As the football-following world becomes more and more excited about the NFL prospects of quarterbacks Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels and Bo Mix and Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy and Michael Penix, Jr., here’s a counter to the notion that the 2024 draft is loaded with can’t-miss prospects.
In 2021, most of the five quarterbacks taken in the top 15 selections have missed.
Last year, the third overall pick — 49ers quarterback Trey Lance — was jettisoned to the Cowboys for a fourth-round pick. Last week, the fifteenth selection, Mac Jones of the Patriots, was dumped to the Jaguars for a sixth-round pick. Now, Justin Fields (who was the eleventh overall pick that year) has been sent to the Steelers for a sixth-round pick, in 2025.
Three of those quarterbacks were picked before Micah Parsons. (D’oh.)
Meanwhile, the Jets might have to give a sixth-round pick to get someone to take quarterback Zach Wilson’s $5.4 million guaranteed compensation package off their hands. (He was the consensus second overall pick that year.)
That’s four of the five, either traded for far less than their draft status or, so far, not even tradable. The only exception, Trevor Lawrence, was dancing on the edge of becoming a franchise quarterback until the Jaguars collapsed down the stretch last year. Now, a fourth season might be needed to decide whether he has lived up to his status as the first overall pick in the draft.
Actually, the entire class has been, well, not good through three years. Others drafted in 2021 were Kyle Trask, Kellen Mond, Davis Mills, Ian Book, and Sam Ehlinger. (The undrafted class contains no Tony Romos or Kurt Warners, either.)
This year, it seems as if several teams are prepared to pin their hopes on a rookie quarterback. And while this year’s class could be a bumper crop, the 2021 harvest has been a disaster for every team that took a quarterback, other than Jacksonville. As the Draft Industrial Complex approaches the annual late April crescendo of proclamations that every pick is a winner, it makes sense to remember that it’s still a crapshoot, and at best a coin flip.