Draft a quarterback early in the first round, then what?
That figures to be a hot debate topic for the Patriots a little more than a month down the road, whether they take a quarterback at No. 3 during the NFL draft, or move down the board and take him a little later in the first round.
Naturally, there will be pressure to start the rookie immediately. But is it more prudent to have him sit, learn and develop for a year or more?
That’s the million dollar question and tug-of-war decision the Patriots will be facing if they do the expected, and bring aboard what they hope will be the next face of the franchise.
Eventually, they’re going to have to decide whether it’s trial by fire with the rookie quarterback, or slow and steady wins the race.
The best course of action? After speaking with several former quarterbacks and football experts, the opinions are all over the map.
Former Patriots quarterback Scott Zolak, co-host of 98.5′s “Zolak and Bertrand” show, has little doubt what should happen, especially if the team takes a quarterback at No. 3.
Whether it’s Drake Maye or Jayden Daniels, the likely choices if the Patriot make the pick at No. 3, Zolak classified the decision as a no-brainer.
“If you pick a quarterback at No. 3, you don’t have the luxury to have him sit back and develop,” Zolak said. “They picked Drew Bledsoe No. 1 overall, and he didn’t sit. If you have a franchise-changing pick, I’m sorry, you have to play him.”
Others don’t subscribe to that logic. They believe the rookie, no matter how high he’s drafted, should sit at least a year.
Sirius XM NFL radio commentator Solomon Wilcots, a former NFL defensive back, aligns with the sit-and-wait strategy.
“I think it’s absurd to say to yourself, if I draft a player that high, in the top five, he’s got to be a Day 1 starter,” Wilcots said. “I hear that often, and that comes from the scouting or evaluating community. Sometimes coaches try to line up with the evaluation community, and they end up pushing a guy out there just because he was drafted high.
“We’ve seen the examples. This has failed epically,” he went on. “There’s more data points suggesting that’s the wrong way to do it than anything that suggests it’s the right way to do it. So I’m totally against that mindset.”
Wilcots believes that sometimes coaches are pressured into playing a kid given his draft status, but that ultimately hurts the rookie in the long run.
“Where are the adults in the building that understand how to raise a quarterback? There’s too many people who let the fan base dictate their timetable, or they let the ownership dictate their timetable. They get antsy and abandon the plan,” Wilcots said. “Andy Reid didn’t abandon his plan. He had (Patrick) Mahomes, the best quarterback in the league, sit a year. Mahomes had to work for it. He didn’t just walk in and have the job handed to him … Tom Brady didn’t walk in and just get the job. Carson Palmer, the first overall pick, sat. So why are we doing this?
“We have more examples of the sit-and-wait scenario being the most successful than the throw-em-in-there, and let them learn by trial and error.”
In truth, there are plenty of examples to support either narrative.
As Wilcots stated, Mahomes is the headliner from the wait-a-year approach. While the Kansas City Chiefs moved up the board during the 2017 draft to get him at No. 10, he sat behind Alex Smith for a year.
Aaron Rodgers is another who wasn’t rushed in, largely because Brett Favre was in front of him.
Favre also sat his rookie year in Atlanta in 1991. A third-stringer with the Falcons, he was traded to Green Bay in 1992, and sat until Don Majkowski, aka “the Majik Man,” was injured in a September game that season. Favre replaced him, and went on to start every Packers game through 2007.
On the flip side, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert and most recently, C.J. Stroud, are examples of those who were thrown into the fire right away, and weren’t set back in the process.
Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner came down in the middle. He believes there isn’t one set of rules that’s either black or white. The conditions vary.
“I think it’s case-by-case, situation by situation, and individual by individual,” Warner told MassLive. “The makeup of the individual, what they’re capable of doing, where they’re at as a player.
“I think there are times when a player is not ready, meaning they don’t have the skillset and the background of what they need at the position to be successful. So by throwing them in, and forcing them to play, they simply get into survival mode,” the NFL Network analyst went on. “It’s not teaching mode, it’s not growing mode ... it’s ‘Here, go try to win.’ And I don’t think those guys really get that much better.”
However, there are those who are capable of succeeding no matter the variables, or situation they’re thrust into. Warner doesn’t have a problem having those rookies start right away.
“(It’s) guys like an Andrew Luck-type player, who has all of those skills,” Warner said. “So even if the team around him isn’t great, he’s going to be able to have a level of success, he’s going to be able to bounce back and get better by playing, as opposed to sitting and watching behind someone else.”
Warner pointed to Steelers quarterback Justin Fields, who started with the Bears as a rookie, as an example of a someone who wasn’t ready as a rookie, and played in survival mode.
“We saw some really special things, and we saw some good football in moments, but the consistency wasn’t there,” Warner said. “You can point to a lot of things, him not being ready, coupled with all the issues they had there, so here we are three years down the road, and we have no idea who he is.
“Then you have Jordan Love who is the opposite. He came in, you knew there were issues, you knew he was a project, they had to clean some things up, and you wondered if he could be that guy. So he sits for three years ... and now he looks, after one year, like he could be the next franchise quarterback for Green Bay.”
In New England, as Zolak mentioned above, the Patriots started first overall pick Drew Bledsoe right away. He won games, but also got pounded in the process. Eventually, that pounding took its toll.
