Why Drafting a Quarterback is NOT the Right Thing to do for Most Teams

If a team is building through the NFL Draft, quarterbacks are not pieces you take that you build around to win a championship.

Plenty of teams are heading into the 2018 NFL Draft needing quarterbacks. None of them are in a position to win a championship in the near future if they draft a quarterback. So they shouldn’t take one.

Since the 2000 regular season, the NFL has had 12 different quarterbacks win their first or only Super Bowl. Two were acquired by their teams in free agency, two were no. 1 overall picks, one was reacquired as a backup, and the others were selected in the NFL Draft in the middle of the first round or later.

Peyton and Eli Manning were no. 1 overall picks and they took years to win the Super Bowl. Aaron Rogers was on the bench for four years, despite being a first-round pick, and Drew Brees won a Super Bowl in his fourth season in New Orleans, and Joe Flacco took five seasons to win a Super Bowl. They combined to win seven Super Bowls.

Tom Brady, Trent Dilfer, Ben Roethlisberger, Nick Foles, Brad Johnson, and Russell Wilson were all acquired by teams that were close but needed that one guy at quarterback to put them over the top. They all won in either their first or second seasons with seasons with the organization. Brady, Dilfer, and Foles were all initially backups in the seasons they won their first titles, and Brady and Roethlisberger won multiple Super Bowls. Wilson appeared in back-to-back Super Bowls. These quarterbacks combined to win 11 Super Bowls.

The narrative going into this year’s draft is that if the franchise needs a quarterback, they must take one this year because the class is so deep and talented. Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Josh Allen, and Baker Mayfield are all supposed to become quality starters in the NFL. There’s one problem. The quarterback is not a foundational position. It’s a final building block position.