The Ringer NFL Show - Draft a Quarterback Every Year | The Island

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Each week, a guest tries to persuade Nora Princiotti to agree with an argument they feel strongly about. This week's guest is The Ringer's Kevin Clark, who explains why teams should draft a quarterback every year. Host: Nora Princiotti Guest: Kevin Clark Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Follow the show now on Spotify. And do us a favor. Give us five stars. And do us another favor and stay major. What is your five-step plan for solving the how do you get them snaps issue? Does this turn into like a load management take? AI. I'm sorry.

Chat. Chat. Chat. Chat. Is that what it's called? Past GPT, snap GPT. We get the quarterback cooking in the QB room. We had Anthony Richardson like an Oculus.

Is that what you're advocating? Hello and welcome to the island Super Bowl Week edition. This is the last island of the 2022 NFL season, which means that we've got Kevin Clark, the one and only. Why does that mean that? Am I shutting it down? Yeah, you're shutting it down. The island will never be the same. My take is out. Bill's going to just shut it down.

You want to actually know what I meant by that? I meant that it was special and that you're a great guest and we wanted to go out with a bang. That's true. I was trying to pay you a compliment. Thank you. You had to make it difficult. You also have chosen to, to uproot our format. Every other guest, an entire season's worth of episodes, just like does it in the normal way.

And Kevin says, I'm just going to drop it. I'm dropping it hottest takes down. I'm just going to go. I'm doing a crossover episode with the hottest take. Oh. I'm just going to let you. Another thing that I was not informed of nor were any of our wonderful producers. Well, I just made that up on the spot.

And so. Shocking. Yeah, no. I think that there's, uh, sorry, is this a take? I'm not going to unveil it yet. Okay. Well, there were a lot of candidates last night. I just want to go through them really quickly.

So the first one, uh, that I'm not going to do is the parenting is easy. Because a lot of people want to ask them what this is going to, I've been privately floating the parenting is easy. And then Danny Kelly told me I would get death threats if that was an actual take of mine. So I'm not going to do that here on the island. When Kevin says he's been privately floating this, he means that he hasn't done it on a podcast, except for when he did do it on a podcast. I did it halfway. Right. But has instead been walking around Phoenix, Arizona, telling everyone he runs into, at least as far as I can glean by your actions, that parenting is easy. Easier than I thought, and instead of just feed him and change him, and he's good. So,

problem solved. So, okay, I'm not a parent. We can move off this. But how do you? know if he needs to be fed or changed or what? That's the amazing thing. That's the amazing thing, right? The baby puts his hands in his mouth when he's hungry. And it appears to be some sort of, there's some sort of kicking system when he needs to be changed. Like Morse code? Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah. Dude, he is, he is sharp as attack. Babies are unbelievable. Chip off the old block. All right. So that one, that one was mixed so that we don't get. And then last night, we were doing the media night thing. and I was talking about how the Super Bowl is a totally different beast,

and it has very little in common with, like, an actual football game because of just the week and, you know, the practices are all disrupted, and you're at a different facility, and I kind of was joking about it. And Roger, correctly, Roger Sherman. Roger Sherman, summarized my take as, it sounds like you say the Super Bowl shouldn't count. And I'll let him own that one. He can own that one.

And also, we have already appointed Stephen Ruiz as, the, uh, team, uh, wins not a team stat. Well, and also the grandmaster of getting to

decide, to decide if certain games don't count. Yes. He gets six per year. As far as I know, he hasn't applied one of his six to the Super Bowl. I also think he's already used all of them.

So he's fresh out. Probably used them all in week one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay, so that's out. So here,

here's actually the thing. And it's actually a, a football take, uh, not a parenting take, not a big broad take but the Super Bowl and practicing on on college fields and how distracting that must be. Based on the two quarterbacks.

And I feel like the conversation has shifted because we don't even remember when these guys were drafted, even though Howard Rosen was asked quite a bit about it last night at media night. I think it shows you, and these teams don't even do it enough, but it shows you a team should draft a quarterback every single year, every single year. Think for the island like a record, spinning on a turntable. Only now, that record is skipping.

