Open Rants by Brownsfan93

Qb’s Wasted or being wasted by the teams that drafted them…

Every so often a team that is a regular or semi –regular losing team drafts a good qb, the thinking is, you have a qb you can win in this league but just because you have a quality signal caller doesn’t mean your team will be this perennial winner or playoff team as several qbs have shown, in this article I will go through a few of them.  It takes at least semi decent drafting to win and some of the teams that don’t draft very well have proven this despite having decent qbs for a long period of time.

Carson Palmer 2003-2010 Bengals

The Bengals drafted Carson Palmer first overall and even gave him an entire year to learn before he started games for the Bengals.  This didn’t really matter though as the Bengals could not put a team around Palmer for them to win consistently.  I do believe the injury he had in 2005 forever affected and hurt his potential as a qb, but not to an extent where he couldn’t win or play well.  Eight seasons was enough for him to realize that he wasn’t going to win anything there due to Mike Browns inept leadership as an owner and gm, he was so tired of it that he decided to quit playing for part of a season in protest, despite singing a long term extension with the team a while prior. While I think he was a decent qb, he did seem to blame everyone else for his inability to win but I still think his talents were wasted by Browns poor front office abilities.

Matt Stafford 2009-Present Lions

The Lions were basically the worst team of the 2000’s decade and the 08’ Lions may have been the worst NFL team ever but it did earn them their choice of the top qb in the draft and they drafted Stafford.  This did not mean that the Lions could draft worth a damn still though as they would consistently continue to show since drafting Stafford.  You have to be able to get more right than the most obvious picks at the top of a draft like Stafford and Suh and the Lions mostly have proven they can’t since drafting those two.  12 seasons in and Stafford has yet to win a playoff game and one has to wonder if he ever will, at least in Detroit despite being a consistent starter and having decent and consistent stats.  With the injuries and his age he probably only has 3-6 years left to add a playoff win to his resume. 

Derek Carr 2014-Present Raiders

The Raiders were also one of the worst teams of the 2000’s (post 2002) and also the early 2010’s, however they finally seemed to get their qb position solved with the second round selection of Derek Carr in 2014.  The Raiders were looking like the raiders of old in 2016 until a broken leg saw that come to an end.  This team was finally able to assemble some talent with Reggie McKenzie as gm after over 10 years of atrocious drafting, but Mark Davis decided to blow it up anyway, trading Khalil Mack and starting anew with an extremely overpaid has-been in Jon Gruden and a Television Personality in Mike Mayock.  This isn’t ESPN or NFL network fantasy football drafting, this is the real deal and the Raiders still haven’t really been able to put a team around Carr to succeed.  6 years in and Carr has no playoff starts despite putting up fairly solid and consistent numbers throughout his career, the Gruden Mayock experiment isn’t over but it sure isn’t looking that great either.

Deshaun Watson 2017-present Texans  

This one is a bit of a wildcard here.  Watson has almost accomplished more in the playoffs than the 3 qbs mentioned above combined but Houston has consistently shown that they don’t believe in or take the draft seriously, constantly trading draft picks year in and year out hoping they can win a Super Bowl immediately, contrary to what ESPN may tell you Bill O Brien it does take more than a qb to win a Super Bowl and the *%@* finally hit the fan this year and caught up with them for their poor to nonexistent drafting of players due to many, many trades.  My guess is it’s not going to be a quick 1 year rebuild either.  A great qb, but totally limited by a poor front office and a very expensive contract, maybe that’s why it’s only a 4 year extension...

 Stat and info courtesy: Wikipedia, Pro Football Reference

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