Quote of the day

I'm a country boy myself, and I've grown a little wary of Brett. I don't see him as a good ol' boy anymore. When I saw him getting off that private jet (Sunday), I thought that maybe he's sipped too much champagne and liked the taste of it. His self love is overwhelming, and that could turn off a lot of guys now.

-- John Riggins

I know that I'm turned off by seeing another guy do self-loving.

Now here's the wacky potential endgame to the Favre saga. Aaron Rodgers has been classy, but there can be no doubt that he's feeling confused and a little betrayed -- and I wouldn't be surprised if he and Favre were about as friendly right now as Latrell Sprewell and PJ Carlesimo (hooray, old NBA reference!).

So what if the Vikings did obtain via trade a disgruntled Packer quarterback who would love nothing more that to get a shot at his old team -- but not the one they may or may not have been asking about before?

Rodgers' rookie contract expires after this year. After all that's transpired, it seems unthinkable that he would want to remain in Green Bay. And the Packers drafted two quarterbacks (including Brian Brohm) in April, so it's not like they'll be left without options when Brett Favre waffles about returning next year (which he will). And even if you have complete faith in Tarvaris Jackson, wouldn't you prefer Rodgers as a backup to Gus Frerotte?

(And then, when the Vikings fire Brad Childress after the '08 season and lure Bill Cowher from his TV job....hey, it could happen!)

Start the rookie QB!

With John David Booty under the Vikings' control (and, also of interest to Vikings fans, with Brian Brohm wearing a Packer uniform in 2008) the call will likely go out at some point during the season that the team put in the rookie QB to inject some life into the offense. Just as quickly, sports pundits will decry the team's use of the rookie QB, saying instead that rookie QBs should be brought along slowly, perhaps not even starting a game until their second season, at least.

It seems to me that the whole idea of not starting a rookie QB right out of the gate began when Steve McNair was drafted #3 overall by the then-Houston Oilers in 1995. Despite his high draft status, he played sparingly his first two seasons -- a seeming aberration at the time -- sitting behind Chris Chandler on the Oilers' depth chart. McNair experienced great success, once he finally got the chance to start, and is always cited as Exhibit A for why rookie quarterbacks shouldn't see playing time their first year. The late starts to the careers of Tom Brady and Brett Favre, and the disastrous careers of Ryan Leaf and Tim Couch, each of whom started several games as rookies, is Exhibit A1.

But what about Peyton Manning, who's started every game of his NFL career? And where does someone like Drew Bledsoe fit in? Is giving a quarterback lots of playing time as a rookie just setting him up to fail later in his career? Or is that just a bunch of hogwash perpetuated by sporadic evidence?

To answer this, I went to the Historical Data Dominator on footballguys.com (which, for whatever reason, seems to be working for free now; I thought it required a subscription fee). I searched for all QBs from 1978 to 2002 who had at least 240 passes in their rookie season. I chose 1978 as my starting point because that was the year the NFL went to a 16-game schedule, allowing me to use 15 passes a game (times 16 games = 240) as my definition of a QB who saw "significant" action. Cutting the search off at 2002 gives me a nice, tidy 25 years of data while also letting me properly evaluate players who were drafted more than five years ago, providing a reasonable snapshot of their careers.

That search, shown here and sorted by yards, yields 30 quarterbacks. Three of them threw for more than 3,000 yards, and all (Manning, Warren Moon, and Jim Kelly) are Hall-of-Fame talents. The bottom of the list is occupied by Ryan Leaf, Steve Fuller, and Chad Hutchinson, and in-between are quarterbacks good and bad and awful. I've divided the quarterbacks -- somewhat arbitrarily, but hey, it's my blog -- into three categories.

Category A includes the great quarterbacks, the Hall-of-Fame-caliber players or very nearly.
Category B includes players who fall short of greatness, but still had (or are having) solid careers.
Category C includes everyone else, the abject failures.

Here's how they fall out:

Category A: Manning, Kelly, Moon, Marino, Aikman, P. Simms(?), Elway
Category B: Collins, Garcia, Bledsoe, Plummer, Batch(?), George, O'Donnell, Kosar, Deberg
Category C: Weinke, Mirer, Brock(?), Carr(?), Banks, Couch, Harrington(?), Komlo, Trudeau, Shuler, Hutchinson, Fuller, Leaf

Phil Simms is the only member of the A group not to be in (or destined for) the Hall of Fame, but I thought his two Super Bowl rings should count for something. Charlie Batch wavers between B and C. He was lousy with the Lions, but has carved out a second career as a solid backup with the Steelers, and if anything happens to Ben Roethlisberger, the team would probably do well. Similarly, David Carr and Joey Harrington each seemed destined for C-land but are young enough that they might turn their careers around. As for Dieter Brock, he posted decent numbers as a rookie for the Rams in 1985 (2,600 yards, 16 TD, 13 Int.). I don't know why he never threw another pass in the NFL -- maybe a Rams fan can enlighten me?

(Of course, as with Ichiro Suzuki, "rookie" can be a relative term. Brock, Moon, and Jeff Garcia all played in the CFL before coming to the NFL, and Jim Kelly starred in the USFL. And Chris Weinke was 29 his rookie season.)