Because in both cases, the Chiefs and the Eagles were not expected to take quarterbacks. And I don't want to say they're totally different situations, Alex Smith. I believe the year before Mahomes was traded, Mahomes was drafted, they traded up for him. Alex Smith led the NFL in deep passing. Andy Reid created Alex Smith into a monster, into, a Reed monster and Andy Monster and then was like actually let's do let's get a better guy and a lot of that scouting and Brett Beach the GM said that you know basically Mahomes was the best part I'd ever seen like they fell in love with him but they also knew the advanced planning of it and then the year uh his rookie

year they knew how good he was but they they let him sit and kind of the Kansas city model we all joke about but that means Mike Kafka was basically his personal coach Eric Bianamy and Andy Reed were actually and Matt Nagy were running the offense, all that stuff. That, I think, is an easier said-than-done model, but what's not easier said than done, what's really easy to do is to create a quarterback pipeline. With Philadelphia, Jeffrey Lurie, I did a piece a couple years ago, but why the Eagles were able to build that team in 2017,

and Jeffrey Lurie said that, talking about Nick Foles, he said, we don't even call it the backup quarterback, we call it the second quarterback, because it's just a conveyor belt. You know, we know that at some point they're going to play. And for me, I just think about the lessons from these two quarterbacks. And Carson Wentz was not, Carson Wentz was nailed on at one point as a franchise player. That became less clear over time.

But he took, how he took a lot of heat for that pick at the time. People thought that Wentz was on the upswing. They thought he was settled. And so I really do think that there's a case to be made. the team should be much more liberal with just adding quarterbacks, seeing how it goes, getting them in the system. I just don't think there's enough.

Now there's drawbacks to it. Number one being that if you look at practice rules, you basically can't give backup quarterbacks with those string quarterbacks any meaningful snaps because of the way that that works out. But I also think that just get those guys in the building. Maybe there's some osmosis happening and things go from there.

I would make the second quarterback position, the third quarterback position, a revolving door based on what we've seen and having actual draft capital devoted to that position. So when you say, should you say draft a quarterback every year or add a quarterback every year? No draft. We're drafting one. Now, is a drafts, is a quarterback stimulus package, baby. Finally, Joe Biden can rest easy. Yep, it's Jover. Does this, is there a point at which it doesn't count? Can you draft a quarterback in the seventh, round and still be doing this.

Yeah, I mean, I actually like, almost like what the Patriots were doing there for a while or a lot of second, third, fourth round guys. I'd say, I'd say, I'd say fourth and above. Big Jared Stidham guy. I'm a huge Jared Stidham guy. Jimmy Garapolo. Ever heard of him? And NFC, NFC champion, Jimmy Garapolo.

Jacobi. Yep, one. Absolutely. I think that Belichick understands positional value and there's a reason that even though they had Tom Brady, he was saying, hey, let's get a look at these guys. And then he drafted Mack Jones in the first round. That did happen too. So you're saying a real, not necessarily, you know, not a first round round pick, not a second round pick, but like a real draft investment. Oh, no, I'm fine with the first and second round pick. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But it doesn't have to be to qualify. Right.

I'd say top four picks. I'd say top four rounds. I'd say top four rounds every single year. You should be doing it. And if you're not doing it, you should be asking yourself why. What are the possible answers to that question that are okay? You don't know ball is number one. Number two, I'd say... I don't think that's okay. Yeah, no, it's okay. Even you think about Kansas City, right?

