“Jalen Hurts is not an NFL-caliber QB.” -random internet moron from a chat thread this week
These are the words that prompted me to write an article I’ve been thinking about for six months now; a complete ranking of the starting QBs in the NFL. I have no idea what the thought process was of the commenter that made the above remark (one has to speculate that he’s some kind of Eagle hater), but it does force one to think: what exactly is meant by “NFL-caliber QB”? If it means, “this player deserves to be one of the 96+ quarterbacks that draw an NFL paycheck”, then of course Hurts is an NFL caliber QB. If it means, “this player is one of the 32 starting caliber quarterbacks in the league”, it’s clear that Jalen deserves that title as well. If it means “this player is a top shelf QB that a franchise can pin its long term hopes on”, well, that’s a different issue. It begs the question, where does Jalen Hurts fit in the overall QB picture in the NFL, and what does that mean for the Birds’ playoff prospects? Hopefully we’ll get a few answers here.
A few thoughts before we begin:
I’ve seen dozens of articles in this category over the years; generally they break the players down into different tiers of quality. Most use five or six tiers to do this, but as far as I’m concerned there are only three: Tier 1 are players that actively make the team better, that elevate their supporting cast, and that can regularly rise above circumstances to carry their team to victory. Tier 2 QBs are players that you can win games with, but not because of, their presence on your roster. They will, from time to time, perform like Tier 1 guys but not nearly consistently enough to earn that designation. Tier 3 QBs will hold your team back more often than anything else; you may win some games but usually this will happen in spite of your QB, not because of him. Like Tier 2 above, these players will have games where they play in a higher tier but these will be the exception, not the norm.
It should be noted, if it isn’t clear already, that no QB is in any one of these tiers 100% of the time. These are merely the categories that the player will generally fall into, and into which they will most comfortably be projected.
I have the players slotted in the tier in which I believe they will perform in 2022. This is meaningful for young QBs especially, as they may have Tier 1 promise but are a couple years away from getting there. On the opposite end of that spectrum, guys like Brady and Rodgers are Tier 1 players right now but may not be there for more than a couple years.
The overall ranking (I’ve ranked 37 players that either have started, or will start, a game this season) is largely determined by the following exercise: “Would Player A be traded for Player B, ignoring their contracts?”. Obviously this is a largely ridiculous test, considering that most teams would be hesitant to make a marginal improvement at the position given how hard it is to get a new player up to speed at QB. We’re going to try to evaluate these theoretical moves in a vacuum.
It’s worth noting (and we’ll talk about this in more detail before we’re done) that teams can win big with almost any tier-caliber player. In the last twenty seasons, teams with all three tiers have won the Super Bowl, including four Tier 2 or 3 guys in the past ten years.
I'll reference TYP and RPP once or twice; here's the link that explains those metrics.
Enough of the warmups, let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.
TIER THREE (players that hold the team back)
37. Mitch Trubisky, Pittsburgh. How this guy was the #2 overall pick in the draft will always be a massive question. The countdown is on in the steel city for how quickly he’ll be replaced as a starter.
36. Davis Mills, Houston. Mills is likely in an impossible situation on a team with minimal NFL talent. He’ll have the rest of the year to prove me wrong with this ranking.
35. Malik Willis, Titans. He isn’t starting yet but the chances are excellent he will be by the end of the season. I’m a Willis fan; no prospect has had his ridiculous combination of pure arm strength and raw speed since at least Mike Vick. Also like Vick was at the time, Willis is likely a couple years away from being ready to be a full time starter in this league.
34. Cooper Rush, Dallas. Cowboys fans are frantically talking themselves into this guy being some sort of star. Yes, he’s 3-0 as a starter, with those three wins coming against a thoroughly mediocre Minnesota team last year, the struggling Bengals and the middling Giants of this season (21 PPG in those contests, YAWN). Maybe he’ll be Tony Romo 2.0, an out-of-nowhere find that starts for a decade, but I doubt it.
33. Geno Smith, Seahawks. Here’s a player that Seattle will spend all season supporting, and all offseason frantically trying to replace. If Drew Lock ever sees the field, he’ll slot in right about here as well.
32. Zach Wilson, Jets. I know we need to see how he looks when he gets back from injury, but I just don’t think this kid turns into anything. I’ll be happy to apologize in this space if he proves me wrong in a couple years.
31. Trey Lance, 49ers. We’ll have to wait at least another year to find out if San Francisco has something with this kid. He clearly has a mountain of upside, but as we know isn’t anywhere close to realizing it yet.
30. Justin Fields, Bears. Based on performance, he likely deserves a lower ranking. I’m giving Fields a pass due to the complete dysfunction the Bears offense has had during his time there. Fields could legitimately have been the second overall pick of his draft, so there’s hope, but he’s running out of time.
