Show of hands. Who’s in, and who’s out with EJ Manuel?
You’ve seen him for most of a season. Is he going to make it?
I liked some of what I saw. But that’s been the case with many quarterbacks over the years. Most of those guys haven’t cut it.
Check out the stats below. These are first-round quarterbacks who after their first year were in the gray area. That is, set aside guys like Cam Newton, Ben Roethlisberger and Andrew Luck, who were all obviously going to be stars after that first year.
The table shows the 13 guys since 2000 who played a bunch in their first year, and had some success, finishing with 10-14 TD passes and usually 300-500 pass attempts.
Of the 12 preceding Manuel, only two can be called successes – Stafford and Flacco. (We are calling those guys successes, right?) Tannehill is a maybe. The other nine (so, 75 percent of the guys) ended up being failures.
I’m not giving up on Manuel. I kind of like what they’re doing up there in Buffalo. Just saying.
| FIRST-ROUND QUARTERBACKS WHO HAD SO-SO ROOKIE SEASONS | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | Pct | TD | Int | Rate |
| 2002 | Joey Harrington | 50.1% | 12 | 16 | 59.9 |
| 2003 | Byron Leftwich | 57.2% | 14 | 16 | 73.0 |
| 2006 | Vince Young | 51.5% | 12 | 13 | 66.7 |
| 2006 | Matt Leinart | 56.8% | 11 | 12 | 74.0 |
| 2008 | Joe Flacco | 60.0% | 14 | 12 | 80.3 |
| 2009 | Josh Freeman | 54.5% | 10 | 18 | 59.8 |
| 2009 | Mark Sanchez | 53.8% | 12 | 20 | 63.0 |
| 2009 | Matthew Stafford | 53.3% | 13 | 20 | 61.0 |
| 2011 | Christian Ponder | 54.3% | 13 | 13 | 70.1 |
| 2011 | Blaine Gabbert | 50.8% | 12 | 11 | 65.4 |
| 2012 | Ryan Tannehill | 58.3% | 12 | 13 | 76.1 |
| 2012 | Brandon Weeden | 57.4% | 14 | 17 | 72.6 |
| 2013 | EJ Manuel | 58.8% | 11 | 9 | 77.7 |
—Ian Allan