Commentary: Picking a QB in the NFL draft remains a mysterious blind date

Some things remain unmappable, and finding the NFL franchise guy is one of them. Ask any generative AI, matrices-multiplying algorithmic gizmo which quarterback to take in the first round of this draft, and watch the fiber optics burn. This uncertainty is fun in a world of too much intelligence. But it also raises a question, especially for QB-hungry teams such as the Washington Commanders: Why is it such an annual search party?

If you’re an NFL executive, machine learning can’t help you. Finding a QB is frankly still a blind date. “Do we look stressed?” asked Washington Commanders general manager Adam Peters, who will make the second pick in Thursday’s NFL draft. Jayden Daniels or Drake Maye? Michael Penix Jr. or J.J. McCarthy? It’s a quant’s quagmire. As sure of a shot as Caleb Williams of Southern California seems to be as the No. 1 pick for the Chicago Bears, data suggests that teams are wrong in identifying “franchise” quarterbacks roughly 75% of the time. Meanwhile, there could be a guy hiding somewhere further down. He may not have the hand size or some other measurable, but he has a low sack rate, he senses pressure, and he might be some organization’s dream date.

The fail rate when it comes to drafting first-round quarterbacks is worth examining in itself. How can people be so wrong about something they spend so much time studying? Last year, predictive analyst Warren Sharp surveyed 38 quarterbacks drafted in the first round since 2011. He found they had started about 2,000 games. Their collective record? A half-game below .500. Only 19% of the time did they make the playoffs. Bill Barnwell of ESPN did his own research, charting the career fates of QBs taken in the first round since 1983. He found just 27.5% achieved what he defines as “franchise” status, meaning established winners for their teams. The Washington Post’s Neil Greenberg limited his analysis to quarterbacks taken in the top five since 2011 and found the odds of landing a franchise QB even in that zone are worse than a coin flip.

“Of course it’s an unknown – it’s human beings,” says Chris Simms, the former NFL quarterback who is now an analyst for NBC Sports. “It’s trying to predict how they’ll fit into a different environment than they’ve ever been involved with before.”

Simms has a better predictive eye than most observers for the next quarterbacking stars. Over the past few years, his rankings have become hotly anticipated, ever since he announced in 2017 that Patrick Mahomes of Texas Tech was the most dynamic QB in the draft, advice the Bears utterly ignored while choosing Mitchell Trubisky with the No. 2 pick. In 2018, Simms had Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen rated ahead of Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen when almost no one else did, including the Cleveland Browns (Mayfield went No. 1 overall) and New York Jets (Darnold went No. 3). In 2020, his senses told him that Justin Herbert and Jordan Love were right behind Joe Burrow in potential and ahead of Tua Tagovailoa. And in 2023, he rightly picked C.J. Stroud as the best prospect.

Obviously, Simms is looking at things differently from a lot of the professional scouts. What is he looking at? Actually, it’s not what so much as where and how he looks.

“There’s made-up stuff by evaluators with quarterbacks,” he says. “ ‘Oh, he’s prototypical; oooooh, he’s a winner; oooooh, look at his stats.’ And I would just say none of that has anything to do with anything. That’s where a lot of the misevaluation comes in.”

To Simms, all the numerical overload gets in the way. Instead of dwelling on statistical charts and quantifiables, he looks at context.

Mahomes was undervalued because his college team had a poor record, his stats were uneven and he threw a lot of unorthodox and improvised balls. If you just looked at spliced cuts of tape combined with stats, what you saw was a guy who appeared undisciplined and too ready to break out of the pocket, throwing across his body a lot for incompletions. But Simms studied Mahomes over entire games, looking for context: “There wasn’t one receiver open in 75 drop-back passes,” Simms says. “Where do you want him to go with that? Instead of saying, ‘Oh, he’s not a winner,’ it was, ‘Wait, he makes one good decision after another, and every time he throws the ball, he throws it exactly where he wants to.’ Now maybe guys are covered and it’s incomplete. But he hits the bull’s eye every time he throws it.”

He had the same experience when he watched Herbert. Again, Simms studied whole games of him at Oregon, where he operated in a basic offense without a lot of talent around him. “But every throw he makes, man, it’s on the money,” Simms says. “He had great power touch, and even when his receiver wasn’t open, he threw to the right spot. He goes to the one place where I go, ‘Yeah, if there’s a completion to be had, that’s it, and ooooooh, he threw the right ball, too.’ ”

So what does Simms think of this draft class and why? It’s an extravaganza of talent with as many as half a dozen signal callers going in the first round. But he calls Williams a cut above all of them and not just because of that howitzer arm and his escapability but, again, because of the context of his playmaking. “I watched some games, and he dropped back 40 times, and he was under pressure on 30 of them, and he got out of 25 of them,” Simms says. Daniels has similar ability and is Simms’s clear-cut No. 2 – and probably would be No. 1 in any other year. He rates Bo Nix, Penix and McCarthy as another small step down behind those two, with Maye, controversially, as his No. 6.

However, Simms can be wrong, too – dead wrong. Such as his decision to call Zach Wilson a better prospect than Trevor Lawrence. “I’ve missed on some, too,” he acknowledges cheerfully. “You just try to be more right than you are wrong. Because you’re going to be wrong – that’s a given. You got to check your ego at the door when it comes to drafting and evaluation.”

That’s why the first round of the NFL draft retains so much charm, even as it’s increasingly overproduced, overhyped and overanalyzed. It’s still an exercise in pondering the imponderable: Which still-unformed youth will take the shape of a future great? “It’s a round that you take a chance, and he’s not the complete player yet,” Simms says. “… It could be special. And sometimes it blows up in your face.”

It’s also a strangely reassuring exercise, for all the uncertainty. It proves machines still haven’t solved all of the riddles of human performance.