Should Kansas City spend a fourth round pick on a quarterback? Well, yes, they should. You think about the Packers with Brett Farve in those quarterback rooms and the depth they always had. And, you know, whether that's Mark Brunel, Aaron Brooks, I think was on a roster at one point. Matt Hasselbeck, obviously, famously. Jim McMan, Lake Stage Jim McMahon,

Doug Peterson, obviously. And so you think about that, like Bill Walsh understood that, always have a plan of quarterback and just keep going. You build depth there. And that was the one thing, Hallie Roseman said on Monday,

it was like, we just wanted depth at the quarterback position. And I think you kind of the draft and develop model, so much of the guys that has gotten broken over the past couple of years. I think that there was a awkward kind of five-year stretch

where NFL teams didn't understand the spread, spread offense, and they just tried to draft pro-style. guys famously have written this a million times. Connor Cook was ahead of Dak Prescott on the Cowboys board because they just liked pro-style quarterbacks more than spread.

Stephen Jones said that. Stephen Jones said that at a press conference. And I was like, does anyone else find this weird? And everyone was like, no. Okay. That was strange. With the record, I do think other people found it weird. Listen, I was there.

There was me and like 10 Cowboys reporters. Oh, you mean the people in the room. Okay. Yeah. All right. It was outside. We were in Oxnard. I'm just saying general consensus on Oxnard residence in. Connor Cook greater than Dak Prescott is, you know, that's a little funky, funky fresh. Yeah. But this is also like three years ago.

But the jury was still out back then. Anyway, there's, I do think that there's so much of that, what I learned from that whole thing was that NFL teams didn't want to take on the responsibility of developing a quarterback. Right. They want to do it when it's a first round pick. that it's like we'll put him out in the third week and see how it goes it'd actually be better if that guy was really really hard it's really hard to develop a quarterback and get him in the system and give him

snaps but give him a personal coach teach him out of watch film an NFL level um they want those problems solved before they get there and all of them they want a fully formed product 99% of the time and i mean i this is a weird thing to say but like because it's not it's not what we're we're talking about, but Josh Allen, it took a village, man. It took a village to get Josh Allen up and running, and he was raw. And again, this is not what we're talking about, but a great example. If a quarterback rich team this year takes Anthony Richardson, who many people are comping to Josh Allen, as far as raw skill, as far as he had some bad pass on tape

last year, but the high end was very, very, very high, it's going to, it's going to take a lot. It's going to take resources and it's almost better for a guy like that. Brandon Bean told me one time they did not want to, they really didn't want to play Josh Allen's first year and they were lucky he survived. It's Brandon Bede's words because they had a bad offensive line and all that stuff. The best place for a guy who needs a year to learn is a quarterback rich environment. Right. I'm making that he's not going to go first overall, but it'd be great for him, you know, to be, uh, you know, sitting behind a guy. who everyone knows where the starter is.

So it'll be interesting to see sort of where that goes. But I think teams need to get back to, and I feel like this was more common in the 80s and 90s. Teams need to get back to developing quarterbacks in a meaningful way because the upside is so huge. And you can trade a guy, you know, that's happened. So, I mean, you think about RG3 and Kirk Cousins and sort of the turns that those guys took

when they drafted two quarterbacks at once. Steve Walsh and Troy Aikman, Jimmy Johnson, took both of them, basically told Steve Walsh, like, hey man, I know we probably shouldn't take you, but if you, worst case scenarios, we just trade you. That stuff. Brady, you could sort of make this argument for. Absolutely. At Tom Brady. Ever heard of him?

And so I feel like it would be a good way to get teams more involved in the quarterback development system. We're bringing quarterbacks back. Wow. Finally. Somebody had to do it. How do you, what is your five-step plan for solving the, how do you get them snaps issue? Does this turn into like a load management take? AI.

I'm sorry. Chat. Chat GPT. Is that what it's called? Past GPT. Snap GPT. We get the quarterback cooking in the QB room. We had Anthony Richardson like a,

an Oculus? Is that what you're advocating? So I actually, there's actually a funny story here. So the, a couple of years ago, they tried to do VR with quarterbacks. And this is actually part of the

impetus for it was that a Mason Rudolph couldn't see what it was like to run first team offense all the time because Ben Rothesberger was doing it. So what do you do? You put, and literally this is the Steelersworth example I used. and when talking to people.