More recently, the Patriots started Mac Jones, the 15th overall pick, his first season. He supplanted incumbent Cam Newton.
“Mac Jones looked better than Cam Newton in training camp, how do you not play him?” Zolak said, referring to Jones’ rookie season.
The wheels, however, started coming off for Jones during his second season. Josh McDaniels, his first offensive coordinator, left to be the head coach of the Raiders. Then Jones was asked to learn a new system under Matt Patricia, who had never run an offense, much less the one he was trying to teach. Patricia had also never called offensive plays.
Beyond that, Jones was also sabotaged by a porous offensive line, and having to put up points without the benefit of difference-making receivers.
Former NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck called that “a textbook example of how to not handle a young quarterback.”
Hasselbeck ardently supports having the rookie sit, especially if a team doesn’t have a good offensive line that can adequately protect the rookie, or enough receivers who can get open in a pinch.
“I’m in favor of the quarterback sitting, and playing when he’s ready to play,” Hasselbeck said. “I think it protects him from injury. I think it protects his teammates from injury.
“This whole idea that you can only progress as a quarterback if you’re out there doing it on Sunday during the game your rookie year, I think that’s a lazy idea. There’s a lot of ways to train a quarterback while someone else is playing. And, some of the best quarterbacks didn’t start out as the starter. Some of the quarterbacks that are talented enough that don’t make it, I think part of the reason they don’t make it, is they start before they’re ready.”
That may very well have been the case with Bryce Young in Carolina last season. The 2022 first overall pick not only wasn’t ready, but had little help in terms of an offensive line and supporting cast. Young completed just 59.8 % of his passes. He threw 11 touchdowns with 10 interceptions. He was sacked 62 times.
“I do think there are some teams that don’t seem to care about public pressure on Twitter, and who the starting quarterback is going to be. I feel like the Patriots would be one of those teams,” Hasselbeck said. “But there are teams that literally care about that. And ownership gets involved because of what they read online, or what they heard on talk radio.”
So Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt have to adopt Bill Belichick’s popular edict and continue to “ignore the noise.”
Hasselbeck believes a rookie quarterback needs to earn the job, and show he’s ready, before putting him in there. And by ready, that means recognizing and understanding what defenses are throwing at him. Understanding where to avoid throwing the football to prevent pass-catchers from getting hurt unnecessarily. In other words, avoid throwing what’s known in football parlance as a medicine ball.
“If a guy’s truly not ready, playing him because you drafted him high, you’re going to get a wide receiver you care about, or a tight end you care about, or a running back you care about, hurt,” Hasselbeck said. “But as soon as your quarterback knows where to go with the ball on third down going against complicated blitz schemes, then play him. But he’s gotta earn it. You can’t just say he’s going to play because he’s the third pick. You’ve gotta earn it.”
Stroud earned it. The Houston rookie was in a competition with Davis Mills last year, emerged from that battle and led the Texans to the playoffs. We’ll see if the quarterback the Patriots draft can do the same going up against Jacoby Brissett, and maybe, Bailey Zappe.
We’ll see how Mayo and Van Pelt view what’s best for a first-round rookie quarterback.
Zolak made it sound like the decision wasn’t complicated. If the Patriots select a quarterback with the third pick, that’s an indication the team believes he’s ready to play. If teams have any major concerns about a quarterback up top, they shouldn’t take him in the first place.
ESPN senior draft analyst Mel Kiper, meanwhile, speaking on the “Eye on Foxborough” podcast, offered his perspective.
“I think when you really look at it right now, and you (talk about) quarterbacks in the NFL and where we are right now, can you sit for a year? Yeah, you can,” Kiper said, “but it’s not preferable by the the guys I talk to.”
Kiper brought up the case of Maye, who could go as high as No. 2, possibly No. 3 to the Patriots, or somewhere below that.
“Where does he go? Will he be afforded that opportunity (to sit)?,” Kiper said. “I think he needs to sit for a year. But in the NFL right now, he probably won’t be able to.
“The rookie quarterbacks always play,” he went on. “We see that every year ... this notion that you gotta sit, watch and learn, you gotta adapt to the league. You can’t go by the old days. This is not a sit, watch and learn for three-four years (league).”
Warner disagreed. He doesn’t view it quite that way. He believes whether the quarterback starts or not depends on the situation, and how advanced the rookie is both mentally and physically. It’s possible some of those qualities will allow a team to put the kid behind an iffy offensive line right out of the gate. In other cases, it might not.
“Can your quarterback process information well? If he does, maybe the offensive line thing isn’t as big of a factor,” Warner said. “If he can’t, maybe it becomes a huge factor. He becomes a quarterback who’s running around, looking at the pass rush ... so you got to know who your guy is, and his limitations.
“Are we going to wreck him? Do we have the patience to grow him. Does he have the mentality to grow, even when he’s going through struggles. Some of these guys haven’t struggled before,” he went on. “I just don’t think there’s one cookie-cutter way of doing it for different guys.”
For the Patriots, they can’t afford to ruin another first round quarterback. If the player they choose needs time, then give him time. If he’s ready, and can handle the job whether the right elements are in place around him or not, there’s no need to wait. Get him out there.
Said Warner: “It really has to come down to how you want to play football, what that looks like, and what your quarterback looks like at that point in time.”