29. Baker Mayfield, Panthers. His supporters will point to his 2020 season as evidence he’s actually good. Unfortunately, we have three seasons and counting of mediocre to bad play to weigh against it.
28. Joe Flacco, Jets. No one wants to roll out Flacco as their starter if they have playoff ambitions. I’m still stunned that Baltimore kept him around as long as they did.
27. Daniel Jones, Giants. I feel a little sorry for Jones, who at times looks like he may be more than what he’s been, but it’s hard to think of a player who’s had a worse OL than he has since Jones has been in the league (2019 on). It’s also hard to think of a team with worse coaching in that time frame. Perhaps they’ve ruined him. Side note: Jones, as well as Fields, Wilson and Trubisky above, are examples of why really bad teams should probably attend seminars on how to draft and develop quarterbacks, sort of like how new parents take classes on dealing with infants.
26. Jacoby Brissett, Browns. Brissett has been a pleasant surprise for Cleveland so far, with above average stats across the board. I still don’t think of him as a starter (neither has any of the teams he’s been a part of so far in his pro career). He’s a fine backup that will likely do what Cleveland needs him to do, coming off the bench, but that’s his ceiling.
25. Jameis Winston, Saints. I must admit to being on the bandwagon when Winston was drafted; I felt he had a real shot to be great. Seven years and a mountain of turnovers later (1.9 turnovers per game for his career?!?!?), Winston is the best that Tier 3 has to offer. Had he gotten to spend more time with Sean Payton, it’s possible he’d move into Tier 2 but the early results in 2022 have not been promising.
TIER TWO (players you can win with, but not because of)
24. Deshaun Watson, Browns. Let’s leave aside the off field stuff for a moment (which should probably get him off this list altogether, but let’s see what happens). If there were no suspension, the FLOOR for Watson is probably somewhere around #8. However, I’d sooner have an average QB for 17 games than a great one for six. If and when he comes back, how will the two year layoff affect him? Will his teammates have his back? Is he going to get the Mike Vick treatment from the officials (where they are a step slower to blow the whistle on late hits)? Watson has too much raw talent for Tier 3 but too many question marks to go higher than this in 2022.
23. Marcus Mariota, Falcons. I admit I was very wrong on MM coming out of Oregon; I saw him as the next Aaron Rodgers. Clearly that was off, but he is a serviceable starter that can make things happen running or throwing. Still, his longtime struggles to get close to his ceiling prevent him from ranking higher.
22. Jared Goff, Lions. For a former #1 overall selection who’s never missed a start, including a Super Bowl, and has made a Pro Bowl, Goff certainly gets his fair share of criticism. Like Mariota above, however, he hasn’t quite been a consistent difference maker, and this Lions stint is likely his last chance to prove he deserves a starting spot.
21. Ryan Tannehill, Titans. Tannehill’s spectacular 2019 season tends to artificially inflate his reputation, and he is following the great tradition of such luminaries as Josh Freeman, RG3, Nick Foles and Carson Wentz as quarterbacks who had a red hot season (or a portion thereof), and never got back to that level again.
20. Matt Ryan, Colts. I’ve long felt that Matty Ice never got his due as a top QB; in his prime he was a top 5 player at the position but never had consistent help from his defense. At this point he’s a bit washed up, and there’s a chance this is his last season as a full time starter.
19. Carson Wentz, Commaders. Only listed this high (his floor is probably around #25) because he is still showing flashes from time to time of his old brilliance. Wentz is in Tier 2 because he vacillates between Tiers 1 and 3, almost from play to play. I truly can’t think of many other players with that degree of variance. The unpredictability is why he’s on this third team in three years.
18. Jimmy Garoppolo, 49ers. Jimmy G might as well be the anti-Wentz, he’s so steadily unspectacular. He’s got a high floor but a very low ceiling. Destined to be a backup after this year.
17. Mac Jones, Patriots. Meet the new Jimmy G! Jones’s one year as a starter at Alabama was about as charmed a year as one could hope for, surrounded by future first round picks at the skill spots, the nation’s best OL and an excellent coaching staff. Jones landed in an extremely QB friendly environment in New England and, while reasonably productive for a rookie, clearly did not have the staff’s trust (as evidenced by his three total passing attempts in the critical win over Buffalo). You’ll notice he’s about as close as possible to the exact middle of the QB rankings, which is how I expect his career to unfold. Nothing wrong with that.
16. Derek Carr, Raiders. We’ve just started to get to the QBs that are generally considered to be quality players, and of these, Carr (and the guy immediately after him on this list) are probably the least exciting. His absolute peak as a passer (2020) only landed him at #9 in passer rating. One wonders what might have been, had the Raiders bothered to get him a quality OL.
