Why Pinning the Eagles hopes on Drafting a Mid-Round Quarterback to Develop  Into a Future Starter is Fools Gold. 

Patrick Causey, on Twitter @pcausey3

There is a trendy argument floating around on #EaglesTwitter that goes something like this: the Eagles don’t need to use a high draft choice on a quarterback because they can just target one in later rounds and develop him into a future starter.

It’s easy to understand the allure of this argument, like a mouth seduced by a flame, many are tricked into believing this approach is valid when when they see the likes of Tom Brady (6th round), Russell Wilson (3rd round), and Tony Romo (undrafted) performing at high levels.

But this argument is the functional equivalent of planning your retirement based on winning the lottery. Ok, perhaps the odds are not that far fetched, but you get the idea. Because for every Brady, Wilson or Romo, there are literally hundreds of mid-to-late round quarterbacks that don’t even play a single snap in the NFL.

In other words, planning to get your franchise quarterback after the first round is the rare exception to the rule: a generational lucky roll of the dice that cannot be relied upon with any degree of certainty.

To figure out just how improbable this is, I relied on three data sets: one that I compiled, one compiled by the venerable FootballOutsiders.com, and one from NumberFire.com, an analytically inclined website known more for its fantasy advice.

To pacify my ego, let’s start with the simple data sets that I compiled: Super Bowl appearances and best single seasons based on Pro-Football-Reference.com’s approximate value metric.

Super Bowl Appearances By Round

Using Super Bowl appearances, we can determine which round is most likely to produce Super Bowl quarterbacks. Obviously, this isn’t a perfect statistic: Super Bowl winning teams are more than a byproduct of quarterback play. But it is a telling stat nonetheless.

Starting in 1990, here are the quarterbacks that have played in the Super Bowl and the round in which each quarterback was drafted:

• 1st: 28 (54%) (!)
• 2nd: 4 (7%)
• 3rd: 4 (7%)
• 4th: 1 (2%)
• 5th: 0 (0%)
• 6th: 9 (17%)
• 7th: 0 (0%)
• Undrafted: 4 (7%)

• 1st round: 1724-1614-5 (.516)
• 2nd round: 440-413 (.516)
• 3rd round: 196-246-1 (.44)
• 4th round: 157-224-1 (.412)
• 5th round: 33-60 (.355)
• 6th round: 317-266 (.544)
• 7th round: 124-195-2 (.389)

Again, we see a sharp decline after the first two rounds, lending credence to the idea that drafting a quarterback is a certifiable crapshoot after the second round. Heck, it’s even a crapshoot drafting quarterbacks in the first two rounds, but I digress.

And we see a spike in the 6th round, which — yet again — we can easily explain with two words, (say it with me): Tom Brady.

And before we get too excited about finding the next Tom Brady, consider this: 86 quarterbacks were drafted in rounds six and seven. 43.0 percent (37) of the quarterbacks have played zero games. So for every one Tom Brady you find, 37 more don’t even play a single snap.

Playoff Success:

Different metric, largely the same result. Quarterbacks drafted in the first two rounds were much more likely to have success in the playoffs than their counterparts taken in rounds three through seven:

In other words, every quarterback drafted in the first two rounds produced, on averaged, 2.83 playoff starts, compared to .69 for quarterbacks drafted in rounds three through seven. The win totals were equally disparate, with the top rounds producing an average of 1.38 wins per quarterback drafted, compared to .30 for the later rounds.

And those latter statistics were inflated by the presence of — you guessed it — Tom Brady. If we removed him from the equation, the numbers are even less inspiring: .54 starts per quarterback and .16 wins per quarterback, respectively.

Weighted DVOA By Round:

FootballOutsiders.com also compiled a list of the top rated single seasons based on its advanced metric, DVOA. While there are slight differences with PFR’s approximate value ranking highlighted above, the end result is still the same: first round quarterbacks dominate:

Conclusion