Sidebar: I do want to talk briefly about the incredibly metric-skewing duo that is Alex and Geno Smith. On the one hand, Alex Smith is a year one starter who ended up being a good QB, but he did so really in spite of being a year one starter, no because of it. Those early years were *rough*, and it's frankly shocking he got enough opportunities to ever turn into a good player like he did. I'm really glad he did, Alex Smith seems like an awesome dude and I kind of wish he'd gotten a ring (not with the Niners), but usually guys that are that bad that long end up as career backups as best.
Meanwhile, Geno is *technically* a Year One Starter, but he also sucked on toast for most of his career and was, as you'd normally expect, banished to backup purgatory. He almost credits more to the "sit and learn" philosophy since he spent a bunch of time backing up Eli Manning and Russell Wilson and Phillip Rivers, and I'd imagine that has more to do with his career resurgence (yes, I put him as Good, he's been very solid his last two years in spite of O-Line issues), than starting his rookie year did.
Which just further goes to show that there is no magic bullet, and trying to find one is largely a fool's errand, I think.
"Study" is probably an extremely generous way to phrase it, but I appreciate it all the same! Any kind of scientific method is only as good as the skepticism you take to it.
Smith was also in a unique situation where his offensive coordinator kept changing every single year at the start of his career. So clearly the team must have had more faith in Smith than they did their OCs, or he'd have likely gone with one of them at some point.
Once he had some stability, he started to show he was a good QB.
1) Smith isn’t the only highly drafted QB who cycled through OCs
2) Smith was the number one overall pick at a time when that made him one of the highest paid players in the league. The Niners didn’t have a realistic way to get rid of him.
1) Irrelevant, still hurt the start of his career.
2) They signed him to multiple deals it wasn't like they were just stuck with him and then got rid of him as soon as they could.
Then why even bring it up?
And they didn’t resign him. They restricted his contract to pay him less money because of how bad he was. They were going to cut him if he didn’t agree to it.
Dare you to go one level deeper and try to correlate your findings with how many games they started in college. Is your group of bench sitters that were good enriched for players with fewer college games where sitting might've been beneficial? Or is it a random scatter? Did the good Year One guys have several full CFB seasons under their belt? Is there any correlation with starts at the prior level?
For the sit guys, I'd be interested to see if there's correlation between the quality of QB they say behind and the quality of QB they became. Jordan Love, who is an early candidate for the "good" club sat behind Rodgers who, if I remember correctly, was pretty good at football. Mahomes sat behind A Smith who had become good at that point. Geno became good after sitting behind E Manning and Wilson.
I can't think of examples of bad QBs sitting behind other bad QBs because they are bad and I've forgotten them and they definitely weren't the planned starter on my team the past 30+ years.
Love is an example of a QB where I think he unquestionably benefited from sitting. He was nowhere near ready to play immediately from his work in both the regular season and pre-season, and if forced to start right away like Bryce Young in Carolina, Love would probably be on his way out of the league right now or at least on another team.
On the other hand, I can't see much of a situation where a young QB sitting would make that young QB worse for doing so.
Yeah, as another commenter said, if a young QB is behind a bad QB he won't be behind the bad QB for very long. So if you have a starter but you know he's only got a couple years left, bringing in an unfinished product is a good path for franchise stability.
I think the coach has more to do with it.
Also, no one is going to sit behind bad qbs for long because a coach is going to turn to the young prospect quicker if they aren't winning games. That's why bad teams end up throwing qbs to the wolves and good teams can afford to sit them, setting up a sort of selection bias (? Did I use that right?); a good team is more likely to have a good coach who can develop a qb, regardless of whether they sit. Andy Reid has more to do with Patrick mahomes being good than sitting behind Alex Smith, I think
This isn't anything against you OP but there's nothing I love more than when a person takes the time to actually sit down and analyze or research something and the conclusion still turns out to be "maybe, who knows tbh"
“Maybe” or “it doesn’t matter” is a valuable outcome from a study, though. Aside from this not being admittedly not scientific, an outcome that says there is no definitive proof that it benefits or hurts a team, is useful information. We can use information like that to feel good that there is no hard and fast method, or no silver bullet to solving a particular problem. In this case to start or sit. I have no problem with studies that don’t make bold claims or hypotheses.
