You’ve heard the label before, the NFL is a “quarterback league.” Well, yeah … and it seems more than ever that football is a “quarterback …
You’ve heard the label before, the NFL is a “quarterback league.” Well, yeah… and it seems more than ever that football is a “quarterback sport.” The 2021 draft will almost certainly be the fourth consecutive “Player Selection Meeting” to have a QB selected No.1 overall. In the past 20 drafts, a passer has come off the board first 15 times. Yet the volume has gone up another notch in recent years, especially as teams become more willing to quickly take a mulligan on a first-round QB misfire – Josh Rosen and Dwayne Haskins being examples. In the last three drafts alone,12 quarterbacks have gone in Round 1 – Rosen (2018) and Haskins (2019) among that group – and at least five will undoubtedly swell that figure this year. “As always, there are some interesting players,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said Thursday. “It’s an interesting class. It’s an interesting group of guys. Some are very strong in some skills. Some seem very strong in other skills.” It’s a stone cold lock that the three teams atop the 2021 draft board – the Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers, in that order – will be selecting a signal caller, the Jags universally expected to call the name of Clemson star Trevor Lawrence and the NYJ widely linked to BYU’s Zach Wilson. But beyond that? In this day and age, you never know when teams like the Raiders or Vikings might go the route the Packers did in 2020 and preemptively lay the groundwork to replace an established veteran by targeting a quarterback early. But discounting such surprise moves, I’ve identified 11 teams (listed with their top pick in 2021) that could be in the draft market for a passing prospect early: They may be the most fascinating team in the draft, seemingly positioned to select the top non-QB prospect, trade what’s shaping as a very valuable pick or target a successor for former league MVP Matt Ryan, who will be 36 next month. If the Falcons choose the latter option, they’d likely select either Ohio State’s Justin Fields, who grew up on the outskirts of Atlanta, North Dakota State’s Trey Lance – both players are far superior athletes to Ryan – or Alabama’s Mac Jones, who’s often compared to Ryan. “We want to stack good quarterbacks. It’s a prime time to do it when you have a player like Matt Ryan because when you can get in the right quarterback, you don’t have that pressure to play him right away,” new Falcons GM Terry Fontenot told the team’s website. “It just opens up so many possibilities.” After Detroit acquired Jared Goff as part of its megadeal with the Los Angeles Rams involving Matthew Stafford, it seems likely he’ll at least get the opportunity to reboot his career in Motown as the Lions reset.
