Do you have to draft a QB high?

One of the topics (or, more accurately, one of the many tangents) of the most recent Pro-Football-Reference.com podcast was about the subject of "star quarterbacks" predominantly coming from very high (i.e., primarily first-round) draft picks and how teams can best find their quarterbacks. Says JKL around the six-minute mark:

The best option, I think, is to go for the elite talent at the top of the draft...Yeah, there are busts, but the upside there is just too great.

Recent busts -- Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Cade McNown, et al -- are well known, as are the success stories, like Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb, and Ben Roethlisberger. But are they absolutely necessary? Do you have to pick a QB at the top of the draft to succeed? After all, if you don't pick a QB with your top pick, you're picking another (probably very good) player. And even the most jaded QB-loving fan would probably admit that quarterbacks tend to be a touch overvalued and definitely overdrafted.

So, where do starting quarterbacks come from? I compiled a list of starting quarterbacks* in 2008, what round they were drafted in, and whether they were with their original teams -- in other words, a first-round pick playing for a team that he wasn't drafted by didn't help his original team in 2008, so, in a sense, that team's first pick was a "bust."

* Here's the rub, though...rather than try to pass off guys like Ryan Fitzpatrick and Ken Dorsey as "starting quarterbacks," I defined each team's "starting quarterback" by the following two rules. He is:

A) The guy the team would have started if there had been a week 18; and
B) The guy the team would have started if healthy.

Point A lets me not worry about subsequent free-agent moves, trades, retirements, and so on. Point B lets me take the guy who "should" be the starter for the team (like Tom Brady over Matt Cassel) rather than a guy forced into the role. Here's the list:

Team	Quarterback	Round	Orig. Team?
Baltimore Ravens	Joe Flacco	1	Y
Oakland Raiders	JaMarcus Russell	1	Y
Philadelphia Eagles	Donovan McNabb	1	Y
Atlanta Falcons	Matt Ryan	1	Y
Pittsburgh Steelers	Ben Roethlisberger	1	Y
New York Giants	Eli Manning	1	Y
Denver Broncos	Jay Cutler	1	Y
Washington Redskins	Jason Campbell	1	Y
Cleveland Browns	Brady Quinn	1	Y
San Diego Chargers	Phillip Rivers	1	Y
Cincinnati Bengals	Carson Palmer	1	Y
Green Bay Packers	Aaron Rodgers	1	Y
Indianapolis Colts	Peyton Manning	1	Y
Detroit Lions	Daunte Culpepper	1	N
Miami Dolphins	Chad Pennington	1	N
Tennessee Titans	Kerry Collins	1	N
Minnesota Vikings	Tarvaris Jackson	2	Y
New York Jets	Brett Favre	2	N
Houston Texans	Matt Schaub	2	N
New Orleans Saints	Drew Brees	2	N
Buffalo Bills	Trent Edwards	3	Y
Chicago Bears	Kyle Orton	4	Y
Jacksonville Jaguars	David Garrard	4	Y
New England Patriots	Tom Brady	6	Y
St. Louis Rams	Marc Bulger	6	N
Seattle Seahawks	Matt Hasselbeck	6	N
Kansas City Chiefs	Tyler Thigpen	7	N
Dallas Cowboys	Tony Romo	U	Y
San Francisco 49ers	Shaun Hill	U	N
Carolina Panthers	Jake Delhomme	U	N
Arizona Cardinals	Kurt Warner	U	N
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	Jeff Garcia	U	N

Of the starting quarterbacks for the 32 NFL teams:

16 were first-round draft picks
19 are with their original teams
13 are "1Y" players -- first-round picks with their original teams

So, that means that 13 of 32 teams in 2008, or about 41%, found their "starting quarterback" by drafting him in the first round. That's a solid percentage, but maybe not enough to be considered as the "only" way to do it.

What about the quality of these quarterbacks, at least as compared to the later-drafted quarterbacks? The only 1Y I see on the list who might have competition next year is JaMarcus Russell. Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco could be one-year wonders, granted, but everyone else is pretty firmly entrenched as their team's starters. The list of non-first-rounders includes a Hall-of-Famer (Brett Favre), a potential Hall-of-Famer (Tom Brady), two of the best quarterbacks of 2008 (Drew Brees and Kurt Warner), and a slew of former or current Pro Bowlers and overall above average QBs (Matt Hasselbeck, Jake Delhomme, Jeff Garcia, Marc Bulger, Tony Romo). Overall, if I had to choose who the best QBs are on the list -- the first-rounders or the non-first-rounders -- I'd probably give the first-rounders the edge, but only barely.

This ignores the fact that there are two more notable 1Y players (Matt Leinart and Vince Young) lurking around who could be their team's primary starters very soon, depending on how the former first-rounder (Kerry Collins) and undrafted free agent (Kurt Warner) ahead of them play out. I also haven't taken draft position into account -- there might be a difference between being the #1 overall pick and the #23 overall pick (Brady Quinn). And, admittedly, this is a one-year sample size, though I have conducted a similar exercise, just for fun, the last few years. The list of starting quarterbacks hasn't changed too much, so it's always been around 1/2 first-rounders. Maybe I'll glance back ten years or so in a future post.

In any case, my conclusion is that, while it's not a bad idea to take a Matthew Stafford or Mark Sanchez early in the draft if your team needs a franchise QB, I don't think it's absolutely vital either. As with any position, good -- even great -- players can be found later in the draft, and quarterbacks probably aren't an exception to that rule.