So you put the camera on Big Ben and then you show Mason Rudolph like this is how Levi-on-Bel breaks out of the backfield all that stuff. And the problem seriously was that the cameras are so shaky that people were really kind of getting motion sickness

while watching it. So it really became impossible. AI fixes. AI fixes it. Augmented reality. What about some drama mean? The metaverse and drama. No, I also think you just can't focus. It's not just motion sickness.

It's also just like you can't. Big Ben is just like moving his head around and there's nothing you can do about it. This is electric. Football fans, FanDuel has the perfect way for everyone to get in on the Super Bowl 57 action with a no sweat same game parley.

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Call 1-8-7-8-Hope-N-Y or text Hope N.N.Y at 467-6-9 in New York. 1-800-5-22-4-7-00 in Wyoming or visit www.1-800-gambler.net in West Virginia. All right. So it's Super Bowl week. Let's talk about the Super Bowl a little bit and how this applies to these teams. I think the Eagles are like the primary example, right? And clearly, they're a very forward-thinking organization that has kind of embraced this. They're on the island with you.

Kansas City is an interesting one because they have the best quarterback on planet Earth. and I think that lends itself to sort of thinking like, okay, we're good here. And bless his soul, we did see Chad Henney take some snaps recently. Should they do this? Should the Chiefs draft another quarterback? Yes. Like, what's your Chad Henney succession plan? That's number one.

Number two is you are good at developing quarterbacks. Right. If you're Kansas City. So what if you took a fourth round pick? developed him in the way you know how, make the assistant quarterback's coach's personal coach, all of that stuff. And then in three years,

you get a low first round, high second round pick for him because he played three games. Mahomes been banged up at times. Maybe it'd be better if you had a dynamic guy. That's more compelling to me than like arbitrage. Who could come in in for two weeks a year and look really good. Remember, I mean,

he's a free agent, but like for God. sakes. Matt Flynn got a lot of money because he played one week 17 game. You can really impress other teams. This is important. This is an important note. Other teams are very stupid. A lot of teams are very stupid. And you can scam them at the quarterback acquisition quite easily. We've seen a lot of scammers at the quarterback acquisition. Teams and players who've just scammed teams into giving them picks and money. And you have to remember that developing a quarterback and saying, ooh, look at, look at this. Look at this little puppy. That can be valuable. So if you're Kansas

City, yes, like there are a multitude of reasons to draft a quarterback in the fourth round all the time. Because backup quarterbacks are the new Bitcoin? Yeah. Except they hold their value. Well, but if it's a scam, they only hold their value until they go somewhere else. But it doesn't matter for Kansas City. I take your point. Is the outcome of this that only the teams with the good quarterbacks coaches can make it work? Yeah, but there's a chicken and egg thing, right? Like, the teams with the good coaches that only are going to make everything work.

Yeah. You know, like if you have bad coaches, you're just going to flop at everything. So you're going to flop with this too. So go home now. Yeah, no, really. I mean, like, I think it's actually two different things. You draft a quarterback if you're a bad team every year because you want to strike gold eventually. It's like, it's like mining, you know, literally mining, like or like looking for oil, you know, Daniel Plainview situation. You're just kind of going around, going around the country.

but then I think it's easier for good teams to draft a average college quarterback and develop him. I think you're just playing the volume numbers game if you're a bad team. If you're the Giants and you just draft a quarterback every single year, eventually you're going to hit on one. You're going to hit on a Jimmy Garoppolo type. You're going to hit on, as you mentioned, a Jacoby percent who could play, who could play for you. that stuff that stuff matters so it's opposite ends of the spectrum if you don't know what you're doing

you just keep drafting quarterbacks for volume and hoping you get a culture changer uh if you do know what you're doing you take a guy and you develop them um and so i don't i don't think there's any downside for any sort of uh profile of a team any any team could benefit from this if you if you are the giants let's say you give daniel jones a short-term contract at third What are you doing in the draft? $35 million? Yeah. A year?

