There has been quite a flurry of combine and draft news recently. One thing I wanted to point at was this notion that 1st round QB's are more successful then others. I thought to myself, is this really true? So I decided to take a look at all the starting QB's in the league and see how they played.
You can get the full excel file here.
The results, much to my surprise, are pretty much even. 17 QB's were taken in the 1st round and this year they had an average rating of 82.87. The 15 remaining QB's were spread out through the rounds (or went undrafted) and had an average rating of 83.16. Just a tad bit shocking?
So I broke it down even further. Top 5 QB's had an average rating this year of 81.2. When you added in the rest of the 1st round QB's (picks 6 to 32), the number jumped to 88.05. The average rating for QB's round 2-7 was 79.84 and three undrafted QB's had an average rating of 96.43.
Looking at the numbers, and the breakdown specifically, it's quite clear that while 1st round prospects generally have the highest ratings, their was a huge surge in numbers from players drafted at spots 10 to around 40. In fact, they had four of the top five ratings (Phillip Rivers being the exception).
So, before anyone starts saying that a first round QB is the only way to go, pause and take a look at the chart. Yes, you have rookies thrown in there that can skew the rankings down. But that wouldn't be different then any other year when fresh players will take their spots as the new crop of QB's.
If you take into account the numbers, picking a QB is really just a crapshoot. You have players like Jason Campbell (1st round, 25th pick) having higher ratings then a lot of top ten (and even top five) QB's. You have undrafted players like Matt Moore and Tony Romo posting up ratings that are barely behind players like Peyton Manning.
One thing we should all agree on is that hopefully the Rams will be lucky this year, if and when they pick a QB.