In any case, the breakdown is 7 "A" quarterbacks, 9 "B" quarterbacks, and 14 "C" quarterbacks. That qualifies better than 50% (16/30) of rookie quarterbacks who threw 240 or more passes their first season as at least "decent" throughout their careers. In any case, the careers of those 16 weren't "ruined" by their getting starts as rookies. In fact, 7 of the 30 went on to exceptional careers. Of course, all seven of those players, save Moon, were first-round draft picks, and three (Elway, Manning, and Aikman) were first overall. This means that, in all likelihood, they were a) good; and b) going to get the chance to start as rookies. I'm not going to grade out every quarterback on the above list by round; suffice to say there are high (Leaf, Carr, Collins) and mid-low (Batch, O'Donnell, Deberg) picks sprinkled throughout the B and C levels.

At the very least, when the inevitable talk of, say, putting Booty, Brohm, or especially first-round picks Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco in the starting lineups for their respective teams this year pops up, don't jump immediately onto the "Starting a rookie QB is bad for him" bandwagon. About half the time, that may be true (and the C-level quarterbacks might have been bad no matter when they first saw significant action); but you have just as good a chance of getting a solid player, or even a star, for years to come.

With the 17th selection: Brian Brohm?

When gymrome offered me the chance to draft for the Vikings in his TSN Mock Draft, I agreed and had every intent of following "the plan" that many have laid out for the Vikings, mainly that they will draft a defensive end in the first round. Roughly 95% of the mock drafts out there have us taking Derrick Harvey with that first pick, and I think I'd be all right with that.

When my turn finally came up in gymrome's draft, I saw that Harvey had already been taken by Broncos, five picks earlier, leading me to re-evaluate the team's needs and the talent available. I told myself I would take a "safe," un-sexy pick, like a lineman (offensive or defensive), until I saw who else wasn't on the list of drafted players, and I couldn't resist. Take a look at the post on gymrome's blog to see who I picked and read my reasoning behind it. I wish I could say I have complete confidence in the selection; truthfully, I don't, and I may have succumbed to a combination of wishful thinking and glory-grabbing, but I'll try to lay out here a few more reasons why Brian Brohm, if he's available, would be a good first-round pick for the Vikings.

First of all, I still like Harvey if he's available. But Brohm would probably be my #2 pick (barring something crazy, like Jake Long somehow plummeting down the list). When I was writing copy for some football cards last month, I had to research several college players, and here's an excerpt from the page I found for Brohm on FootballsFuture:

Brohm has it all from a physical standpoint. He has a nice frame, and is sturdy enough to sit in the pocket and take a hit. His arm is excellent, and he can make all the throws. He is also a good athlete with the mobility to elude the rush and buy more time. On the field, Brohm has proven to be an extremely efficient QB, making smart decisions and not turning the ball over very often.

The only real knock on Brohm is his durability. He has had some injury issues during his stay at Louisville. He tore his ACL as a sophomore, and was hurt twice last year. He tore ligaments in his thumb, and also had surgery on his left shoulder.

The analysis is a year old, and Brohm was healthy his senior year, so I'm not too worried about potential injury issues. "An extremely efficient QB, making smart decisions and not turning the ball over very often." Gee, I'd sure like to have one of those!

Now, I hate it when an announcer describes a quarterback as "managing the game," typically said when his overall numbers aren't great but he avoids turnovers and/or completes many low-risk, short-yardage passes and his team wins the game. (It's especially galling when the quarterback has next to nothing to do with his team's success, but I've been over that already.) Nobody wants their quarterback to "manage the game"; they want their quarterback to win the game. A player who isn't capable of that isn't as good a quarterback as those who can -- guys like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and the like -- and wouldn't you rather have a better player at the position? Barry Sanders got caught in the backfield for losses a lot but still ripped off enough big runs to average 5.0 yards per carry for his career. Would you rather have a nice, "safe" back who managed 4.0 yards per carry and hardly never gets stopped for a loss? Probably not.

All things being equal, nearly every team would rather have a Manning or Brady than the quarterback they currently have. Of course, all things aren't equal. Would you rather have Manning at $10 million/year or someone like David Garrard at $5 million/year and spend the remaining $5 million on other players? The Vikings are a team that would benefit from the Garrard + $5 million scenario rather than the Manning + $0 scenario because, with their running game and defense, they don't need a dominant passer to win games. Now, if we (or the Jaguars) could get Peyton Manning for $5 million, that would be another matter entirely.

So what's all that got to do with Brohm? If he is an "intelligent" quarterback (this just in: he tied for the highest score among quarterbacks on the Wonderlic test) who avoids turnovers, along the lines of a David Garrard or Jeff Garcia (or a certain third-round pick who never had the strongest arm), then he's still valuable to the team even if he doesn't throw for 35 TDs and 4,000 yards every season. For what it's worth, his college numbers seem to bear that out, as he was picked on only 2.0% of his pass attempts. I'd rather have Peyton Manning (or maybe even Matt Ryan), too, but if this is the best we can get, I'd say go for it.

Of course, everyone will say that first-round quarterbacks are a huge risk. I maintain that they aren't any more risky than any other position -- just more visible. Sure, everyone remembers flameouts Tim Couch, Akili Smith, maybe Alex Smith, and especially Ryan Leaf, but you don't hear as much about David Terrell, Mike Williams (the Buffalo OL, though the wide receiver might also fit the bill), Curtis Enis, Andre Wadsworth, and (a particular favorite) Tony Mandarich, because they're not quarterbacks. And my admittedly unscientific study from last month shows that highly drafted QBs aren't really any more of a risk than other positions, at least in determining whether they'll excel enough to make the Pro Bowl. If you think the team would be better off drafting someone other than Brohm, fine, but don't make that decision "because he's a quarterback." Since the merger, the Vikings have drafted two quarterbacks in the first round, and while neither are destined for the Hall of Fame, they weren't exactly failures in Purple either.