PFF Throws Shade on Drew Lock & His Mom
On Monday, ESPN's NFL Nation released a fun piece of content, where all current NFL players were thrown into a pool for the express purpose of doing a 'starting a franchise from scratch' redraft. From there, specific beat writers were given the responsibility of executing a redraft of four current NFL players with the following mandate: one quarterback, one non-QB offensive player, one defensive player, and the fourth choice could be a 'wildcard' pick.
Jeff Legwold, former President of the Pro Football Writers of America and long-time Denver Broncos beat writer for ESPN, made the Mile High selections. The draft order in this redraft was based on the 2020 order, with one exception; each round would snake, kind of like a fantasy football draft.
The Broncos' held the No. 15 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, and with that pick, Legwold unflinchingly selected Drew Lock. There were 10 QBs drafted ahead of Lock in NFL Nation's exercise, so ostensibly, Legwold still had nearly the pick of the litter.
But Legwold's decision was Lock, which did not rub some people the right way. In fact, with Legwold passing over QBs like Matt Ryan, Kyler Murray, Teddy Bridgewater, Jimmy Garoppolo, Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Ryan Tannehill, Matthew Stafford, and Tua Tagovailoa, among others, Pro Football Focus did not take kindly to Lock going at No. 15 overall.
PFF's Kevin Cole expressed his skepticism while keeping it relatively above board.
"I mean, for me, he's going to be more like in the bottom 5-to-10, at best, for quarterbacks," Cole said of Lock. "If you think about Lock, he was a second-round pick, so that doesn't necessarily mean he's going to have a lot of success. He has five games under his belt. He had a couple of good games but that's really not enough to go by. So I'm not sure what it is about Lock that people seem to be really infatuated by... but I think for Lock, he's really going to be near the end and I probably even prefer most of the quarterbacks that came this year, at least the first-rounders, over Lock. So it's really tough to give him that despite the young age and despite the tools that he has."
However, PFF's Austin Gale chose to bring up Lock's mother in his response to ESPN's redraft.
"Drew Lock's mom doesn't take him 15th overall in that draft," Gayle said. "It's kind of absurd that he went that high."
An Argument Collapsing in on Itself
On the surface, Cole's premise about Lock's sample size not being big enough to justify taking him over several other current NFL QBs is a fair one, but then his argument collapses in on itself when he then says that he would prefer all the 2020 first-round QBs over Lock, none of whom have played a snap in the NFL yet. Wait, what?
What we have here is a bias being exposed and promulgated as an objective take. PFF did not grade Lock favorably last year.
Cole also references Lock's second-round pedigree, perhaps exposing a bias, as an argument against Lock being chosen by Legwold over other options. This is a dumb take and if I were a betting man, I'd wager that Cole did not have a favorable view of Lock when he was coming out of Missouri in the 2019 draft.
It's inverted confirmation bias. An analyst has a negative evaluation on a prospect, but the player in question goes on to out-perform the analyst's evaluation. At that point, there are only two options; admit one's mistake (you got it wrong) or double down.
It wouldn't surprise me if this were an example of Cole doubling down. I don't know that for certain because I don't follow his work but my sneaking suspicion is that Cole probably didn't like Lock in the 2019 draft.
As for Gayle's reference, I'll offer him this one defense in bringing up Lock's mother. The comment that even she wouldn't take Lock at No. 15 in a redraft purportedly came from another PFF pundit named George Chahrouri. Still, regurgitating the comment was simply distasteful.
Fueling the Fire
Let the haters hate. That's what this is. Look, a lot of NFL analysts got it wrong on Lock. Even the Broncos are proving that they got it wrong and should have taken him at pick 10. If GM John Elway knew then what he knows now about Lock, there's no chance the Broncos trade back to pick 20 and risk letting Lock fall.
It worked out to Denver's benefit, similar to how promising Phillip Lindsay he'd be the team's seventh-round pick in 2018 only to instead draft David Williams and letting Lindsay slip completely out of the draft, worked out in the Broncos' favor. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter how a Lindsay or a Lock landed in Denver. It only matters that they did.
But there were a lot of pundits who went in on Lock and so you're going to continue to see these talking heads bitterly clinging to their erroneous takes as they double down and make themselves look ridiculous.
For Lock, and for the Broncos, it's all fuel. The national perspective has been mostly skeptical and dismissive of Lock and the Broncos, with the exception of a couple of pundits like syndicated radio host Colin Cowherd and NFL.com's Adam Schein.
It all goes on the figurative bulletin board and it's all fuel. The truth is, Lock took over a team in Week 13 that had won exactly three games all season long.
By virtue of his impact, the Broncos won four of their final five games. Along the way, Lock didn't just eek out wins or hold on for dear life while the defense or ground game led the way. No, Lock was the difference-maker.
In Week 14, Lock trounced the AFC South-Champion Houston Texans 38-24, becoming the first rookie quarterback in the Super Bowl era to eclipse 300 yards passing and throw three touchdowns in his first career road start. With the Chargers and Texans vanquished in back-to-back weeks, Lock became just the fourth Broncos rookie quarterback to win his first two career starts since Elway did it in 1983.
Lock's 4-1 record matched Elway's franchise record for the most wins by a rookie quarterback in team history. On top of that, Lock became just the seventh rookie QB in the NFL in the last 20 years to win at least four of his first five starts.
Lock's 7-to-3 TD-to-INT ratio was better than the 2-to-1 mark most young QBs fail meet. Not only did he win games and set a few franchise and NFL records along the way, Lock captivated a fanbase and injected fire back into the locker room.
I could go on, but let's face it. While on the surface, I can understand PFF's skepticism that Lock was fictionally 'redrafted' ahead of several more-accomplished QBs, the bottom line is, the site's blatant disrespect is more telling that it realizes.
Going back to bias. PFF didn't give Lock great grades in his five starts last year. The site has to justify their grades somehow and this is one way it goes about doing it, loosing its analysts to gin up a defense of sorts by throwing shade on Lock. But let's face it, almost nobody takes PFF's grades seriously anymore — only their advanced statistics.
All the shade will be like water off a duck's back for Lock. He's been doubted since before even entering the NFL, so it's nothing new and will only serve as fuel as he enters Year 2 with a new, bonafide offensive coordinator, a rebuilt interior O-line, and an embarrassment of riches at the skill positions. Good luck defending those outdated takes, PFF.
Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.
