[OC] Moving on From an Above Average QB


Feb 5, 2022 12:37:21 GMT -6 73 Replies
There has been talk of Kirk Cousins being traded for many reasons, and it has left me wondering what past NFL teams have opted to do in similar situations. This article will examine what has happened to Above Average QBs after their team moved on. Note that the definition of that is fluid - I've included QBs who some will think are below that line, and a couple who were at one point above it. Still, the QBs selected were generally seen as above average or statistically were considered to be so.

The article will be structured by the manner of which with QB was let go:

Trade - We will examine other scenarios similar to Kirk's situation for a potential trade.
FA - A few above average QBs were let go in free agency - they weren't at Cousins' level, but I think the situations are worth examining.
Retirement - What happened after an above average QB retired? Sure, it's not all that relevant to Kirk, but I do want to see what happened when QBs who played at a similar level to Kirk call it quits.

Note that all examples have occurred within the past 10/11 years. Let's begin!


Trading an Above Average QB

Bengals - Carson Palmer

Palmer got fed up losing games with the Bengals and asked out. It was true that he didn't play as well in 2010, but the Bengals weren't going to be the ones to unlock his next level. He got traded to the Raiders for a 1st and a 2nd, which seemed like an overpay at the time, but the Bengals definitely weren't complaining.

The Bengals picked Andy Dalton in a draft that was rife with QBs. They immediately went to the playoffs by going 9-7. While they never won a playoff game in Dalton's era, they successfully maintained the status quo.

Summary - The Bengals immediately found Dalton in the draft and had a much better season, and led to a 9 year stretch of solid QB play.


Raiders - Carson Palmer

Oakland successfully coaxed poor play from Palmer and then dumped him for 6th and 7th round picks, and in 2013 named project QB Terrelle Pryor as their QB. To nobody's surprise, the move was a total flop and it led to Matt McGloin starting 6 games and even a Matt Flynn sighting.

In 2014, they wisely stayed put in the 2nd round and took Derek Carr, who may be the best QB from this draft, depending on your feelings on Garoppolo.

Summary - After a miserable 2013 season without Palmer, they found their QB of the future and eventually made the playoffs in 2016.


Bills - Tyrod Taylor

After spending 4 years as a backup QB for the Ravens, Taylor won the starting job for the Bills and helped the franchise reach their first playoff berth in 18 years, and also had a 22-20 win record and 92.5 passer rate. Taylor's 2017 season ended on a bad note as the offense crumbled, but they were able to get a 3rd round pick for him in a trade with the Browns.

The following draft, the Bills traded up using 2 second round picks to jump up 9 spots and select Josh Allen with the 7th overall pick. Allen had a rough rookie year, but took a step forward in 2019 and the team made the playoffs again, followed by a borderline MVP season in 2020. The Bills are in great shape now.

Summary - The Bills moved on from an average QB in Tyrod Taylor and immediately struck paydirt the following draft.


49ers - Alex Smith

The former 1st overall pick selected over Aaron Rodgers, Smith had a rough first 6 years in the NFL until 2011, when Jim Harbaugh arrived and saved his career. However, the 49ers had already selected Kaepernick in the 2nd round in 2011, and after Smith got injured in 2012, the unheralded sophomore usurped the position and played his tail off. This prompted the 49ers to trade Smith to the Chiefs (while he still had 2 years, $18M on his deal).

Following a Super Bowl loss, Kaep had a great 2013 season that got the team to the NFCCG again, but after that, things waned. His play was not up to his prior standards in the following seasons, with his passing numbers tumbling,
but it's worth noting that he was still a very talented scrambler and he ended up running for 2300 yards in 5 seasons. Harbaugh's departure and the team's deteriorating roster were factors in Kaep's regression, but it had also seemed that NFL defenses had him figured out.

Summary - The 49ers were fine moving on from Smith, and advanced to another semifinal playoff game. However, the wheels came off for the franchise in the following years, but neither Kaepernick nor Smith were preventing that.


