FanPost

Starting NFL QB Draft Position Evaluation

Prompted by the post about Josh Johnson, I went in search of the round which each starting QB currently in the NFL was drafted. I looked at the QBs for every team in the league last season, and listed every QB that either started a game last season, or has been an NFL starter before (example: B.Johnson). I'm sure I missed a few, but I have a total of 57 QBs listed here, which should definitely be considered a representative sample.

The full list is at the bottom, but here's some roundup stats.

First off, # of QBs by round:

1st---21     2nd---6
3rd---9      4th---3
5th---2      6th---4
8th---1      9th---1
UD---10

Now, your initial reaction would be that, wow, 1st round has the highest number by far, but, keep in mind that the 1st round only makes up 36.8% of all of the QBs. In fact, 2nd day picks (which, note, is now from the 3rd round till the end), make up 35%, and Undrafteds are another  17.5%.

Next, look at the number of active super bowl winning QBs by round.

QB------Rings---Round
Brady-----3-------6
Roeth-----1-------1
P. Man----1-------1
B. John---1-------9
E. Man----1-------1
Favre-----1-------2
Warner----1-------UD

With the exception of Brady, this chart tends to favor the first round guys. But wait. Lets look at all of the Super Bowls since 1970, and see where the winner of each was drafted. Again, the full list is available later, for now, here's a recap chart.

Round---# of SB
1st--------19
2nd--------2
3rd--------5
4th--------1
6th--------5
9th--------2
10th-------2
UD---------2

Again, similar to before. The 1st round only claims 50% of the Super Bowls since 1970. In that chart, note that I counted number of super bowls, so multiple-time winners such as Brady or Montana were counted more then once. This is the chart if you take out multiple winners:

Round---# of SB
1st-------10
2nd-------2
3rd-------2
4th-------1
6th-------3
9th-------2
10th------1
UD--------2

Note that after taking out multiple winners, the first round only has 43% of the QBs.

There's no point here to prove or anything, I just got curious and couldn't find the information readily available anywhere, so decided to do it myself. I'm sure I missed some names, and some numbers may be slightly off since I'm doing this at 1am, so feel free to give me any corrections that you know of.

As for the list, I tried to group QBs with who they were with last season, but the list I was working with included all of the transactions that have already happened, so there's probably a few QBs with the wrong teams, too, but that's not really that important for what I was doing here, anyways.

Finally, I would like to point everyone to this great article by Ted Kluck before last year's draft that studied the risk of drafting each position. Note that QB has the highest bust percentage at 53: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=kluck/quarterbacks/070425

I hope everyone finds this interesting. If you can think of any other ways to extrapolate information from this data, please do so, or at least suggest different things to look at. I kind of enjoy researching this kind of stuff, so I may go even further if there's enough interest. Anyways, without further ado, here's the lists. QBs sorted by Team/Division, Super Bowls are by years.

(I'm not sure how this extended copy thing works, you might have to click read more or something like that.)

Starting NFL QBs:

MIA Lemon UD
MIA Beck 2nd
MIA Green 8th
MIA McCown 3rd
N_E Brady 6th
NYJ Clemens 2nd
NYJ Pennington 1st
BUF Edwards 3rd
BUF Losman 1st

BAL Boller 1st
BAL McNair 1st
CIN Palmer 1st
CLE D.Anderson 6th
PIT Roethlisberger 1st

HOU Schaub 3rd
HOU Rosenfels 4th
IND P.Manning 1st
JAX Garrard 4th
JAX Gray UD
TEN Young 1st

DEN Cutler 1st
K_C Croyle 3rd
K_C Huard UD
OAK Russel 1st
OAK Culpepper 1st
S_D Rivers 1st

DAL Romo UD
DAL B.Johnson 9th
NYG E.Manning 1st
PHI McNabb 1st
PHI Feely 5th
WAS Collins 2nd
WAS Campbell 1st

CHI Orton 4th
CHI Grossman 1st
DET Kitna UD
G_B Favre 2nd
G_B Rodgers 1st
MIN Jackson 2nd

ATL Redman 3rd
ATL Vick 1st
ATL Leftwich 3rd
CAR Moore UD
CAR Delhomme UD
CAR Carr 1st
N_O Brees 2nd
N_O Brunell 5th
T_B Garcia UD
T_B Griese 3rd
T_B Simms 3rd

ARI Warner UD
ARI Leinart 1st
StL Bulger 6th
S_F Hill UD
S_F Smith 1st
SEA Hasselbeck 6th
SEA Frye 3rd


Super Bowl Winning QBs since 1970:

1971    Unitas    9th
1972    Staubach    10th
1973    Griese    1st
1974    Griese    1st
1975    Bradshaw    1st
1976    Bradshaw    1st
1977    Stabler    2nd
1978    Staubach    10th
1979    Bradshaw    1st
1980    Bradshaw    1st
1981    Plunkett    1st
1982    Montana    3rd
1983    Theismann    4th
1984    Plunkett    1st
1985    Montana    3rd
1986    McMahon    1st
1987    Simms    1st
1988    Williams    1st
1989    Montana    3rd
1990    Montana    3rd
1991    Hostetler    3rd
1992    Rypien    6th
1993    Aikman    1st
1994    Aikman    1st
1995    Young    Supp.
1996    Aikman    1st
1997    Favre    2nd
1998    Elway    1st
1999    Elway    1st
2000    Warner    UD
2001    Dilfer    6th
2002    Brady    6th
2003    B. John    9th
2004    Brady    6th
2005    Brady    6th
2006    Roeth    1st
2007    P. Man    1st
2008    E. Man    1st

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Phinsider's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of The Phinsider writers or editors.