In the context of the 2024 NFL draft, Thomas Dimitroff’s words last week were a timely reminder of what to look for in two or three years.
“If you fail on the quarterback and everything else goes awry in the next two years, yes, you’re out and you’re never back in,” Dimitroff, the former Atlanta Falcons general manager, said in an appearance on the “Ross Tucker Football Podcast.”
That sentiment had to be part of Ryan Poles’ thinking and impetus a year ago, when the Chicago Bears traded out of the No. 1 pick with the Carolina Panthers, passing on the opportunity to select Bryce Young or C.J. Stroud. How this year’s top pick, Caleb Williams, fares in comparison with Stroud — the reigning offensive rookie of the year — is a storyline to track closely the next few seasons.
Poles knew the Bears infrastructure coming out of a miserable 2022 season with a poor cast of skill-position talent and an underwhelming offensive line (to say nothing of a bad defense with all sorts of needs) didn’t offer much support for a rookie quarterback.
But there was risk involved in trading back with the Panthers and staying the course with Justin Fields. The Bears had no way of knowing if Fields would make enough improvements — he did not — or what kind of pick they would receive from the Panthers, who had a respected offensive coach in Frank Reich to tutor Young.
There was no way of telling the Panthers and Young would experience a complete meltdown, just as it was impossible to forecast Stroud would thrive from the start for the Houston Texans, who had one of the worst rosters in the league coming out of the 2022 season.
That brings us back to the recently completed draft, in which six quarterbacks were chosen in the first round for the first time since 1983. The NFL arms race has never been more intense as QBs went 1-2-3 and the six came off the board in the first 12 picks, setting up a couple of teams for potential great success while odds tell us just as many will experience utter failure.
Five quarterbacks were drafted in the first round in 2021, and only the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence remains with his original team and entrenched as the starter. None of the others — Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Fields and Mac Jones — projects to start for his new team in spring depth charts. The fallout for all four was fast and the drop was steep.
The whiff rate on high picks at the game’s premium position is alarming, but teams stuck in purgatory — or worse — without an elite quarterback can’t find their way out of the conundrum without landing one.
“You are judged by your big decisions as a general manager,” Dimitroff said. “Most important, obviously, is picking a quarterback.”
By waiting a year, Poles appears to have the ideal landing spot for Williams when considering the talent he has been able to amass around the position in the last year-plus. There’s no such thing as a fail-safe roster for a quarterback, but Williams is positioned for early success when assessing the roster as a whole.
While it’s not discussed a lot, front-office moves are often based on survival. Pick your spot to draft a quarterback because once you do, the clock starts ticking and the evaluation process speeds up for everyone. Usually when you draft a quarterback, you buy yourself a couple of seasons for that process to play out. Of course, that didn’t happen for former Bears GM Ryan Pace after Fields’ 2021 season was a disaster all the way around, not just for the rookie quarterback.
It will be fascinating to see how the other rookie quarterbacks fare in comparison with Williams. New Washington Commanders GM Adam Peters selected Jayden Daniels at No. 2, and there isn’t a lot surrounding him. The Commanders aren’t built to withstand a miss the way the San Francisco 49ers — Peters’ previous team — were when Lance flopped and the team was able to pivot to a tremendous discovery in seventh-round pick Brock Purdy.
The Falcons delivered the shocker of the draft. Most figured they would try to augment their defensive line, and GM Terry Fontenot instead went with Michael Penix at No. 8, five picks after the New England Patriots took Drake Maye.
Fontenot explained he wants to avoid a QB quandary when Kirk Cousins, who turns 36 in August, is done. It’s long-range thinking after Cousins signed a four-year, $180 million contract that guarantees him $100 million. Penix likely won’t help the Falcons win on the field this season, though, and that’s where the move has been roundly criticized. Still, it reinforces the conviction in the building for the Washington product.
In the NFC North, there’s also focus on LaGrange native J.J. McCarthy, whom the Minnesota Vikings traded up to choose at No. 10. GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was in scramble mode to replace Cousins and is taking his chances with McCarthy after the Vikings had been strongly linked to Maye, with whom quarterbacks coach Josh McCown worked in high school.
The Vikings were viewed as a desired landing spot (along with the Bears) for some agents of the top quarterbacks because of the infrastructure in place, including wide receivers Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, tight end T.J. Hockenson, a solid offensive line and impressive young coach Kevin O’Connell. Whether it works out for McCarthy, who knows?
“His talent, his traits are as high-end as anybody and mold him into that player we want to be,” Adofo-Mensah told Minnesota media. “We talked about a lot here. A lot of times when we go back over history and we say these quarterbacks have missed, there’s a lot of hands that are dirty in that regard. We’re going to make sure that our hands are clean and give him the best opportunity to be the best player he can be in this offense.”
The Denver Broncos, pivoting from two disappointing seasons after a trade for Russell Wilson, refused to wait around for Bo Nix, grabbing him with the 12th pick in part because they were short on draft capital without a Round 2 selection.
Broncos coach Sean Payton described Nix’s strengths in ways that evoked similarities to what Payton did with a high level of success in New Orleans with Drew Brees. But most expected if Nix was going to be a Day 1 pick, it would be at the back end of the round. The Broncos didn’t want to risk the Las Vegas Raiders, who were squeezed out of the QB market by the early run, or another team scooping up Nix.
Now they set out with their own plan to bring along a rookie.
“The two biggest allies to that, I believe strongly, are good defensive play and a running game,” Payton told Denver media. “In other words, if you are a quarterback and you’re having trouble running the ball — or let’s get worse — if you’re a quarterback and you’re having trouble running the ball or stopping people, your job description becomes very difficult. When you’re playing good defense and you have a running game, your job description is a little bit more palatable.”
By the time the 2026 season rolls around, a couple of these quarterbacks could be entering the upper echelon of the league. In 2027, some of these teams could be plotting their next move to reboot the position — maybe with a new GM calling the shots.
“You get two chances, I think, as a GM with your head coach,” Dimitroff said. “I don’t know if you do necessarily putting yourself on the line for that quarterback. If that fails, man, your owner is looking at you with sort of a wry eye.”
That wry eye can lead to massive organizational overhaul.
