On a different note, Colt Brennan is having hip surgery and could be available in the sixth or seventh round at this point. I’d give strong consideration to taking him at that point. I would also give a long look at Anthony Morelli if he’s still on the board- he’s got the traditional big body and big arm, and he would have a lot of upside for a guy going that late.

No, the FO numbers were Culpepper #1, McNabb #2, with McCown a distant third. Remember, it’s a two-part equation, starts and completion percentage. Culpepper started 51 games and completed 63.3% of his passes, which graded out tops even after adjusting for the 1-AA factor. McNabb started 45 games and completed 58.4% of his passes, while McCown started 43 games and only completed 55.5% of his passes. Culpepper projected to be a 5.46 DPAR/game QB, and before his knee injury, he was almost hitting it on the dot with 5.20 DPAR/game.

I wouldn’t characterize 2005 as an everything else draft, either. Jason Campbell started 39 games and completed 64.6% of his passes at Auburn. He was a legitimate franchise quarterback candidate. He had a very low number of total attempts at Auburn, and if we find there is a more accurate gauge from a 70/30 start/attempt ratio, for instance, his projection would go down a bit (and Matt Ryan’s would go up a bit), but in any event he was certainly a much better option for San Francisco than Alex Smith. (And Braylon Edwards was a better prospect than either of them.)

I think a clear top five quarterback should project out to about 6.00 per game. That’s for a franchise guy. Of the quarterbacks in the last eleven years, that would be Ben Roethlisberger, Peyton Manning, Chad Pennington, Philip Rivers, Matt Leinart and Jason Campbell. Those are players who you take no matter what your situation at quarterback is like. Guys who project at 5.00 a game are probably worth taking unless there are clearly better prospects at other impact positions (left tackle, defensive end, etc.). That would add Carson Palmer, Daunte Culpepper and Byron Leftwich. Guys who have a lower projection than that I wouldn’t touch in the top five or six picks, not with the amount of money the quarterback is likely to command. If you’ve got a 4 DPAR projection, I would use a pick outside of the top ten- Donovan McNabb, Eli Manning, Drew Brees, Jay Cutler, Alex Smith, Vince Young-but nothing higher, and a guy with a 3 projection is a second round prospect. Ryan is probably going to fall into that 3 range; at best he’ll be a 4, depending on the adjustments. In no way, shape or form did he perform like a top five candidate, even though he has the body of one. Even if you just look at his conventional stats, they are very troubling. He had a 6.91 YPA on his career. The only recent guys with a lower number were Aaron Rodgers, JP Losman, Patrick Ramsey, and Kyle Boller, all of whom were in the sixes. His TD-INT ratio of 56-37 is going to be the worst of any player taken in the first round since 1997, and the when you factor in the second round as well and look at comparisons, you get a list like this- Jay Cutler (59/36), JP Losman (60/27), Quincy Carter (35/25) Kyle Boller (64/48) and Charlie Batch (53/31). It’s much closer (and worse!) to the Joey Harringtons (59/23) and Ryan Leafs (59/24) of the world than to the Ben Roethlisbergers (84/34) and Peyton Mannings (89/33). So either Ryan was struggling in the least conducive environment of any quarterback in the last twelve years-and he wasn’t, as BC is routinely a middle-to-upper level team, and the ACC has been exceptionally weak the last few years; only Jay Cutler really deserves consideration in this respect-or your eyes have been deceiving you, which is understandable- he’s a big, strapping boy with good pocket presence who can make all the throws…he just doesn’t with nearly enough regularity. It’s not even a case like Palmer where a guy puts it all together his senior season after being steady but unspectacular in his first three years, as Ryan’s senior numbers are basically identical to his junior numbers once you account for the inflation in his attempts- his 6.89 YPA is literally identical.

Is it possible that Ryan turns into another Roethlisberger? Yes, it’s possible. I hope he does-and if we draft him, I really hope he does. But it’s a major stretch to expect him to become that kind of player based on just about any measure of his performance during his college career.

http://www.chargers.com/team/front_office/aj-smith.htm?&modulePageId=7

Because his tenure with the Bills ended in 2000, I doubt that he had any role in the Chargers taking Brees, who was drafted in April 2001, 2 years before AJ Smith re-joined the team. I was joking about his taking 6-4+ QBs, but your statement is wrong.

