5. Due to the lack of talent on the offensive side, the QBs have enormous pressure to make lemonade out of a warm cup of piss. If you want a young QB to develop, draft him after you surround him with some real pros or some real talent.
It's something of a chicken/egg problem, but I don't believe that building everything else and only
then adding a QB is smart.
1) Without a decent QB, the rest of your offense will suck, and worse, you'll have a very difficult time evaluating the talent at those positions. Are the WR's unable to get open/running bad routes, or does the QB telegraph his throws/is inaccurate? Can the OL not block, or is the QB giving plays away or holding the ball too long? Do the RB's suck, or is it the lack of a passing threat that stifles the running game? We've gone through all of those debates before, not knowing what we have elsewhere because the QB sucks.
2) The QB has the longest shelf life of any offensive player, being able to excel into his mid-30's. Other positions, much less so. By the time you draft everything else, and then go after your QB and take a couple of years for him to develop, the team you so carefully built is going to start falling apart due to age, free agency, etc.. Especially if you have to cycle through another shitty QB or two to find the guy that works.
3) The best QB prospects usually go high in the draft, and if you build a "pretty good" otherwise team first, you'll be stuck with shittier picks to get that QB.
4) QB is easily the highest-impact player on a team. If you don't have a good one and you have a high pick, you've got to go for the impact.
5) Much easier to get a good WR in FA than a good QB. They tend to be prima donnas, and teams generally can't afford more than one stud WR, so they tend to go on the market.
It's obviously more difficult to evaluate your QB if the rest of the team sucks, but you can still learn a lot. Missing wide open pass catchers/inaccuracy is unsatisfactory no matter how good the rest of the team is. And in any case, we're no longer in that situation. Our WR corps was at least
decent this year. And our running game was good for a good chunk of the season as well. Injuries are hurting us now, but at least for awhile, the rest of the team was
good enough to evaluate the QB. And next year, with Mack returning, two good sophomore RB's, and our pass catchers, the offense apart from the QB should be above average.
6. When was the last time there wasn't a purposeful attempt at a QB controversy? It sells tickets, it gets people talking, and it doesn't win jack shit. Its like if your company laptop is dying so they give you three more 1990s Dell laptops that also don't work and call the problem solved.
I don't believe there has
ever been a purposeful (on the part of the franchise) attempt at a QB controversy here.
Everyone (except perhaps the backup himself) wants the primary guy to succeed. It's only when he looks to be failing that people want the backup, but that's not because they want a controversy - it's because they want a competent QB.
7. When you blow a first or second day pick on a QB every other year, along with your annual overhaul of the defensive front seven, you have wasted several high picks year after year in a go-nowhere self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.
But we've blown plenty of WR picks (name your second-rounder) and RB's (Steamin' Willie Green/Richardson) as well. Should we stop drafting them too?