Chiefs - Alex Smith

Everyone should know this one - Smith was an above average starting QB from 2013 to 2017, with the Chiefs going 50-26 in that stretch, but they only went 1-4 in the playoffs. Despite Smith's gaudy numbers, especially in 2017 - it was apparent to some that they needed to find a better QB. In 2017 they made the bold move to trade up to the 10th overall pick to take Patrick Mahomes, having him set on the bench for his first year. They traded Smith to the then-Redskins for starting CB Kendall Fuller and a 3rd round pick (Smith had 1 year, $17.7M left on his $68M deal he had inked back in 2014).

We all know what happened since the trade - Mahomes won MVP in his first year as starter, and was the main force in getting the team to 4 straight NFCCG. He's a statistical anomaly as an instant superstar at such a young age.

Summary - The Chiefs risked 2 1st rounders on a raw QB and struck paydirt, as he was instantly an upgrade from Alex Smith. Trading Smith while his value was at his highest was also a prudent move.


Dolphins - Ryan Tannehill

After spending a 1st on Tannehill in 2012, the Dolphins were mired in mediocrity as they consistently won 7-8 games a year with him under center. By his third year his passer ratings were consistently above average and most considered him to be around the #10-15th best QB in the league. After a torn ACL in 2017, and a rough stretch in 2018, they moved him and a 6th for a 4th and 7th rounder and ended that era (he had one year left on his $77M extension, but they mostly bought out the money for the Titans).

His replacements in 2019 were Ryan Fitzpatrick (2 year, $11M deal) and putting a 2nd round pick in the shredder to acquire Josh Rosen from the Cardinals. Fitzmagic put together a solid season as the Dolphins tore down the roster, having a practice squad caliber OL, nothing at RB, and just two viable receivers. However, the Fins wanted to see what Rosen was capable of, and they gave him a shot - and he turned out to be horrific! Still, Fitzpatrick matched Tannehill's level of play on a far cheaper deal.

The "Tank for Tua" campaign missed its mark for the 1st overall pick, so they missed out on Burrow, but still landed Tua. At this point, the move looks to be a failure has been an average at best QB, while Burrow is a superstar and Herbert has looked phenomenal. Tua's durability is a big question mark as well, but when he has been healthy, he's got the team to be 5 games over .500. It seems as if they've gone full circle and have returned to the mediocrity that the Tannehill era provided.

Summary - On the surface level, Fitzmagic and Tua have replaced Tannehill just fine. However, seeing Tannehill thrive in Tennessee and Herbert look like the obvious pick at #5, Miami management has bungled the situation - the franchise is right back where they started, but not in horrible position.


Letting Go an Above (?) Average QB

Texans - Matt Schaub

After a few solid years as the Texans' starting QB, Schaub flunked out of the job in 2013 due to throwing too many pick 6s. In the offseason, the Texans went with the shotgun approach to QBs - they signed Ryan Fitzpatrick to a 2 year $7.25M deal, draft Tom Savage in the 4th round, and traded a 7th rounder for Patriots QB Ryan Mallett. Despite shaky QB play, the team went 9-7 and barely missed the playoffs.

In 2015, the Texans doubled down on their Patriots connections, re-signing Mallett to a 2 year $7M deal and also signing Brian Hoyer to a 2 year $10.5M deal.
They opted not to draft a QB, and with Savage spending the whole year on the IR, they saw starts from Hoyer, Mallet, Brandon Weeden, and TJ Yates.

In 2016, Houston infamously gave Brock Osweiler way too much money to play worse than basically every player named above, except maybe Mallett. This lead to the drafting of Deshaun Watson in 2017, but not before they stubbornly gave Savage more chances.

Summary - It took 4 years to draft Watson after wandering in the wilderness. It's debatable whether trying to fix Schaub was a better plan than bringing in former Patriots QBs and blowing money on Osweiler.


Bengals - Andy Dalton

The Bengals had finally bottomed out in 2019, putting together an awful roster around Dalton, who had his worst career year. They released him once the season was over.

Having the 1st overall pick in the draft, the Bengals opted to take Joe Burrow. After a rookie year filled struggles, flashes of brilliance, and a torn ACL, Burrow recovered and had a fantastic sophomore year, and has his team in the Super Bowl. Only 2 years later, the Bengals are in amazing shape.

