REACH FOR THE STARS-DO TEAMS REALLY ALWAYS REACH FOR QUATERBACKS IN THE FIRST ROUND?
A Statistical Analysis investigating if teams really reach for quarterbacks more than other positions.
(Jon Heath/USA Today)
It’s NFL Combine week which means it’s also NFL Draft cliché season. Get ready for “upside”, “motor”, and “burst” to begin filling up your television screens and Twitter feeds.
Another cliché that is going to get spread around is the notion that multiple teams will talk themselves into taking a quarterback early. It has become part of popular NFL Draft vernacular that teams will always talk themselves into reaching for a quarterback in the first round. It’s how a fringe top 100 prospect like Davis Mills was last year starts getting first round buzz.
So naturally this begs the question-do teams really reach for quarterbacks more often than any other position? To find out, I looked at the data. From 2011-2018, I compared ESPN’s Scouts Inc’s. draft grades to where each player ended up being selected in the draft (NFL.com is the only other site that has data that goes back that far but it’s a little messy to sort so I didn’t include their rankings.) I then compiled the “reach score” of each player to see which position had the highest average reach score. As a refresher, reach score is defined as a player’s pre-draft ranking subtracted by where they end up being selected. In other words, if a player’s final pre-draft ranking lists him at 13, and gets selected with the 10th pick, then his reach score would be 3 (13-10).
For the 2019-2021 drafts, I used The Athletic’s “Consensus Draft Board” rankings. The Consensus Draft board has proven to be a more reliable predictor of draft position and future performance and is the draft board that most mirrors my own.
Finally, I wanted to examine two areas. First, I compared the average reach score of each draft position in the first round to see if teams really reached for quarterbacks more often than other positions. Next, I looked at every prospect that had a pre-draft ranking between 25 and 50 to see if quarterbacks in this tier were any more or less likely to get selected in the first round than their peers.
With that preamble out of the way, let’s dive into the numbers.
Do teams really reach for quarterbacks in the first round more than any other position?
Most clichés derive from at least some semblance of truth and it turns out this one is no different. If we look at first round picks selected from 2011-2018, it turns out quarterbacks do have the highest reach score of any position.
During this eight-year stretch, there were 25 quarterbacks selected in round one, and teams were more eager to grab a quarterback than any other position
However, that trend has declined recently. In 2018, quarterbacks had a reach score of only 2.5. Also, the table below compares the reach score of each position from 2019-2021, where I used a more comprehensive consensus ranking for each prospect and position.
Granted, it’s only three years, but this paints a different picture. Quarterback isn’t even among the top five positions in terms of reach score in round one. Teams were more likely to reach for lower value positions like safety and interior offensive line than they were quarterback. Three years isn’t long enough to draw any definitive conclusions, but the league certainly seems to be trending away from taking big leaps on quarterbacks in the first round.
What About The Late Round One/Early Round Two Prospects?
Next, let’s look at players specifically with pre-draft grades between 25-50. What we’re trying to figure out here is if quarterbacks specifically in this range are treated differently than any other prospect with a similar grade. First, the table below shows the average reach score of each player in this tier, drafted between 2011 and 2018:
Again, nothing in this sample size demonstrates that teams are likely to make a bigger reach for quarterback than they are at any other position in the draft. Quarterback’s reach score is only slightly higher than the average position and is sandwiched in between edge rusher and safety in terms of reach score.
Next, I wanted to look at what round players with these grades are most likely to be selected in, specifically at quarterback. There were 208 players competing for 64 first rounds picks. Another way of putting is 30.77% of players in this tier get selected in round one. If we break it down by position, the data looks like this:
Of that list of 208, 17 were quarterbacks and 9 of them were drafted in round one. While it’s not overwhelming, quarterbacks were more likely to get selected in round one than other positions with similar grades. The same thing was true between 2019-2021, although that only included a sample of four quarterbacks.
This phenomenon can probably be chalked up to the introduction of the fifth-year option. By selecting a player in round one, teams are given one extra year of control of a player at below market price-but only if the team wants it. Therefore, if you’re on the fence about a quarterback, there is zero downside to grabbing him at the back of round one as opposed to waiting until round two and losing the potential extra year of cheap quarterback costs. However, even with the economics clearly favoring selecting a quarterback, they still aren’t significant outliers compared to many other positions.
What does this mean for this year’s class?
If you’re reading this article, you probably know at this point that the 2022 quarterback class is not held in high esteem. The data backs that up. The table below shows the top five quarterbacks in this class and their current cumulative draft rank.
Unless someone absolutely lights up their pro-day, there isn’t going to be a single consensus first-round quarterback in the draft for the first since 2013.
So where are they going to get selected? First, we can probably rule out any of these quarterbacks being selected in the top ten. If these grades hold up, that means the lowest reach score for any of these quarterbacks to be taken in the top ten would be 19. In the last eleven years, there have only been three quarterbacks taken in the top ten with a reach score that high. One of them was Patrick Mahomes. It cannot be overstated enough that Patrick Mahomes is a unicorn and team should not try to replicate that model. There will never be another Patrick Mahomes. The other two were Daniel Jones and Mitchell Trubisky. It is not a coincidence that the General manager that selected both players no longer work for those teams.
As for how many get selected in the first round, again we can look at the math. From 2011-2021, there were 21 quarterbacks with a pre-draft grade between 25-50. 12, or 57%, were taken in round one. If we apply that math to this year’s class, that means we’d be looking at an average of 2.85 quarterbacks taken in round one. That means at most we’re probably looking at three quarterbacks selected in the first round, and probably in the back half.
So in conclusion, no, teams don’t really talk themselves into quarterbacks any more than they talk themselves into any other position. If there’s any bias towards selecting a quarterback in the first round, it’s usually in the back half and that reason is strictly economical. Finally, if you see any prop bets that are giving you anything under 3.5 quarterbacks taken in the first round-go ahead and make some money.*