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Around draft time, Alx has consistently mentioned he always prefers QB’s who have won in college, makes sense right? After hearing this bold claim, I decided to check and see if there was any relation between a QB’s record in college and their success in the NFL.
It may seem obvious that the better a QB performs in college, the higher the likelihood of them succeeding in the NFL, however, there are enough instances where this isn’t the case to prompt some investigation. In this article series, we will go class by class and compare the QB with the highest college win-rate to the QB most successful in the NFL. 2018 Draft Class:
Back in college, Baker and Darnold had similar win rates. However, Baker played in twice as many games, got his team to the College Football Playoff twice, and, despite having a Big 12 defense, almost beat Georgia in the Semi-Final back in 2017. Baker had quite the road getting to Heisman status; He started his career walking on and winning the starting job at Texas Tech as a true freshman. Through his first two games he threw for 780 yards and 7 TD’s. Unfortunately, later in the season he was affected by injuries and lost the job to fellow freshman Davis Webb. That offseason he transferred to Oklahoma, walked on to their team as well, sat out the year due to the NCAA’s totally consistent transfer rules, then proceeded to win the starting job over Trevor Knight, who seemed to stop caring about football after Katy Perry said he was hot. Since then Baker hasn’t looked back though, having 3 excellent seasons at Oklahoma (119 TDs to 21 INTs and a QB rating of 189.4!) which earned him a Heisman trophy his senior year and the honor of getting selected first overall by the Browns. Darnold’s path was a bit more straightforward, but he deserves a ton of acknowledgement for the job he did at USC as well. He was a high 4-star recruit coming out of high school and was labelled as the savior of USC football. The previous four years had not been up to the “USC standard” established by Pete Carroll in the mid-2000’s, and even with all the uncertainty of the coaching staff and the intense expectation that the media and boosters put on USC, Darnold came in, won the job as a redshirt freshman, and turned in two very successful seasons: he threw for 57 TD’s and had an average QB rating of 153.7, which was 3rd out of all the drafted QB’s behind Baker Mayfield and Mason Rudolph. He also had a near perfect game (453 yards passing and 5 TD’s to 1 INT) in perhaps the most entertaining bowl game I’ve ever watched with the shootout win against a top ten Penn State team. Unfortunately, they failed to reach the playoff in either of Darnold’s two years starting. It’s understandable though—we all know how tough it is to succeed when you average a top ten recruiting class every year, have 5 stars right in your back door that would love to play for you, and have virtually unlimited resources. That research school in Seattle has it so much easier. Five QB’s were drafted in the first round of this class, the most since the 1999 draft which included another first overall pick by the Browns, Tim Couch, the first name on the infamous Browns QB jersey. Here’s to hoping Baker’s career in Cleveland can be a bit better than Tim’s. All indications from his first season show that’s looking likely; In fact, an ad agency has replaced the long-winded list with a #6 Jersey showing a lone name: Mayfield. Ever since he stepped in for an injured Tyrod Taylor during Week 3 against the Jets and led the Brown’s back from 14-0, it’s felt as if there’s been a completely different aura about the Brown’s organization. No longer are they the laughing stock of the NFL; instead, they now have a potent offense led by the next coming of Brett Favre and a GM who knows how to draw in talent. Sure, they still finished 7-8-1, but they did have Hue Jackson as HC for the first 8 weeks so...let’s keep things in perspective here.
Baker led all rookie QB’s in Completion %, Passing Yards, and Passing TD’s (and set the all-time record for most Passing TD’s by a rookie). Meanwhile, Sam Darnold was second in all of these categories (technically third for Completion % slightly behind Lamar Jackson, but I’m not counting him because he averaged 10 throws a game). Darnold started off his NFL career in about the worst way you possibly could: a pick six to the Detroit Lions. It’s honestly a good joke, and it’s also a good joke that most of the credit for this win seems to go to Darnold and his overcoming of that early blunder, not the 4 INTs from Stafford, or the 3 defensive/special teams TD’s, or what felt like 1000 yards rushing from Isaiah Crowell and Bilal Powell (the box score only says 169, but that really doesn’t do it justice). It’s unfair to judge Darnold’s first season, however, when his best receiver was Robby Anderson, who’s preoccupied having friendly conversations with police officers about their wives and campaigning for pro bowl votes during a game which the Jets lost. On the bright side, though, after coming back from injury, Darnold improved his play. Granted, it’s a small sample size of 4 games, but he averaged a 63.9 completion % and threw 6 TD’s to 1 INT (pre-Injury his ratio was 11 TD’s to 14 INT’s). Hopefully going into next year with the addition of Le’veon Bell and the new philosophy of Adam Gase, Darnold can continue to improve and become a true franchise QB. Or Gase could work his magic and have Darnold playing at a Tannehill level for 3-5 years and the Jets front office won’t know if they should move on or not. Good thing they know who their GM is. Now I know it may seem like I’m bashing Darnold too much, but I do believe he has a bright future ahead of him. I’m just always going to be skeptical of the hype behind USC QB’s. Darnold has shown he can bring stability to a franchise going through turmoil, and Baker has shown he can succeed when the odds are against him and then maintain that success. Both strengths are fitting for the teams they were drafted to, and it will be very exciting to see where these players can go in their second years.
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Reeb the Unpaid InternIf you want to go 6-8 in your fantasy league and not know why, then this is the blog for you. Archives
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