The Rams have swung the trade for the first pick of the draft. They now have the ability to select Carson Wentz or Jared Goff. Now what? At least for this year, probably not much. The track record for rookie quarterbacks is remarkably ugly.
There have been a couple of notable exceptions – Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III, Andrew Luck – but it’s far more common for quarterbacks to struggle in their first year.
In this century, 42 have been selected with first-round picks. Just over half of those guys started over half of their games in their first year. And of that 23-quarterback subset, only four were able to be top-15 quarterbacks right out of the box.
And by “top 15”, note that I’m using the apples-to-apples grading of looking at production per game. Otherwise, you can run into the deal where a player starts all 16 games and winds up in the top 15 simply through attrition.
Especially with the kind of offense that’s around him, it looks very unlikely that the new Los Angeles quarterback will put up stats of any significance in his first year.
| FIRST-ROUND QUARTERBACKS STARTING AT LEAST EIGHT GAMES | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | St | Pass | Run | TDP | Int | TDR | FPG | Rk |
| 2002 | David Carr, Hou. | 16 | 162 | 18 | 9 | 15 | 3 | 13.5 | 28th |
| 2002 | Joey Harrington, Det. | 12 | 187 | 0 | 12 | 16 | 0 | 13.4 | 29th |
| 2003 | Byron Leftwich, Jac. | 13 | 207 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 2 | 15.8 | 20th |
| 2003 | Kyle Boller, Balt. | 9 | 139 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 0 | 11.6 | 31st |
| 2004 | Ben Roethlisberger, Pitt. | 13 | 188 | 11 | 15 | 9 | 1 | 15.6 | 24th |
| 2008 | Matt Ryan, Atl. | 16 | 215 | 7 | 16 | 11 | 1 | 15.9 | 21st |
| 2008 | Joe Flacco, Balt. | 16 | 186 | 11 | 14 | 12 | 2 | 14.8 | 26th |
| 2009 | Matthew Stafford, Det. | 10 | 227 | 11 | 13 | 20 | 2 | 19.0 | 14th |
| 2009 | Josh Freeman, T.B. | 9 | 204 | 17 | 10 | 18 | 0 | 16.8 | 23rd |
| 2009 | Mark Sanchez, NYJ | 15 | 163 | 7 | 12 | 20 | 3 | 13.5 | 28th |
| 2010 | Sam Bradford, St.L. | 16 | 220 | 4 | 18 | 15 | 1 | 16.2 | 24th |
| 2011 | Cam Newton, Car. | 16 | 253 | 44 | 21 | 17 | 14 | 27.8 | 4th |
| 2011 | Blaine Gabbert, Jac. | 14 | 154 | 7 | 12 | 11 | 0 | 11.8 | 33rd |
| 2012 | Robert Griffin III, Wash. | 15 | 213 | 54 | 20 | 5 | 7 | 24.2 | 5th |
| 2012 | Andrew Luck, Ind. | 16 | 273 | 16 | 23 | 18 | 5 | 22.9 | 10th |
| 2012 | Brandon Weeden, Clev. | 15 | 226 | 7 | 14 | 17 | 0 | 15.8 | 27th |
| 2012 | Ryan Tannehill, Mia. | 16 | 206 | 13 | 12 | 13 | 2 | 15.6 | 28th |
| 2013 | EJ Manuel, Buff. | 10 | 197 | 19 | 11 | 9 | 2 | 17.7 | 25th |
| 2014 | Teddy Bridgewater, Minn. | 12 | 231 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 1 | 18.6 | 21st |
| 2014 | Blake Bortles, Jac. | 13 | 207 | 30 | 9 | 15 | 0 | 16.2 | 27th |
| 2015 | Marcus Mariota, Tenn. | 12 | 235 | 21 | 19 | 10 | 3 | 22.2 | 16th |
| 2015 | Jameis Winston, T.B. | 16 | 253 | 13 | 22 | 15 | 6 | 21.8 | 17th |
—Ian Allan