Yeah. And American dollars? American dollars. Wait. Sorry, do you think they're getting him for significantly less than that? I don't know. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't re-sign Daniel Jones for $35 million a year.

I've seen, listen, I've seen the numbers. I saw that report a couple weeks ago that it's going to be north of 30. I wouldn't do it. I think you can find it. It depends so many years it is, but I would do it. I think you can find a Daniel Jones in quite a few places. I don't disagree with that, which is why I think it has to be short term. You know where else you can find a Daniel Jones?

In the draft. In the fourth round every single year. Not every, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, there's every fourth round pick will become Daniel Jones, but enough would. But there's a, there's a time value of money thing here, right? Like, he's there. He knows what he's doing. they like him in the real world that matters.

I also think in the real world there's there. He's there as a qualification. He's like the Seinfeld there. Why are people watching it? Because it's on TV. Are you here to tell me this is the real island that like inertia and preference for the status quo is not a decision making factor in the national footballing?

I know. I thought that they were, I thought Joe Shane and Daibol were more forward thinking than that. I think they will look for other opportunities. and I hope they turn over every stone that's there. I think that's the right thing to do. But they're going to, he's going to stay there. $35 million here.

For more than $30 million a year. Two people at the senior bowl last week talking about 40? Was it Daniel Jones? Why would he be at the senior poll? That would have been smart, though. The senior ball is where Dave Gettelman fell in love with him, remember? Well, yeah, but that was. But that was when he was participating.

Yeah. But that was like, that was his high watermark. Wouldn't you want to be there? Daniel Jones is going to be the New York Giants quarterback for the next couple of years. And it's going to cost the New York Giants upwards of $30 million dollars a year. What is the franchise tag value for a quarterback now? Is it 40? No, no.

For him, it would be lower. It's also mid-30s, but then they can't use it on take one. Oh, God. We wouldn't want that. You know what? The other thing is that you would want kind of like an extra year flexibility with the cap. You can make it unguaranteed. I mean, like, where else is Dan Jones getting $35 million from?

Well, right. What do you think you would get in the open market? I actually think he would get more than $30 million here. It's a little tricky because there's so, like, it's such an interesting quarterback market because there's so many names and none of them are very good. Is this an Aaron Rogers take? I don't know. We'll see what happens when he emerges from the dark.

He was on McAfee, like an hour ago. Well, he's, but you know he's going into the darkness, right? He's going into a darkness retreat for four days. And then once he comes out of that, after seeing no light for, I can't do 24 times four on, on air right now. But that many hours, he's going to make his decision. Wow. Darkness retreat. I've seen some.

I've seen some things. I've seen some seasons that were darkness retreats in the NFL. I don't think that's going to help them, the darkness retreats. treat. Nor do I. Just go to sleep with an eye mask like the rest of us. Like the rest of us. Lunya makes a great one.

I don't, a friend of mine just recommended that. I'm going to keep the main thing, the main thing. What does that mean? What's the main thing? What's the main thing? It's the main thing. It's not earplugs. It's an eye mask.

Someone told me it has headphones in it. No, you can get all sorts of things, but they just make a nice, it's thick, it's soft, it doesn't, it's not too heavy on the eye sockets. What? Amazon basics cook is my take on that. All right. This has been the island. I'm right there with you, Kevin.

I think this is a thing that teams should do. Thanks, pal. Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, when he used to be good, I think is another success story of, they did in the draft and free agency, but just take some swings. Big fan of taking swings at the quarterback position. And I think the Giants should do it, even though Daniel Jones is going to be their quarterback going forward at north of $30 million a year. Good to see you, buddy.

This has been the island on the ringer NFL show feed. I'm Nora Pinciotti. Thank you so much to Kevin Clark for joining us and to you for listening. Additional thanks to Isaiah Blakely for production on this episode and to Arjuna Ramgapal and Connor Niveans for additional production supervision. We will be back after the Super Bowl at some point and we'll keep you posted on what's to come.