15. Kirk Cousins, Vikings. You could probably ditto everything that was said about Carr for Cousins as well. His career stats as a passer are perfectly fine, but we all know in our hearts that any deep postseason run he’ll ever have will come on the back of a great defense.
14. Kyler Murray, Cardinals. Murray is one of the most exciting QBs to watch in this league, but the multitude of turnovers he has so far been bogged down by really blunts his overall value. By TYP, he’s almost perfectly average (career TYP of 6.23, NFL average 6.20). His team clearly doesn’t fully trust him (hence the study clause in his extension), and this is particularly concerning considering his head coach hand picked him as the one player he really wanted to coach. Certainly there’s room for Murray to prove all of this analysis wrong, but for now he’s a rich man’s Jameis Winston in my book.
13. Tua Tagovailoa, Dolphins. If anyone thinks that Mac Jones had it really good at Alabama (as I do), check out Tua’s supporting cast his final year in college: Najee Harris, DeVonta Smith, Jerry Jeudy, Henry Ruggs, Brian Robinson, Jaylen Waddle, Jerome Ford, Deonte Brown, Landon Dickerson, Alex Leatherwood, Evan Neal, Jedrick Wills. If you’re keeping track, that’s eight future #1 picks and 12 overall NFL picks. The amount of help he had was borderline absurd. I mention this because I was among the minority that didn’t think much of Tua’s pro prospects coming out of college, mostly because quarterbacks that come from NFL factory programs do not generally have NFL success (in the last 30 years only Clemson qualified as an NFL factory that produced good NFL QBs; Florida St., Miami, Oklahoma, USC, Ohio St. and Alabama generally have not). Having said all that, Tua is off to a statistical hot start this year (although his big afternoon against the Ravens was unmistakably fueled by the injuries that decimated Baltimore's secondary). Maybe he proves me completely wrong, or maybe his hot start is a mirage that will cool as the year moves on. We’ll find out in a couple months.
12. Trevor Lawrence, Jaguars. If this ranking was based purely on upside, Lawrence would probably be in the top 5. Few players ever had a higher ceiling. We’ll see if Dougie P continues to mine his talents.
11. JALEN HURTS, EAGLES. Here’s our boy. Some of you Birds fans are currently excoriating me for ranking Hurts below Dak Prescott; here’s my response: if the remainder of this season plays out for both players the way it has started, the rankings will certainly be reversed. We do need to tap the brakes on the Hurts Hype just a little bit; he’s had a great three game stretch but there’s a longstanding tradition of Eagles QBs playing out of their minds for a part of the year and never hitting that level again (we’ve already noted Foles and Wentz, but don’t forget AJ Feely, Jeff Garcia, Kevin Kolb and Mike Vick, and that’s just in the last 20 years). I want to see Hurts in a couple scenarios before we anoint him as the Next Big Thing: 1) playing from behind in the second half, 2) playing a top shelf defense, 3) playing in the playoffs. If he continues the standard of play he’s shown so far, and if we still feel this way after he’s played through the scenarios I mentioned, #11 will be too low.
10. Dak Prescott, Cowboys. Prescott is right on the bubble between “high level dual threat star”, sort of a more consistent Donovan McNabb, and “rich man’s Kirk Cousins”. On balance he’s an above-average passer (his career TYP is just below 7, which is very good) that offers the power run option. He’s also been the beneficiary of a solid supporting cast (over the seven years he’s been a pro, the cast includes Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, Cole Beasley, Ezekiel Elliott, Tony Pollard, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, Ceedee Lamb and one of the NFL’s two or three best offensive lines). The general lack of playoff success puts a damper on what’s been a perfectly fine regular season career to this point.
9. Russell Wilson, Broncos. Russ is perhaps the best candidate in my top ten to end up much lower in the next year or two; I’ve been following him since his NC State days and to my eyes he looks like he’s lost a step as both a runner and a thrower. The Broncos supporting offensive cast is likely a lateral move compared to Seattle’s, and the coaching staff there is clearly a step or two lower. Denver has scored a whopping 43 total points in three games; likely not what they thought they’d get this season.
8. Matthew Stafford, Rams. Stafford has long been the Crown Prince of Tier 2 in my mind. He’s undeniably talented but, excluding last season, has not delivered or really even come close. I’m not inclined to count his Rams tenure in his favor, largely because he’s led the league in picks since he was traded to LA (22 total in just 20 games, yeesh), and because Sean McVay’s system is a QB maker. I think the bottom line with Stafford is that as talented as he is, he is still largely dependent on his supporting cast and coaching environment. Nothing wrong with that, but by definition such a player absolutely belongs in Tier 2.
