While watching football yesterday I heard a lot of media personalities slam the Jets for winning a game. Subsequently missing out on the chance to draft future Hall of Fame QB, Trevor Lawrence. Yes, you heard my words right. Future hall of fame. That's how he's being touted anyhow. I'm not trying to knock Trevor, I'm sure he's going to be incredible. But, then again, the list of QB's who were supposed to be incredible is longer than the list who came out of nowhere to be amazing.

People in the media and some on social media are acting like getting a QB first overall suddenly rebuilds your team.

Check out the list of number one overall draft picks who have at least one Super Bowl ring. Take note that David Carr and Drew Bledsoe got their rings while holding a clipboard.

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The Jaguars and Jets have more cap space available in 2021 than any other team. If I'm the Jets, I'm fielding offers for that 2nd overall pick and looking to rebuild my roster around Sam Darnold. You know, the 23 year old guy who they drafted 3rd overall in 2018 NFL Draft.

The moral of the story here kids is the media is full of ignorant narrow minded cotton headed ninny muggins.

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That list gets incredibly sparse after the 1990s. The two QBs (Aikman and Elway) before the Manning Bros won their rings in a totally different environment in regards to the salary cap.

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Yeah, and the Jets could still get the #1 pick... (or number 3).... the last games aren't completele either way.


But Pat McAfee brought up a great point, the last time they had a moment like this, he was on the team... the winless Colts were all set up to get the #1 draft pick and golden boy Andrew Luck... and they fought hard to beat a team with a winning record, and rumor were Colt's executives were pissed... but you know what... they weren't as horrible as that horrible Lions or Browns team (only Lions happened at the time).

And guess what... they still got their Andrew Luck.... and how many #1 overall QBs just get the crap kicked out of them because they have poor OL? Reason Luck retired early and see the #1 QB from last draft on the IR now.


Also side note by me... who was the best QB value in that draft? The #1 can't miss QB Andrew Luck? Or someone else?

#1 Andrew Luck
#2 Robert Griffin III
#8 Ryan Tannehill
#22 Brandon Weeden
#57 Brock Osweiler
#75 Russell Wilson
#88 Nick Foles
#102 Kirk cousins
185 Ryan Lindley
# 243 B. J. Coleman
#253 Chandler Harnish

Speaking of which, the Packers used a 7th rounder in B.J. Coleman when they could of had some excellent kickers.. (I believe arguably the best since they have been drafted... just saying).

K Justin Tucker
P Johnny Hekker

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The theory that first overall selections, or more specifically quarterbacks, don't regularly win the Superbowl doesn't hold up. There are a couple of data points we could look at to try and make it seem like this is the case, ie: the relatively small amount of 1st overall QBs that have won at least one SB, but this is a red herring; there haven't been that many Superbowls and many QBs have won multiple.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ECmfz4MHaHoEslGhTTB8IGgaq4dhOWDK4ZDhfHkdCQo/edit?usp=sharing 

Major points:

1st overall QBs regularly get to the Superbowl and win it

41% of Superbowls have featured a #1 pick starting at QB for at least one of the teams (22/54). Nearly a third of Super Bowls were won by a QB drafted #1 (16/54 or 30%). This means that the other 70% of Superbowls were won by players picked #2-442. In other words, literally hundreds of different draft slots have produced QBs that have won the Superbowl only a little more than twice as often as 1st overall picks. If draft position was irrelevant and success was truly random, we would expect to see #1 picks win about 0.3% of Superbowls. So 30% means 1st overall picks win the Superbowl about 100 times more often than we would see with a truly random distribution.

Not only do 1st overall selections win the Superbowl at a much higher rate than one might expect, but they also tend to get to and win multiple Superbowls as well. Notable examples being Terry Bradshaw (4-0), Troy Aikman (3-0), John Elway (2-3), Peyton Manning (2-2), and Eli Manning (2-0). Of course, we have good examples of late picks doing well too, Tom Brady (6-3), Joe Montana (4-0), Bart Starr (2-0) and Kurt Warner (1-1).

QBs drafted high show up at Superbowls frequently as well

If we expand our parameters to QBs drafted in the top 10 percentile (for recent drafts, this would be the ~25 slot or above, more on percentile vs absolute position later), we'll see that the vast majority of Superbowls have featured one or more starting QBs that were picked early. Specifically, 42 out of 54 Superbowls, for a rate of 78%. 10 percentile picks win the Superbowl slightly more often than the other 90%, at 29/54 or a win rate of 54%. Even though that is essentially a coin toss rate, this is a remarkable statistic as truly random would put the 10-percentile win rate at, well, 10%. So 10 percentile QBs outperform random chance by about 5x, much less than 1st overall picks, but a respectable rate nonetheless.

There is no way around it: QBs picked #1 overall, or at least fairly high, have historically won the Superbowl at much higher rates than everyone else.

Other tidbits

• The average draft position for Superbowl winning and losing quarterbacks is about the same, with losers being drafted slightly higher (pick 58 vs 62), converted to new money, this would be about the 51st pick
• Tom Brandy single-handedly shifts the average draft position of both SB winners and losers by a decent margin because was drafted so late and played in so many SBs
• Tom Brady (78%), Brad Johnson (68%), Bart Star (56%), Steve Young (UD), and Kurt Warner (UD) are the only QBs drafted in the second half of their respective drafts (or undrafted) to win a SB. However, they account for 11 SB wins (19%).
• Super Bowl 50 saw two #1 picks face off in Peyton Manning and Cam Newton.

