ANALYSIS | It’s a whole new game for NFL rookie quarterbacks these days.
They’re starting in place of sitting, winning instead of waiting and charting new courses in the record books instead of charting plays on a clipboard.
Make no doubt, the top college QBs currently are being examined under a different light — a radically different light — as NFL teams prepare for April’s draft.
Over the past decade — and, more specifically, the past five years — there’s been a sea change when it comes to handling first-year pro QBs, and they’re being thrown into the NFL deep end, sink or swim. For the most part, however, it has gone rather swimmingly of late.
Now you don’t have to be an NFL Network junkie or a data-mining devotee to realize that recent rookies such as Robert Griffin III, Joe Flacco and Cam Newton have been cutting against the established NFL grain.
But just how much ground have the recent rookie QBs broken? Just check out the following breakdown of how they’ve performed in a trio of “S” categories:
Starts
As we were just reminiscing, it used to be that first-year QBs were brought along slowly.
But whether it’s the high rookie salaries, the even higher expectations, the greater number of NFL-ready college quarterbacks, the utilization of more collegiate offensive schemes in the pros or simply the ever-growing importance of the position in the NFL, the rooks are quickly being thrust into action.
Sifting through the abundant data available on Pro-football-reference.com, we found 17 rookie quarterbacks in the 53 seasons since 1960 who have started every one of their team’s games during their first pro season. Nine of those seasons — or slightly more than half — have come during the past 11 years and a full eight of those nine have taken place in the past five years.
The recent run of 16-game rookie starters began with the Baltimore Ravens’ Flacco and the Atlanta Falcons’ Matt Ryan in 2008, continued in 2010 and ’11 with Sam Bradford (St. Louis Rams), Newton (Carolina Panthers) and Andy Dalton (Cincinnati Bengals) and extended to this past season when Andrew Luck (Indianapolis Colts), Ryan Tannehill (Miami Dolphins) and Russell Wilson (Seattle Seahawks) all started 16 games for their respective teams.
Two more prized 2012 rookies — RG3, the league’s Offensive Rookie of the Year and Brandon Weeden of the Cleveland Browns — started 15 of 16 games and are among the 22 first-year QBs who have started 14 or more games in their inaugural seasons since 1978 and the advent of the 16-game regular season.
And, again, it’s a trend that’s been heavy on recency with 15 of the 22 seasons transpiring over the past dozen years and 12 of those occurring over the past five seasons.
Stats
Not only are rookie QBs getting more immediate opportunities, but they’re making the most out of them as well.
Take a gander at the top 20 single-season passing-yardage totals for rookie QBs in NFL history. Notice that 14 of the 20 (70 percent) have occurred over the past 12 seasons, led by Luck’s rookie-record 4,374 yards for the Colts in 2012.
Narrowing it down to the top 13 all-time rookie passing-yard performances, a full 10 of the 13 (77 percent) have played out in the past five seasons. The only outliers have been ninth-place Warren Moon (Houston Oilers) in 1984, fourth-place Jim Kelly (Buffalo Bills) in ’86 and Peyton Manning (Colts) in ’98.
Moon and Kelly, though, may best be noted with asterisks as the current Hall-of-Famers were anything but your typical rookies. Moon spent six seasons in the Canadian Football League before playing his first NFL down, while Kelly spent his first three pro seasons in the United States Football League despite being drafted in the first round by the Bills in ’83.
Success
Again, with the assistance of our informative friends at Pro-football-reference.com, we find that 17 rookie QBs have won seven or more of their first-year, regular-season starts in league history.
Twelve of those 17 seasons (71 percent) have come over the past nine seasons, including nine in the past five.
Moving on to the postseason, 30 first-year QBs have started a playoff game since 1960, and continuing the trend, 18 (60 percent) of those starts have been made since the opening of the 2000 season, including 14 in the past five seasons.
Eleven of those 30 rookie postseason starts resulted in wins, with eight of those victories being recorded since the turn of the century. Moreover, six of those eight wins have come over the past five seasons with Flacco (2 in ’08), the New York Jets’ Mark Sanchez (2 in ’09), the Houston Texans’ T.J. Yates (’11) and Wilson (’12) notching the milestones.
As for the Super Bowl, no rookie QB has yet to start a Roman Numeral contest, but it should be noted that youth is definitely being served in the Big Game with eight of the past 12 winning starters being age 28 or younger, including Flacco (28) in the most recent matchup.
By comparison, only 13 of the winning QBs in the first 35 Super Bowls were 28 or younger.
Any way you slice it, rookie quarterbacks are making a bigger splash than ever in the NFL pool, and they’re definitely not waiting their turn to leap off the diving board.