Summary - Dalton's run had come to a close, and they immediately found their QB messiah who broke their 31 year long playoff win drought is now in the Super Bowl.


49ers - Colin Kaepernick


With Jim Harbaugh chased out of town and the once-proclaimed offensive genius Chip Kelly in charge, Kaepernick had a statically solid 2016, but the team went 1-10 and he was benched for Blaine freaking Gabbert. You probably know the rest: Kaepernick drew scant interest on the market, but waited things out for a better deal... only for him to vanish into the mist, with no team signing him. I don't delve into the reasons why here.

Kyle Shanahan was hired the next year, and he brought in Brian Hoyer as their starting QB on a 2 year $12M deal, while also drafting (reaching) on a 3rd round QB named CJ Beathard. Both were flops, leading to them trading a 2nd round pick at the trade deadline for Jimmy Garoppolo. While it has been a good run, Garoppolo's durability and poor play might have lost them a Super Bowl win against the Chiefs. They've since traded 3 1sts to select Trey Lance, signaling the impending conclusion to the Garoppolo era.

Summary - The 49ers found Garoppolo the next year, and stabilized the position. However, a better QB likely would have netted them a SB win.


What Happens When an Above Average QB Retires

Cardinals - Carson Palmer

Palmer retired after an injury (caused by a missed Adrian Peterson block) after the conclusion of the 2017 season. With several QB options on the FA market, the Cardinals were the #3 team in the Kirk Cousins bidding, and instead blew $40M on a 2 year deal to Bradford, who was so bad he got benched after 3 games. He ended up taking home $15.9M of that $40M. They also traded up in the 1st round to select Josh Rosen, who straight out of the gate was also an abject failure.

Thankfully the Cardinals were so bad with those two at QB that they were able to get the 1st overall pick and take Kyler Murray, and somehow got a 2nd rounder out of Miami in exchange for Rosen. They finally made the playoffs in 2021, but Kyler's story still has a long ways to go. He is clearly a franchise QB.

Summary - After completely botching the QB spot in 2018, Arizona admitted their wrongs and got their franchise QB in the 2019 draft. Not bad!


Colts - Andrew Luck

Luck announced his retirement out of the blue in the preseason of 2019, as he was booed off the field by his fans. Perhaps what followed next was karma.

The Colts had Jacoby Brissett ready to step in for the 2019 season, but even with a strong defense and good OL, Brissett's play was mediocre at best, failing to get the team to the playoffs. They also unnecessarily gave him a 2 year $30M extension that was completely undeserved.

Knowing they had to upgrade the QB position, they went to 39 year old Philip Rivers on a one year $25M deal despite the fact that they could have afforded Tom Brady. Rivers gave them all he had left and helped get them to the playoffs, but Rivers was never going to be the guy to do damage in the postseason. They were dispatched by the Bills and their young QB mentioned earlier in this article.

With Rivers retiring, the Colts made a bold move to fix Carson Wentz's career and sent a 3rd and future 1st to the Eagles for him (contract at about $24M a year). Looking at the aggregate stats, you may be deluded in thinking Wentz had a good season, but he was horrific down the stretch and somehow willed the team out of the playoffs despite having the NFL's best run game, good pass protection, and a solid defense.

Summary - The Colts are lost in the QB wilderness, and have not recovered since the retirement of Andrew Luck.


Cowboys - Tony Romo

Romo's retirement was impending, but it came sooner than everyone thought it would - the Cowboys' consistently above average QB succumbed to injury and had to retire after the 2019 season. The previous year, Romo missed 12 games, resulting in starts from Matt Cassel, Kellen Moore, and Brandon Weeden.

The Cowboys opted to spend a 4th rounder on Dak Prescott, which seemed like a risk since he had been busted for a DUI a week before the draft. Mark Sanchez was there as the veteran backup. With reports that Prescott looked overwhelmed in practice, Romo got injured in the preseason and that led to Prescott starting 16 games... and the team went 13-3. The offense was heavily predicated on the run game, but Prescott did a fantastic job as a 4th round rookie QB, even in the limited role they had him play in.

