Dolphins' leading rusher in 2004 also had 523 yards. They needed a running back as much as a quarterback and went with Ronnie Brown, who had 907 yards as a rookie. Even though Brown fizzled a few years later, that pick is defensible. Brown, much like Alex Smith, was underwhelming and not a total bust.
The Redskins took DB Carlos Rogers, who got better after he left the team, and still got their QB at No. 25 with Jason Campbell. That was one pick after Rodgers was taken, so that might be one of the great "what ifs" had the Packers passed on Rodgers.
With the Saints, Aaron Brooks was coming off a 3,800-yard season (his fourth in a row of 3,500-plus back when that meant something) and was still a year away from turning to utter shit. Brooks was a serviceable quarterback at worst, and a potential superstar at best. Hard to fault them for sticking with Brooks for another year.

A bunch of other historical quarterback dumpster fires, like the Jaguars (Byron Leftwich) and Buccaneers (Chris Simms, who looked frisky during that period), had young quarterbacks already that they weren't ready to cut bait on. Certainly not to the point that it was worth spending a first rounder on the same position.
The Cowboys needed a QB, had two first-round picks and drafted DeMarcus Ware and Marcus Spears. Hard to fault either of those.
The Raiders had just invested in free agent Kerry Collins.
It was just a weird moment in time when only a handful of teams were at the right point in their talent cycles to spend a high pick on a quarterback. Hell, even the Packers fell into that category. They didn't necessarily need a quarterback in 2005. Rodgers was a wise investment, but it didn't fill a glaring hole in the lineup and the team took some criticism for it.

 

That's just one big heaping helping of silly rationalizations. Regarding Brown, if there has been anything proven in the draft in the last 15 years -- and something that was fairly obvious even then -- it's the folly of drafting a running back high.

I mean, if you're going to pin your argument on "But Carlos Rogers was available!" I think we can be done here.

 

Silly rationalizations is what the draft is all about.
Was Carlos Rogers a good pick when there were 10 other pro bowlers available? Of course not. But if you can get someone you believe is a starting cornerback at No. 9 and still be able to draft someone you believe can be your starting quarterback at No. 25, that's the prudent move. Whether it worked out or not is a different story.
I'm really not justifying the individual players taken. Teams screw up the draft all the time. I'm more arguing that most of the teams that passed on Rodgers didn't necessarily need him at the time. There were a few that needed a quarterback, sure, and would have been much better off drafting him. Of the 20 that had picks between Nos. 2 and 23, however, not every team fell into that category -- in fact, only three or four probably did. Hence, my original statement that "23 teams passed on Aaron Rodgers!" is somewhat silly.

 

Pro football team front office personnel are always looking for an excuse not to take a quarterback high in the draft. It's the one position even the owner can sort of see what's going on. If you pick a guy and he's a bust, the franchise is screwed for at least five years (more so back then, when there was no rookie salary cap), and everybody gets fired, scouts included.
The book on Rodgers was he had all the tools and needed time to develop. Green Bay could give him that time, when others couldn't. It made perfect sense for them. It's tough to go to the fans and say, "the new guy won't play for three years but then he'll be great" if you were 3-13 last year.

 

As one who covered the Packers during the three years of Favre-Rodgers, there was a sense was Aaron was a bust after the first two years. He looked lost in preseason games and mop-up duty.

Yet in year 3, he had to play at Dallas in 2007 on MNF when Favre got hurt. He didn't win the game but played exceptionally well. Turns out McCarthy was incredibly close to pulling Favre in the NFCCG vs the Giants for Rodgers. If he would have and Green Bay won, the trajectory of the Favre Mess in 2008 would have been forever altered.

 

Tell that to the legions of scouts, coaches and fans who excoriated the Texans for passing on Reggie Bush for Mario Williams.

 

"Reggie Bush will run for 2,500 yards and score 25 touchdowns." -- Michael Irvin before the 2006 season

 

Avoiding running backs high in the draft is a fairly recent development, and the year in which Brown, Williams and Benson went 2, 4, 5 was the beginning of the end.

I blame Auburn.

 

OK but that was nine years ago and was fairly rare even for that time frame.

Since then there have been two running backs taken in the top five -- Darren McFadden (#4 in 2008) and Trent Richardson (#3 in 2012).