Quotulatiousness

March 24, 2014

Is there a “magic formula” for drafting a winning NFL quarterback?

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:28

Short answer … no. But CCNorseman at the Daily Norseman has come up with an evaluation system that looks promising, especially as the Vikings are once again hoping to draft their QBOTF in this year’s crapshoot draft:

First, I created a list of quarterbacks to research to determine what traits they might have had in common coming out of college, both good and bad. I attempted to answer the following question: Were there certain traits that all successful quarterbacks possessed coming out of the draft, and were there any negative traits that can generally be dismissed as not being that important? As it turns out, the answer is yes to both questions.

In compiling a list of quarterbacks to study, I decided to take a look at all of the most successful quarterbacks that have entered the league within the last 15 years, regardless of the round in which they were drafted (or if they were drafted at all). I think most fans can agree that we need a quarterback that can lead the Vikings to the playoffs, and ultimately to the Super Bowl. And most quarterbacks that can achieve consistent playoff appearances or consistent efficiency metrics tend to have the best chance of winning a Super Bowl. So in order to be qualified as “successful” for this study, a quarterback must have either won a Super Bowl, have appeared in at least 10 playoff games, or be ranked in the top 32 of career “adjusted net yards per attempt” (ANY/A) statistic compared to the entire history of the NFL (ANY/A is the statistic that most closely correlates to winning and losing for quarterbacks).

[…]

In any case, from there I scoured the internet for pre-draft scouting reports of all 26 quarterbacks, and unfortunately I drew blanks on 6 of them that were drafted prior to the year 2000 (Kurt Warner, Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb, Daunte Culpepper, David Garrard and Matt Hasselbeck). So for the remaining 20 quarterbacks that I could actually find pre-draft scouting reports online, I tracked which attributes were listed as “positive traits” and which attributes were listed as “negative traits” in the various reports. After boiling down the data I began to see which traits occurred most frequently and there were seven attributes that stood out as being the most common as they applied to more than half of the 20 quarterbacks on the list. So, here is a list of the seven most common “positive traits” that successful NFL quarterbacks on the list above possessed coming out of college:

  1. Good Pocket Awareness and mobile around the pocket with an ability to “step up” in the pocket (15 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
  2. Smart and made good decisions with the football showing patience (14 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
  3. Good Arm Strength or “Prototypical NFL Arm Strength” (13 of 19 QBs possessed this trait)
  4. Good Attitude, leader and fierce competitor (13 of 19 QBs possessed this trait)
  5. Has good vision, can see the field and read defenses (11 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
  6. Good accuracy (11 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)
  7. Can throw on the run (11 of 20 QBs possessed this trait)

Some other positive traits that appeared for several of the Quarterbacks on the list (but less than half) were: good size/stature, good ability to scramble and avoid the rush, quick release, good touch passes and good ball placement and timing. But again, those traits were not common for the majority of the quarterbacks on the list with each one being common for only 8 or 9 quarterbacks, total. So in short if we can find a quarterback in the draft that exhibits most (if not all) of the seven traits above, then they will have a lot in common with the 20 most successful quarterbacks drafted over the past 15 years when they were college prospects. And therefore, they should have much better odds of panning out as a draft selection just as these prospects did before them.

He then uses these identified traits to look at current draft prospects and the results are rather different than most mock drafts portray:

In any case where does all of this leave us in regards to the quarterback prospects in the 2014 draft? Which ones are most likely to succeed? Well, in looking at the top 10 QBs from the latest cumulative draft rankings, they all possessed some of the traits above, but none of them possessed all seven (and of the 20 most successful, none of them possessed all 7 coming out of college either). In order to determine with traits were more important, I assigned a point system to each one relative to their frequency in the scouting reports. Below is the point scale.

QB Traits Point Scale
Trait #1, Good Pocket Awareness: 7 points
Trait #2, Good decision making: 6 Points
Trait #3, Good arm strength: 5 Points
Trait #4, Leader and good attitude: 5 Points
Trait #5, Can read defenses: 4 Points
Trait #6, Good accuracy: 4 Points
Trait #7, Can throw on the run: 4 Points
Total: 35 Points Possible

If a quarterback had one of the traits listed above as a positive, they earned that many points. However, if it was listed as a negative part of their game, then I subtracted that many points from their total. If one of these traits simply wasn’t listed as a positive or a negative, then it didn’t count for or against them. Listed below are the seven quarterbacks that scored double digit points based on this rating metric.

It won’t surprise anyone that Christian Ponder’s score using this scale comes out as a magnificent -2 (yes, that’s a negative number). If this scoring system was in use at Winter Park in the coming draft, the Vikings would end up drafting Derek Carr, Fresno State (score 28 out of 35) or Jimmy Garoppolo, Eastern Illinois (who scores 27 out of 35).

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