Quote:Yeah, but you're being misleading by only counting 'teams that drafted them'.  It's rare for a team to have the opportunity to pick up a QB in free agency of that caliber.  It's being even more misleading by apparently not counting Phillip Rivers, who was as good as a 1st round pick for the Chargers.  

 

8 of the top 15 QB's (not counting Bradford and McCown) were 1st rounders.  That's 53%.

 

If you're going to be misleading, then I can too and say that 9 of the top 15 QB's were taken within the first 32 picks.  Making it 60%.

 

I'm not being misleading(And I did count Rivers as one of those 5).  The whole point is that you can get upper echelon QBs outside the draft.  Its not as though your only two options for acquiring an elite QB are to draft one in the first round or to draft one in another round. 

 

You say its rare to pick up a QB of that caliber in free agency.  Well first I would say you can also trade for one.  But secondly, of those top 15, I see 5 first rounders drafted by their own team and 3 are first rounders playing for a new team.  So obviously its not that rare.  Bu then of course, if you are going after already proven quality NFL QBs, who cares what round he was drafted in?  So I may as well add in Drew Brees and make it 4 guys playing on a new team.

 

Point being, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat.  And while I think that article would have been much better served to look at it by round and not lump together rounds 2-7, obviously the success rate of a 1st round QB is going to be better.  Just like any position.  But if you could somehow perform an ROI calc on drafting QBs 1st round versus building your team early and finding a QB later/free agency/trade, I'd be curious to know how much better off you would be in terms of wins.  Clearly we are 0-2 on 1st round QBs and it set us back both times although obviously way back with Gabbert. 

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