I’m leery of Johnny Football and Teddy Bridgewater. They apparently have some talent, and maybe things will work out for them, but ultimately, they fell in the draft.
In today’s game, the quarterback is everything. There are a bunch of teams that would love to have a franchise quarterback. That’s why we see those guys going in the top 10 every year.
But Manziel and Bridgewater didn’t go in the top 10. Nor did anybody trade up to take them at 15th, 18th. The Cardinals were drafting 20th; they would have loved to select a franchise quarterback.
But all of those teams passed. The logical conclusion, then, is that after spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours studying these guys, all of those teams didn’t think Manziel or Bridgewater was good enough to merit being selected early in the first round.
And history shows us that when a quarterback falls in the first round, the general consensus is usually right.
In the last 30 years, 20 quarterbacks have been selected in the first round but not in the top 15. That is, set aside the can’t-miss franchise guys like Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck and look just at the guys that slipped into the second half of the first round. With those guys, I see only two that have hit it really big. Aaron Rodgers and Joe Flacco. I see two others that have had some success. Jim Harbaugh and Chad Pennington. Maybe those guys weren’t home runs, but they weren’t busts.
The rest of the picks reads like a comedy of errors.
That’s the group that Manziel and Bridgewater are in. So if history is any indication, it will be a miracle if both of these guys are good picks. We’ll be beating the odds, in fact, if even one of them turns out to be just an OK pick.
| FIRST-ROUNDERS OUTSIDE THE TOP 15 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Pick | |
| 1987 | 26 | • Jim Harbaugh |
| 1991 | 16 | Dan McGwire |
| 1991 | 24 | Todd Marinovich |
| 1992 | 25 | Tommy Maddox |
| 1997 | 26 | Jim Druckenmiller |
| 2000 | 18 | • Chad Pennington |
| 2002 | 32 | Patrick Ramsey |
| 2003 | 19 | Kyle Boller |
| 2003 | 22 | Rex Grossman |
| 2004 | 22 | J.P. Losman |
| 2005 | 24 | •• Aaron Rodgers |
| 2005 | 25 | Jason Campbell |
| 2007 | 22 | Brady Quinn |
| 2008 | 18 | •• Joe Flacco |
| 2009 | 17 | Josh Freeman |
| 2010 | 25 | Tim Tebow |
| 2012 | 22 | Brandon Weeden |
| 2013 | 16 | EJ Manuel |
| 2014 | 22 | Johnny Manziel |
| 2014 | 32 | Teddy Bridgewater |
—Ian Allan