Summary - Prescott's career has been a bit up and down, but they've committed to him with a 4 year, $160M deal. I'd say he's on a similar level to Romo. He's certainly a franchise QB, but you've got to wonder if they can be a SB contender with him on that bloated deal.


Chargers - Philip Rivers

Rivers had been a very successful regular season QB in San Diego and LA, putting up 134 wins and a 95.2 passer rating in 16 years there. However, winning in the playoffs was always a challenge and they never got past the AFC Championship game, and Rivers finished 5-6 in the playoffs. After a rough 2019, he hit the market and signed a deal with the Colts.

With the 2020 draft having several legitimate QB prospects, the Chargers sat back and watched the Bengals take Burrow and the Dolphins take Tagovailoa, and they opted to take Justin Herbert. He had a fantastic rookie year (which looks even better after the 2021 QB class was so rough), and was the driving force in 2021 en route to a Top 5 offense. Their defense stinks and has held them back for years, but if that can be fixed, they will be a perennial contender.

Summary - The Chargers immediately found Herbert, and has become a top 10 QB from the get-go. While they have yet to make the playoffs, they still have him on 3 more years of a rookie deal. They had better not squander that.


Broncos - Peyton Manning

Peyton topped off an incredible career with a Super Bowl win in 2015, despite the fact that his arm was hanging by a thread and duct tape. He was awful that year, but Denver's defense was far superior to the rest of the NFL. Prior to that year Peyton was fully functional, so I am considering him to be 'above average' if you combine the results of his final couple seaons. Denver did have a plan of succession, but things went awry after Peyton's retirement.

Brock Osweiler was supposed to step in as the starting QB, but the former 2nd rounder's deal had expired. He looked solid when playing for Manning in 2015, and that landed him a $72M FA deal in Houston. This turned out to be a bullet dodged, as Osweiler was exposed as a terrible QB... but the Broncos dove headfirst into a barrage of bullets. They spent a 1st rounder on Paxton Lynch, but it quickly became clear that Lynch did not have the intangibles nor the accuracy to be an NFL QB. He started only 4 games, as Trevor Siemian got to play out the defense's best days. They spent 2 years headed down this path, with middling results.

With GM John Elway convinced the team was still in 'win now' mode, they inked Case Keenum to a 2 year, $36M deal. Keenum flopped hard as the team went 6-10, as it was apparent the pixie dust from his magical 2017 season had completely worn off. In 2019, they opted to eat most of the money on his deal and shipped him off to the WFT. They successfully downgraded even further by trading a 4th round pick for a cooked version of Joe Flacco. They then immediately made that move look stupid as they drafted Drew Lock in the 2nd round, and he would go on to usurp the starting job after Flacco floundered as expected.

This then led the way to the current era, where Lock got the 2020 season to try and prove he was a franchise QB after he looked decent in a 7 game stretch in 2019. Lock was awful, barely throwing more TDs then ints and only competed 57% of his passes. In 2021, they traded a 6th rounder to Teddy Bridgewater and he won the job. Teddy had a passable year and was a bigger upgrade on Lock then expected - it was Denver's best QB performance 2014 because the bar was set so low - but the writing is on the wall that a QB upgrade is desperately needed.

Summary - Once Peyton retired, the Broncos have been swinging and missing very badly. Their top defense regressed and the team swooned for a while, but their current roster has talent. They need to be aggressive in finding a QB upgrade, else they're going to continue to be stuck at the bottom of their division for a very long time.


Conclusion

At this point I think it's rather obvious that the risk of the franchise going into a complete tailspin because their above average QB moved on is not as high as you think it is. As it turns out, having strong infrastructure (GM/HC/OL/position players/defense) usually prevents teams from turning into the next Browns/Jags/Lions franchise. If you think the Vikings are going to become the next Lions because they're moving on from Cousins... it's not going to happen. It takes a complete erosion of the aforementioned infrastructure to become that way. This is the same franchise that went to the playoffs with Tarvaris Jackson, Christian Ponder, and Case Keenum as the starting QB. Bad QB play is not a ticket to constant doom and gloom.

