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WASHINGTON — With contract deadlines looming that will dictate the futures of both Kirk Cousins and Robert Griffin III, it’s as good a time as ever to look at how well teams have fared drafting quarterbacks in recent memory.
It’s important to remember that these rankings don’t necessarily mean any team is “better” or “worse” at managing quarterbacks. Some choose to trade or use free agency to acquire them, rather than leaning on the draft. This simply measures the quantity of draft assets used, and the return in both games started and won in relation to those assets.
Because we’re dealing with an arbitrary end point (the year 2000), the methodology is imperfect and forces a couple exceptions, which I’ll detail below. And since we are going through the 2015 Draft, there are players with the chance to help teams improve upon their scores. That’s why each team includes an “outlook,” which helps us attempt to forecast if they will likely move up or down the list in the future.
For this exercise, I used the draft trade value chart devised by Jimmy Johnson while he was head coach of the Cowboys back in the 90s. The chart assigns a numerical point value to each slot in the draft. I used this when quantifying the draft stock spent by each team on quarterbacks, as well as the value of picks they traded or received in return for either the player or the pick itself. See the full chart here.
The teams were ranked from fewest to most on three metrics: net draft points spent, net draft points per game started by a quarterback they drafted, and net draft points per win by a quarterback they drafted. There are arguments to be made why each of those metrics could be more valuable, but I’m not attempting to quantify them. That said, the teams are listed from the fewest net points spent to the most in the gallery above.
The Exceptions: New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs
Both the Saints and Chiefs have drafted quarterbacks since 2000 — five and three each, respectively — but not a single one has started a game for either team. The Saints leaned primarily on trade acquisitions Aaron Brooks, then Drew Brees. The Chiefs have had a whole host of signal callers, but none who won games were originally drafted by the organization. This poses a problem for determining draft points per start and draft points per win, as one cannot divide a number by zero.
For the Saints, we have to go back to 1997 to Danny Wuerffel, the 99th overall pick, who started six games and won two in black and gold. Brodie Croyle started 10 games for the Chiefs, but lost all of them. To find a Kansas City draftee with a win, we have to go back more than decade before Wuerffel to Todd Blackledge, drafted in 1983, who earned his final win for the Chiefs in 1989.
This is obviously well outside the scope of this study. So for these teams, I have simply given them an N/A rank for the categories they cannot fill.
Flip through the slides and see where your team lands.