I could do a point-by-point rebuttal, but it seems to me your argument proves too much. Then, a team should never take a first-round QB. Dallas takes Aikman and then goes 1-15…does that mean they were wrong to draft him? The teams you mentioned were wrong because they chose poorly. Couch (1) went right before McNabb (2); the Browns chose poorly. I have no idea how FO numbers went, but my guess is McNabb was no. 1 and Cade McNown was no. 2…if that were the case, then Philly would’ve made the error taking McNown. Also, a team that takes a QB at 17 (as opposed to 6) still has a first-round investment in the QB and, if the QB doesn’t pan out, has wasted the opportunity to draft a pro-bowl calibre player.

The more I look into the issue of drafting QB, the more I’m convinced that there are absolute can’t-miss studs and everyone else. In your opinion this is an “everyone else” draft. If that’s the case, then drafting a QB in the first 2 rounds is a mistake like in 2005 or 2002. I think Ryan is a a clear top 5 pick and the class of this draft, like Palmer in ‘03. I didn’t see Big Ben in college, but like I’ve said before, Ryan reminds me of both guys. If I believed, like you, that he didn’t produce numbers in college that merited a top 5 pick, then I’d stay away from any QB until the 3rd round or later because most teams expect starters from the first 2 rounds and it’s unlikely that’s what you’d get from a late-first or second round pick.

I don’t put that much into the history of second round picks for a variety of reasons- one is that what constitutes a second round pick has changed quite a bit, so guys who previously went late first (like Marino) or early third (like Montana) would have been second rounders in this or that format. I think the second or third round are basically the same thing as far as the strategy of QB picks is concerned, and I would certainly include both Croyle and Trent Edwards (as well as guys like Charlie Frye) as examples of teams using the second round QB concept.

I also happen to think there is indeed a paradigm shift going on. In each of the last three drafts, quarterbacks have dropped. Brady Quinn and Aaron Rodgers were frequently graded as the sixth or seventh best prospects in their draft classes and each one of them dropped into the twenties. Matt Leinart was a top five candidate who slid to ten. There is likely going to be the same kind of slide this year. It may happen to Matt Ryan, who I think has a legitimate chance to fall as far as 17th- I don’t expect it to happen, but I would put his draft range as anywhere between 1-17, or it may happen to Brohm, who might have been a mid-first round pick in earlier years and who now may drop out of the round altogether. If teams aren’t very desperate or very sure, they are passing on quarterbacks, and they’re doing it because the evidence is striking that when you draft a big, strapping quarterback at the top of the draft who hasn’t hasn’t been consistently dominant enough to earn that draft slot, it sinks your franchise for years. After the Chargers took Ryan Leaf, they ended up with the #1 overall pick again three years later, (and then three years later after that), and they would have had the #8 pick in the draft the following year had they not traded it away for Leaf. The Browns used the #1 pick in the draft on Tim Couch and had the #1 pick the next year, the #3 pick the year after that, the #7 pick in 2004 and the #3 pick in 2005. The Bengals whiffed on the #3 pick with Akili Smith in 1999 and had the #4, the #4, the #10 and then finally the #1 overall pick as they bottomed out from that disaster. The Texans used the #1 overall on David Carr and were stuck with the #1 overall pick again four years later. The 49ers used the #1 overall on Alex Smith and have picked #6 overall and would have picked #7 overall had they kept their pick. So when these teams reach for their 6′4″ studmuffins, they end up beginning a cycle of high draft picks that is very hard to get out of, and when they do get out of them, it’s usually under new management. So coaches and front offices are bailing, and understandably so. After all, Mel Kiper can say that Trent Dilfer has it and Tim Couch has it and Akili Smith has it and David Carr has it and Joey Harrington has it and keep his job- he’ll be back on ESPN in April insisting that Matt Ryan has it. But the people who make those picks get fired.