TIER ONE (players that win games on their own, consistently)
7. Joe Burrow, Bengals. The Bengal’s run to the Super Bowl last year was almost entirely on account of Burrow’s toughness and relentlessness. He was reminiscent of Tom Brady in that way. Still, the copious number of sacks he’s taken plus his mediocre 13-15-1 regular season record has to land at least partially on his shoulders. I do expect things to improve for Burrow and the Bengals at some point this year, but for now we have to consider Burrow the most likely player to drop to Tier 2 next season.
6. Lamar Jackson, Ravens. Jackson has hit his contract year in the best way possible. When he’s at his best he’s possibly the best player in the league. I do have lingering questions about his ability to stay healthy, and his ability to produce as a pure passer in the playoffs when a defense takes away the run game. That last sentence likely sounded more critical than I intended it to; I think they are legitimate concerns but simply put; there are few if any players as electric as Jackson, and he’d easily represent an upgrade over 80% of the league’s starters.
5. Tom Brady, Buccaneers. TB12 has real concerns over his mental state for the first time in his unprecedented career; I mean, he already retired once and has spent a lot of time away from practice. My long time contention is that Brady’s best asset is his laser focus on the sport, which led to his fanatical training regimen, his practice habits, his willingness to sacrifice whatever it takes to win and his overall consistency and endurance. If the mental focus on which his game is built is starting to erode, one wonders if he’ll have that killer edge come December and January. Obviously betting against Brady has largely proved to be a fool’s errand, but even the most ardent Brady fan would likely agree that something feels different this season. The fact that there are these reasonable concerns but TB12 STILL ranks this high is a testament to his brilliance.
4. Justin Herbert, Chargers. We’ve officially reached the part in the rankings where you could rank these last four guys in any order and I’m not sure there’d be a complaint from me. Herbert was (by both TYP and RPP) the only player in the Brady/Rodgers stratosphere last year. He typifies the new mold of top NFL QBs that are tall, athletic and high level passer to the entire field. Health questions drop him this far.
3. Josh Allen, Bills. The only complaint I’d have about Allen is that he tends to put the ball in harm’s way more often than average. In that way he’s a billionaire’s Kyler Murray; super talented but a little boom or bust potential. If that’s true (and statistically, it is), why is he ranked this high? Frankly, I don’t think there’s a better player when he’s on, and he’s on far more often than not. Brilliant draft pick by Buffalo, and even better in the developmental aspect.
2. Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs. Ridiculous talent that I think I’d make my #1 choice if all franchises had to start over and my team had the top pick. He’s got all the physical and mental gifts of the guys ranked just below him, but he’s stayed healthier than Herbert and protects the ball better than Allen. Why isn't he #1? Well, …..
1. Aaron Rodgers, Packers. … because this guy is still in the league. Rodgers is still the rare elite passer who was also a dangerous runner (perfecting the mold originally cast by Steve Young; Rodgers has done this better and longer than the Hall of Famer). What sets Rodgers apart from his competitors from the first half of his career (Brady, Manning, Brees) is his top-shelf scrambling ability. What sets him apart from the younger guys in his mold is the experience that he brings to the table (what can a defense do that he hasn’t already seen?). I said earlier that I’d take Mahomes as my pick to start a franchise because of his relative youth; Rodgers is the player I’d take to win a single game in 2022 if my life depended on it.
So that’s my list. What conclusions can we draw from it? More specifically, what does this mean for the Eagles playoff hopes?
To answer this question, I went back forty-plus years (to 1981, the start of DVOA data) and measured the rankings of every Super Bowl winning QB in DVOA, Passer Rating and ANY/A. For each player, I took the average of the three stats to get a sense of where that player ranked among his peers that season. Of course, each year is different in terms of how many quality players existed at each position, so to keep it simple I grouped the players exactly how they are grouped above, with Tier 1 stopping with the #7 player and Tier 2 stopping with the #24 player. I found that (among those 41 seasons) Tier 1 QBs were the winner 28 times (68%), Tier 2 players prevailed 9 times (22%) which left 4 (10%) for Tier 3. The average winner ranked right at #8 (this was true if I averaged either the yearly average referenced above, or the grand average of all 126 data points I measured). Unsurprisingly, quarterbacks finishing first or second accounted for the largest share (11 wins, 27%). QBs ranked #7 won five times (12%), more than any other ranking (first and second excluded). QBs ranked #25 or lower accounted for as many wins as QBs ranked third (four).
My conclusion: while no one will argue that having one of the best two or three quarterbacks in a given season enhances your Super Bowl odds, winners can come from almost any bracket. If I’m correct ranking Jalen Hurts where I did, he is certainly good enough to give the Birds a viable chance, especially if he manages to work his way up toward that magic #8 level. Stay tuned…