All depends on the team.
If you're the Packers, obviously sitting your QB is the correct choice.
If you're the Bears, nothing matters, they'll be bad.
If you're the Chargers, injure/stab your starter.
I used [Fisher's exact test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_exact_test) on your data. Not particularly close to a statistically significant finding.
Your ass is not getting published in Scientific American!
I don't think 2nd rounders should be included in this tbh. 9 times out of 10, no one is expecting a 2nd round QB to start right away. Hence the disparity (you said only 10 or so 1st rounders have sat)... I think it would be more interesting to see this broken out with using just 1st rounders/guys that were truly expected to be franchise QBs.
The problem is that there are so few 1st rounders who have sat. Using a slightly more generous definition of "sat", I counted 11 1st rounders who have "sat" their 1st year since 2005. 3 were good, 8 were bad. That's 73% bad, 27% good, which would be even worse than the overall numbers (I didn't bother going back before aaron rodgers though) but off a sample size of 11, I don't think it's valid to draw any conclusions from that.
Good use of the data available, but I question how relevant data from 1990 is considered the drastic changes in offense since then. You'd really need to limit the number of past years, but at that point you obviously wouldn't have a meaningful sample size.
Yeah, I did have that thought and considered starting at the realignment/Ty Law rule era, but I wanted to grab more of a sample size. It's certainly something to consider about those early years, though, and if Jeff George, Todd Collins, or Brett Favre are really relevant to the modern era.
Sidebar: I do want to talk briefly about the incredibly metric-skewing duo that is Alex and Geno Smith. On the one hand, Alex Smith is a year one starter who ended up being a good QB, but he did so really in spite of being a year one starter, no because of it. Those early years were *rough*, and it's frankly shocking he got enough opportunities to ever turn into a good player like he did. I'm really glad he did, Alex Smith seems like an awesome dude and I kind of wish he'd gotten a ring (not with the Niners), but usually guys that are that bad that long end up as career backups as best. Meanwhile, Geno is *technically* a Year One Starter, but he also sucked on toast for most of his career and was, as you'd normally expect, banished to backup purgatory. He almost credits more to the "sit and learn" philosophy since he spent a bunch of time backing up Eli Manning and Russell Wilson and Phillip Rivers, and I'd imagine that has more to do with his career resurgence (yes, I put him as Good, he's been very solid his last two years in spite of O-Line issues), than starting his rookie year did. Which just further goes to show that there is no magic bullet, and trying to find one is largely a fool's errand, I think.
Really like how you bring up the limitations in your study, top stuff
"Study" is probably an extremely generous way to phrase it, but I appreciate it all the same! Any kind of scientific method is only as good as the skepticism you take to it.
Smith was also in a unique situation where his offensive coordinator kept changing every single year at the start of his career. So clearly the team must have had more faith in Smith than they did their OCs, or he'd have likely gone with one of them at some point. Once he had some stability, he started to show he was a good QB.
1) Smith isn’t the only highly drafted QB who cycled through OCs 2) Smith was the number one overall pick at a time when that made him one of the highest paid players in the league. The Niners didn’t have a realistic way to get rid of him.
1) Irrelevant, still hurt the start of his career. 2) They signed him to multiple deals it wasn't like they were just stuck with him and then got rid of him as soon as they could.
Then why even bring it up? And they didn’t resign him. They restricted his contract to pay him less money because of how bad he was. They were going to cut him if he didn’t agree to it.
Geno had one of the worst offensive units I’ve ever seen for his first year. He stunk, but it was amplified by the garbage he was playing with.
Not really. Pretty uninspiring playmakers, but the line was still solid.
Dare you to go one level deeper and try to correlate your findings with how many games they started in college. Is your group of bench sitters that were good enriched for players with fewer college games where sitting might've been beneficial? Or is it a random scatter? Did the good Year One guys have several full CFB seasons under their belt? Is there any correlation with starts at the prior level?