If you're going to compare Kirk's situation to anybody's here, he reminds me most of Alex Smith (with the Chiefs) and Philip Rivers. Solid regular season QBs, but they've never taken their team to the next level to go on a SB run. However, they don't compare to Kirk's % of salary cap; Smith at most made 11% of his team's cap (only topped 10% in 4 seasons) and Rivers at most made 15% of the Chargers' cap (he topped 10% his last 9 years there). Kirk made 16.6% of the cap in 2021, and is set to cost 21.5% in 2022.


Let me know what you think! Is it worth trading Cousins with the track record of what other teams have done to try and fill the hole a QB of his level leaves?

[OC] Moving on From an Above Average QB

Shoutbox

Purple Pain: I'll have the Pick 6 thread up tonight for Wild Card Weekend! Jan 10, 2024 12:08:58 GMT -6
Purple Pain: Pick 6 Playoffs Edition for Wild Card Weekend is up: purplepainforums.com/thread/7532/pick-playoffs-edition-wild-weekend Jan 11, 2024 1:30:16 GMT -6
Purple Pain: Pick 6 Playoffs Edition for the Divisional Round: purplepainforums.com/thread/7549/pick-playoffs-edition-divisional-round Jan 17, 2024 23:09:56 GMT -6
beckmt: Where are the totals for the wild card weekend. Jan 18, 2024 20:49:24 GMT -6
Purple Pain: Pick 6 Playoffs Edition for Championship Weekend: purplepainforums.com/thread/7572/pick-playoffs-edition-championship-weekend Jan 25, 2024 11:02:04 GMT -6
Purple Pain: Pick 6 Playoffs Edition for the Super Bowl is up: purplepainforums.com/thread/7585/pick-playoffs-edition-super-lviii Jan 31, 2024 11:33:55 GMT -6
salamander: Not feeling good unless we can find a QB. Haven't had a great one in a looooooong time. Feb 22, 2024 13:43:06 GMT -6
Reignman: March 11th, 2024 will live in history as Kirk Cousins Independence Day *cheerleader* Mar 11, 2024 16:34:20 GMT -6
salbrecht: Why can Pittsburg sign Russel Wilson fo 1.2 million and we get Sam Darnold for 10 million?? Mar 13, 2024 18:31:25 GMT -6
Reignman: when you put it like that, it's a real head scratcher, but this franchise is all about their precious culture, so I imagine they passed on a guy like Russ over something silly like that ... Darnold will have a big smile when he's throwing all the INT's Mar 14, 2024 17:44:47 GMT -6
shandman: If I am NE, I seriously consider getting Justin Fields and roll with Fields/Brisset this year.

For Vikings to actually pull this off they probably have to trade #11, #23 and 2025 first rounder. In return, they hopefully get #3 overall this year and NE's
Mar 15, 2024 19:29:01 GMT -6
glenwo2: Saying that Darnold will have a big smile when he's throwing all the INT's is quite the Take, Reignman. Mar 16, 2024 20:17:05 GMT -6
Nemesis: Good grief....first I hear....and then I hear...I think I better go back to being gone. *woot* ??? Mar 22, 2024 15:24:17 GMT -6
Norseman: You were gone? Mar 22, 2024 22:30:40 GMT -6
Nemesis: I'm a long gone daddy www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtpe6_2nCts Mar 23, 2024 9:39:00 GMT -6
glenwo2: Norseman is Nemesis' Daddy! You heard it here first, folks. Mar 25, 2024 12:26:17 GMT -6
glenwo2: I'm kidding of course, Nemesis. :) Mar 25, 2024 12:27:05 GMT -6
Norseman: How do you know that it isn't true? Mar 25, 2024 14:28:23 GMT -6
glenwo2: Because Nemesis is the Mod and I'm just a punk rookie acting like a goofball. Mar 25, 2024 16:57:35 GMT -6
Nemesis: Plus glenwo2 is probably my dad, he just likes messing with me from the beyond. Mar 26, 2024 17:13:40 GMT -6
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