It's been a rough offseason for former top draft pick quarterbacks. Jared Goff was traded in what was primarily a salary dump, and Carson Wentz apparently will be. That's continuing a recent trend in which quarterbacks taken at the top of drafts are kicked to the curb a few years later. And it's not only recently that most of those guys have disappointed.
A year ago, of course, another pair of quarterbacks recently drafted 1-2 were dumped by their teams. Jameis Winston was replaced in Tampa Bay, and Marcus Mariota dumped by Tennessee. Going back even further, we're looking at close to 30 years of quarterbacks selected with top-5 picks generally failing to live up to expectations.
The table below shows all quarterbacks selected in the top 5 of the NFL Draft since 1990. There have been 38 such players. Leaving out the five most recent selections, who it's too early to safely judge, more than half (18) of the 33 can fairly be called disappointments -- either out-and-out busts, or guys their teams moved on from fairly quickly, who didn't do much. I'm putting Goff and Wentz in that group, but it's not too late for them to have successful careers.
Of the other 15, I originally termed five of them journeymen -- a word with negative connotations, but in this case I was considering them players who started for 3 or more teams and had some degree of success at at least one of those stops. Jeff George, Kerry Collins and Carson Palmer, for example. But the term drew some criticism, so I'm going to broadly call all of them "good." There's degrees of good -- Palmer was a lot better than Collins. But Collins had his moments, including taking the Giants to a Super Bowl, so I'll go with good for the previous "journeymen."
Of the remaining 10, there's one Hall of Famer, the recently selected Peyton Manning, and nine more who can safely be called good or great quarterbacks. Steve McNair certainly, and also guys like Donovan McNabb and Matthew Stafford. I went with simply good to reduce debate over borderline good/great players.
| QUARTERBACKS SELECTED IN THE TOP 5, 1990-2020 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Pk | Player | Career | SB wins | Best FFRk |
| 2020 | 1 | Joe Burrow | ? | 0 | 25th |
| 2020 | 5 | Tua Tagovailoa | ? | 0 | 34th |
| 2019 | 1 | Kyler Murray | ? | 0 | 2nd |
| 2018 | 1 | Baker Mayfield | ? | 0 | 16th |
| 2018 | 3 | Sam Darnold | ? | 0 | 24th |
| 2017 | 2 | Mitchell Trubisky | Disappointment | 0 | 15th |
| 2016 | 1 | Jared Goff | Disappointment | 0 | 6th |
| 2016 | 2 | Carson Wentz | Disappointment | 0 | 8th |
| 2015 | 1 | Jameis Winston | Disappointment | 0 | 2nd |
| 2015 | 2 | Marcus Mariota | Disappointment | 0 | 14th |
| 2014 | 3 | Blake Bortles | Disappointment | 0 | 3rd |
| 2012 | 1 | Andrew Luck | Good quarterback | 0 | 1st |
| 2012 | 2 | Robert Griffin III | Disappointment | 0 | 10th |
| 2011 | 1 | Cam Newton | Good quarterback | 0 | 1st |
| 2010 | 1 | Sam Bradford | Disappointment | 0 | 17th |
| 2009 | 1 | Matthew Stafford | Good quarterback | 0 | 4th |
| 2009 | 5 | Mark Sanchez | Disappointment | 0 | 10th |
| 2008 | 3 | Matt Ryan | Good quarterback | 0 | 3rd |
| 2007 | 1 | JaMarcus Russell | Disappointment | 0 | 24th |
| 2006 | 3 | Vince Young | Disappointment | 0 | 12th |
| 2005 | 1 | Alex Smith | Good quarterback | 0 | 6th |
| 2004 | 1 | Eli Manning | Good quarterback | 2 | 4th |
| 2004 | 4 | Philip Rivers | Good quarterback | 0 | 4th |
| 2003 | 1 | Carson Palmer | Good quarterback | 0 | 1st |
| 2002 | 1 | David Carr | Disappointment | 0 | 14th |
| 2002 | 3 | Joey Harrington | Disappointment | 0 | 17th |
| 2001 | 1 | Michael Vick | Good quarterback | 0 | 4th |
| 1999 | 1 | Tim Couch | Disappointment | 0 | 17th |
| 1999 | 2 | Donovan McNabb | Good quarterback | 0 | 3rd |
| 1999 | 3 | Akili Smith | Disappointment | 0 | 38th |
| 1998 | 1 | Peyton Manning | Hall of Fame | 2 | 1st |
| 1998 | 2 | Ryan Leaf | Disappointment | 0 | 28th |
| 1995 | 3 | Steve McNair | Good quarterback | 0 | 5th |
| 1995 | 5 | Kerry Collins | Good quarterback | 0 | 10th |
| 1994 | 3 | Heath Shuler | Disappointment | 0 | 25th |
| 1993 | 1 | Drew Bledsoe | Good quarterback | 0 | 4th |
| 1993 | 2 | Rick Mirer | Disappointment | 0 | 9th |
| 1990 | 1 | Jeff George | Good quarterback | 0 | 3rd |
However you want to slice it, more than half of the guys selected with top 5 picks -- presumed franchise quarterbacks -- have been disappointments. And it's a little shocking to see that only two of those quarterbacks, in 30 years, have won Super Bowls. Winning Super Bowls hasn't been so easy the last two decades, with a former 6th-round pick accounting for a third of them. But you'd expect more than 4 total rings from top-5 picks in a 30-year period.
In fantasy terms, results haven't been quite that bad. Of the 38 quarterbacks selected in the top 5 since 1990, 23 of them have had at least one season where they ranked among the top 10 at their position. So most of them have produced good numbers at one point or another. (That includes Blake Bortles, so fantasy success doesn't always equate to NFL excellence.) About a quarter of them (9) have taken teams to Super Bowls, even though the Mannings were the only ones to win them.
But it's easy to see why Super Bowl hopefuls might trade for capable veterans or pursue them in free agency. Selecting them atop the draft and developing them? More misses than hits.
--Andy Richardson