Michael Penix Jr. Is Cursed! (Maybe.)
So might be Jayden Daniels, if QB-heavy draft history holds up.
The dominant storyline of Thursday’s NFL Draft Round 1 was quarterbacks: Unsurprisingly, USC’s Caleb Williams and LSU’s Jayden Daniels went 1-2 overall, but then four more QBs were taken within the next 10 picks: UNC’s Drake Maye at No. 3, Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. at No. 8, Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy at No. 10 and Oregon’s Bo Nix at No. 12.
That set a new record for the most quarterbacks taken within the first 12 picks, an indication of just how much value teams place on finding their potential signal-caller of the future. (The Falcons took Penix despite just signing Kirk Cousins to a big free-agent deal last month.) In a QB-driven league, there doesn’t appear to be much limit to the lengths teams are willing to go in their pursuit of a franchise passer.
But given the sheer number of QBs taken, not all of them can be successful. (Many will be busts, in fact, if history is a guide.) And one of the rules that I’ve always intuited around the draft is that the first QB taken isn’t usually the one that burns you — it’s the second one (the Ryan Leaf to Peyton Manning in 1998), or the third or fourth, where a team is desperate for a QB but the demand has exceeded the supply, where you run into trouble.
Is this true, though?
To find the answer, I decided to take an analytical look at how quickly the value falls off for highly drafted QBs based on the order in which they were taken. The metric I’ll be using is QBR Points Above Replacement (PAR) within a quarterback’s first three seasons in the league after his draft year.
(Why three? The league is definitely putting pressure on young passers to develop within the span of their rookie contracts — but also this allows us to get the 2021 draft in our sample, which saw 5 QBs taken within the first 15 picks, a pertinent data point to include when thinking about 2024.)
Going back to 2006 (the earliest season of QBR data), here is the breakdown of QB production based on the order in which they were taken:
Unsurprisingly, the first QB taken in a draft towers over the rest of his peers, which is good news for Williams and the Chicago Bears. Another trend: While QBs No. 2-3 are roughly equivalent (despite the second QB being drafted much higher on average), there is a massive drop-off between the 3rd and 4th QBs taken in the typical draft. This is your point where, again, the demand for passing talent seems to exceed the supply.
But it’s fair to question just how relevant this overall sample is to a case like the 2024 draft. The sixth QB taken in the 2006-21 drafts was picked at No. 116.3 on average; the sixth QB taken Thursday was picked at No. 12. Surely, a situation where teams draft a bunch of QBs high up would potentially lead to more production from QBs taken deeper in the order.
So let’s limit our data to just focus on cases where at least four QBs were taken in the first round. This reduces our sample size, but it does give us a more relevant dataset:
Again, the first QB taken tends to do very well relative to his peers. But interestingly, in our more 2024-like sample of data, the second QB off the board tends to do much worse than the third QB off the board, while the fourth QB off the board does very poorly compared to his peers — and the fifth QB off the board does better than we might expect.
Why would this be the case? It could be that the No. 2 QB taken, as a consolation prize versus the No. 1, is caught in between being taken for his upside/potential (a high ceiling) and his present ability (a high floor). Teams might be more willing to take chances on the second QB, whereas a more pragmatic approach might win out with the third one. And by the time the fourth QB rolls around, you are getting the dregs of a “can’t-miss” group — the consolation prize to the consolation prize’s consolation prize. (i.e., the Josh Rosen of the bunch.)
If this trend holds, it would mean that Williams is a future star, Daniels is a wild card with the potential to go poorly, Maye is a solid pick, Penix is doomed (many have already called his pick the most head-scratching of the draft) and McCarthy could turn out fine.
But this is, of course, wild speculation based on a miniscule sample of data; there’s no guarantee these trends from five drafts will hold up going forward. The most interesting aspect is just watching the psychology of these QB “runs” playing out — the FOMO teams suffer, and how that manifests in these strange drop-offs between the 1st and 2nd QBs taken, or the 2nd and 3rd, etc. Franchise QBs are just like any other scarce resource: there’s a finite supply, but no shortage of teams who are willing to convince themselves they’ve found one, no matter how much they’ve rummaged through the prospect bin for it.
Filed under: NFL