Extra nerdy stuff

I've included draft percentile in the spreadsheet, or what % a pick lands relative to the overall draft that year. The number of players drafted has varied wildly, going from around 350 in the pre-merger era to up to 442 post-merger, down to the 220s in the 90s, and now usually about 255 since there have been 32 teams and compensation picks were added. Percentile is a good way to compare relative draft position between years where different amounts of players were taken. But it's not perfect, as drafts that feature 3-400 players include many who would be UDFAs in today's game. For a practical example, Bart Starr was picked one pick after Tom Brady (200 vs 199), but was, relatively speaking, chosen much earlier (56% vs 87%).

I marked Joe Namath as a #1 pick. Technically he was picked #1 in the AFL and #12 in the NFL, and chose to play for the Jets in the AFL pre-merger. Reasonable minds could differ on whether he should be listed as #1 or #12, but given that he didn't play for an NFL team, his AFL pick slot made more sense to me.

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Now, one could make the argument that of the highly touted QBs we hear about every year, relatively few win the Superbowl. This is of course true, however, it doesn't tell us much. Few players, at any position, drafted at any slot, win the Superbowl. Do 1st overall QBs fail to win the Superbowl at a higher rate than any other positions or draft slots? I haven't dug into the numbers here (that's a big research task), but the likely answer to this is: no, with a decent probability that the opposite is true. In any case, Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, and Joe Montana are all the more interesting because they were picked late and had success, precisely because that's not the typical pattern.

Another interesting argument is that we've seen relatively few #1 overall QBs win the Superbowl in the last 20 years (4 to be precise, for a rate of 20%, down from the historic 30% rate). This is a valid point and there are likely a few factors, the salary cap being one of them and Tom Brady bogarting the thing - going to 9 of the last 20 and winning 6 - being another.

Again, 54 is a pretty small sample size to work with. Only one team, and one starting QB can win the SB each year. So we can end up with Tom Brady situations where one guy is so mind-numbingly good that he throws off the data for his entire, astonishingly-long career. It will be interesting to see when he retires, if there is a rash of younger generation QBs picked #1 or in the first round that are showing up at and winning Superbowls. Potential contenders as soon as this year being: Patrick Mahomes (10), Josh Alley (7), Kyler Murray (1), Jared Goff (1), and Baker Mayfield (1) - two of these dudes have already been, with one losing to the ageless wonder.

First overall picks (unsurprisingly) tend to go to bad teams too, but this isn't new. Troy Aikman's Cowboys and Peyton Manning's Colts sucked for a while before those franchises were turned around - generally, there are a few factors, like taking a very good QB early, getting the right coach, and in the case of the Cowboys, being on the right end of the most lopsided trade in history, that factor into success. The Joe Montana to Steve Young and Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers stories are very much outliers, most teams get good by sucking and picking good players early - it's the parity that drives the NFL and a big part of what makes it so interesting.

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I just want to throw in there that alot of experts have or even had the Jets going after the tackle anyhows. The Jets don't have a bad team they are just young, and like you said they have all this cap space for next year when the cap is projected to drop. With it dropping some good players are going to be let go so the teams can fit under the cap.

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Summed up very concisely.

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Not many of the blue checkmark boys ever strapped on a helmet at any level. Even less have walked the sidelines teaching plays and concepts. Almost none have developed overall strategy. And yet when the herd gets moving they don't want to get left behind so right or wrong almost all mindlessly follow along.

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This oddly specific language discounts John Elway and Eli Manning, both of whom were traded before they played a down for the team that drafted them, and who account for 7 Superbowl appearances (13% of all SBs) and 4 wins (7%).

There is no meaningful difference between trading for the right to pick #1 overall, and trading for the player chosen #1 overall after the draft, but before the season.

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It's not oddly specific at all. Read the two tweets as more than QB being picked first overall. You'll see his point. The Giants didn't tank to get first overall. The Broncos didn't tank to get first overall. Both those teams traded FOR the first overall pick because they didn't have it to begin with.

Tanking to get first pick isn't the way to build a team. That's the point. At least, that's how I interpreted it.

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If the only point you're trying to make is that tanking isn't a good way to build a team, I'm not sure I have much to argue about there. There are few examples of teams tanking, and fewer still cases where we know the poor performances were intentional (we can only assume). As far as analyzing tanking in a meaningful way, it's next to impossible: small sample size, can't verify actions. It's difficult to say one way or another.

Now, to the examples that were purposefully excluded from the above post:

The 2003 Giants finished 6-10 and got the #4 pick (2 wins more than the Chargers, who picked #1). They were not a good team, having lost 8 straight but winning their final game to close out the season. To be fair, winning that last game is a solid indicator that they were not tanking for a better draft pick.

The 1982 Broncos finished 2-7 (strike-shortened season) and got the #4 pick. They were not a good team.

Having a poor record and a top-5 draft pick makes it a lot easier to trade up to #1. If these were good teams, it likely would have been too costly (draft-pick wise) to make these trades. In both cases, bad teams were turned around, at least in part, by trading for the top player/quarterback in the draft. This is directly counter to the point that you're trying to make, which is why you're trying to justify excluding these examples.

The whole premise is somewhat dubious, and you're cherry-picking data to try and prove a point you've already decided is correct. It's hard to view this sort of argument with anything but skepticism.

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