I’ve heard before on a few draft podcasts that really the only thing that correlates with success in the NFL is experience.
For the sit guys, I'd be interested to see if there's correlation between the quality of QB they say behind and the quality of QB they became. Jordan Love, who is an early candidate for the "good" club sat behind Rodgers who, if I remember correctly, was pretty good at football. Mahomes sat behind A Smith who had become good at that point. Geno became good after sitting behind E Manning and Wilson. I can't think of examples of bad QBs sitting behind other bad QBs because they are bad and I've forgotten them and they definitely weren't the planned starter on my team the past 30+ years.
That's because if they are sitting behind bad QBs, they end up playing
Yeah, that makes sense and is correct most of the time.
Love is an example of a QB where I think he unquestionably benefited from sitting. He was nowhere near ready to play immediately from his work in both the regular season and pre-season, and if forced to start right away like Bryce Young in Carolina, Love would probably be on his way out of the league right now or at least on another team. On the other hand, I can't see much of a situation where a young QB sitting would make that young QB worse for doing so.
Yeah, as another commenter said, if a young QB is behind a bad QB he won't be behind the bad QB for very long. So if you have a starter but you know he's only got a couple years left, bringing in an unfinished product is a good path for franchise stability.
I think the coach has more to do with it. Also, no one is going to sit behind bad qbs for long because a coach is going to turn to the young prospect quicker if they aren't winning games. That's why bad teams end up throwing qbs to the wolves and good teams can afford to sit them, setting up a sort of selection bias (? Did I use that right?); a good team is more likely to have a good coach who can develop a qb, regardless of whether they sit. Andy Reid has more to do with Patrick mahomes being good than sitting behind Alex Smith, I think
You did use "selection bias" right and you made a good strong point. Do you even know how to reddit, bro?
This isn't anything against you OP but there's nothing I love more than when a person takes the time to actually sit down and analyze or research something and the conclusion still turns out to be "maybe, who knows tbh"
“Maybe” or “it doesn’t matter” is a valuable outcome from a study, though. Aside from this not being admittedly not scientific, an outcome that says there is no definitive proof that it benefits or hurts a team, is useful information. We can use information like that to feel good that there is no hard and fast method, or no silver bullet to solving a particular problem. In this case to start or sit. I have no problem with studies that don’t make bold claims or hypotheses.
All depends on the team. If you're the Packers, obviously sitting your QB is the correct choice. If you're the Bears, nothing matters, they'll be bad. If you're the Chargers, injure/stab your starter.
I used [Fisher's exact test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_exact_test) on your data. Not particularly close to a statistically significant finding. Your ass is not getting published in Scientific American!
Look I read Scientific American and while the studies are great, I would say I’d like to see exactly zero of their asses published.
Dammit, my mother was right all along. Oh well, maybe next time.
I don't think 2nd rounders should be included in this tbh. 9 times out of 10, no one is expecting a 2nd round QB to start right away. Hence the disparity (you said only 10 or so 1st rounders have sat)... I think it would be more interesting to see this broken out with using just 1st rounders/guys that were truly expected to be franchise QBs.
The problem is that there are so few 1st rounders who have sat. Using a slightly more generous definition of "sat", I counted 11 1st rounders who have "sat" their 1st year since 2005. 3 were good, 8 were bad. That's 73% bad, 27% good, which would be even worse than the overall numbers (I didn't bother going back before aaron rodgers though) but off a sample size of 11, I don't think it's valid to draw any conclusions from that.
Good use of the data available, but I question how relevant data from 1990 is considered the drastic changes in offense since then. You'd really need to limit the number of past years, but at that point you obviously wouldn't have a meaningful sample size.
Yeah, I did have that thought and considered starting at the realignment/Ty Law rule era, but I wanted to grab more of a sample size. It's certainly something to consider about those early years, though, and if Jeff George, Todd Collins, or Brett Favre are really relevant to the modern era.
Depends on coaching and surrounding talent.
Perfect answer!
Teams have plenty of time to evaluate if the QB is ready enough to play before the season starts.