Podcast: Young QBs Have Been Really Bad Lately
This week on It’s Always Sunny in Chiefs Kingdom, Austin and I recapped the Chiefs' 26-3 dismantling of the Chicago Bears last season, in which Patrick Mahomes underlined, bolded and italicized why the Bears made such a big mistake in drafting Mitchell Trubisky in the 2017 NFL Draft ahead of Mahomes.
In doing so, we decided it would be fun to go full scorched-Earth with the roast segment and light up every signal-caller who was drafted from 2017-2019 to show how far above the pack Mahomes truly sits. No one was safe. Below is just a sample of the damage we did to the collective psyche of all the young QBs in the NFL.
A year after Patrick Mahomes was picked 10th overall in the draft, the Arizona Cardinals also selected Josh Rosen at 10. But they were so bad that year, and so uninspired by Rosen, that they shipped him off to Miami after just one 3-10 season. Then in Miami, Rosen lost all three games he started and then got hurt. And Miami was so uninspired by his performance that they picked Tua Tagovailoa sixth in this year's draft. With only 12 touchdown passes to 19 interceptions on his second team in his second season, he's actually a bigger first-round bust than Mitchell Trubisky, which seems impossible.
Lamar Jackson had a phenomenal regular season, no denying that. But the unanimous MVP has a big hole in his game, and that's the postseason. In his two playoff games against the Los Angeles Chargers and Tennessee Titans, he put up 29 total points and a 68.3 QB rating. In his 22 regular-season starts, he only had two games below a 68 QB rating, but both of those games were blowout victories for the Ravens. The only two games in his career that he absolutely had to win, he performed at his absolute worst. So until he can show that he's ready for the biggest stage, he's nothing more than an elite Fantasy Football quarterback.
Poor Luke Falk. A sixth-round pick by the Titans in 2018, he was waived in September before the season even began. The Dolphins picked him up and then he suffered a fractured wrist and was placed on IR a month later. After the season was over, the Dolphins said goodbye to Falk and the Jets said hello. He then made two extremely bad starts for the Jets in 2019 when they lost Sam Darnold to mononucleosis and Trevor Siemian to a broken leg. Falk performed terribly, throwing no touchdowns and three picks and getting shut out in a Monday Night game with the New England Patriots, and then the Jets cut him as soon as they were able to. He is currently a free agent, now and forever.
Despite being picked 15th in the first round in 2019, Washington thought so little of their chances with Dwayne Haskins at QB as a rookie that they went ahead and sent out Case Keenum to start the year, and when he ended up sucking so bad... or getting hurt or whatever reason that they realized that they needed a QB change, they put in... Colt McCoy in Week 5 against the Patriots. They still didn't think Haskins was ready to start until Week 9. He finished the year 2-6 and now they are just going full steam ahead with this dude who threw 200 passes last year, seven touchdowns, seven picks, and a 76.1 QB rating. Yikes, Dwayne. Yikes.
Just so everyone is clear, including the Missouri fans reading this that watched Drew Lock play in college: he is probably not going to move the needle very much in Denver. The Broncos added some weapons in Jerry Jeudy and KJ Hamler to try and go shot-for-shot with the Chiefs, but they got their competitive window all wrong. They’ll now be perpetually three years behind the Chiefs in building and developing a dynamic offense, which means while Denver is just learning how to come together as a team and win in the NFL, the Chiefs will have better players with more experience. When the Broncos' young players like Lock finally start to figure things out, they’ll be facing a decade ahead of them going against the most well-oiled machine the sport has ever seen. Lock is destined to be the QB that can’t deliver against the Chiefs the same way Derek Carr and Philip Rivers before him were. Denver has delusions of grandeur and their egos just won’t be able to tolerate his constant second-place finishes... the kid never really had a chance.
Will Grier was the Carolina Panthers' third-round pick in 2019 who they thought might be an answer for their Cam Newton questions, but… in a 38-6 loss at Indianapolis in his first career action, he threw for 224 yards and 3 picks, and then in the season finale, he went only 1-for-8 with another interception and a lost fumble before giving way to Kyle Allen. So the Panthers went out and got Teddy Bridgewater instead, and now you have to wonder what kind of future Will Grier even has in the NFL. I’d put better odds that XFL standout PJ Walker takes the field as a Panther before Grier does.
When Ryan Finley was drafted by the Bengals in the fourth-round of 2019, he was probably thinking to himself, "All I have to do is wait for them to get sick of Andy Dalton (which they’re definitely going to do) and I’m in great shape." Well, they did get sick of Dalton, but all Finley managed to do in the three starts he was given was go 0-3, complete 47% of his passes, score 11 points a game, and have a QB rating of 62.1. He was so bad, in fact, that despite the Bengals being 0-11 and in clear need of getting the Joe Burrow in the following draft, they asked Andy Dalton to start again for them. They were so sick of Finley that they went back to the guy that they benched after only three games! So now Finley's backing up a younger and much better QB in Burrow, and is destined to ride the bench for his career.
Jarrett Stidham, the heir to Tom Brady's throne. The only thing he has to do is follow the greatest player by individual career accomplishments that professional sports have ever known. But that should be easy enough for the fourth-rounder, after all, he was drafted two rounds earlier than Brady was. Let’s face it, this guy literally cannot be considered a success story unless you count "not having a nervous breakdown every day" a success. Boston fans are going to remember Brady (incorrectly) as the only reason they were ever any good, and it’s going to cost Stidham his job and probably his sanity.
What's that? Gardner Minshew? No, we don't roast Gardner Minshew here. How dare you?
