NFL: Third and Long: Which rookie QB plays first?

Five rookie quarterbacks have every reason to hope for snaps in the coming season – but what are their chances? And how do they fit into the schemes of your new teams? In his weekly column, SPOX editor Adrian Franke takes a closer look at the five first-round quarterbacks of the last drag. Also: For whom does the title window open, for whom does it close? Who is the favorite for the title of Comeback Player of the Year? And which offense will be particularly fun in 2018?

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Five quarterbacks were selected in the first round of the drag – and the story tells us that in most cases high-picked quarterbacks are used earlier than was once the plan. In concrete terms, this often means that a first-round quarterback is usually used sooner or later in his rookie season.

This makes the view of this year’s Draft Class with five first-round quarterbacks all the more exciting. Because at least four of the five rookie QBs could give the teams good reasons to keep them in the bank longer – if they really want to.

In fact, however, it is worth looking in a different direction: What is the situation for each of the first-round quarterbacks this year – and what does the scheme fit look like? What schematic situations await the youngsters, and how quickly are they really put to use?

The quarterback situation: With the trade for Tyrod Taylor, the Browns have created a starting position on the most important position that had not been seen in Cleveland for a while – stability is gaining ground. Coach Hue Jackson was correspondingly clear in his recent announcement: “I won’t change my mind about that. Tyrod Taylor is the starting quarterback of this football team. That’s not gonna change.”

Knowing that you will get your desired quarterback with the first pick, the Browns had already taken Taylor as a safety net several weeks before. A game manager par excellence, which will stand out especially in comparison to DeShone Kizer because he hardly makes any turnovers.

And that’s not all: The Browns also got Cardinal’s free agent Drew Stanton, an ideal backup in many ways. If Cleveland Mayfield wants to give him a year, the quarterback situation is ideal – all the more so as Taylor’s contract expires after next season. A natural transition would thus be given.

The Scheme: Just like Hue Jackson, Cleveland’s new offensive coordinator Todd Haley wants to pass vertically with a tendency towards isolation routes, especially Downfield. Not for nothing Ben Roethlisberger ranked eighth of all quarterbacks in terms of average intended air yards (at least 200 passes) under Haley in 2017: On average Big Ben wanted to throw the ball 9.5 yards. Seventh? Clevelands DeShone Kizer (9.6).

Haley will introduce a mixture of some fast passes and screens with the aggressive vertical passing game, it will be Haley’s offense with his plays and his terminology. “We will install many new concepts and elements,” Jackson himself clarified. Haley also never tires of stressing that he is “not a system coach”: “I believe in bringing out the best in your players’ strengths. You have to give them the best chance of success.”

This fits in with a quote from Haley before last season: “We will go into the games with an attacking game plan. That can be a focus on the run game, sometimes a focus on the passing game. We have a rather smaller playbook. Some coaches work with countless plays, we try to use the things that really suit our boys.”

For Mayfield, this would mean, among other things, more concrete spread elements; on the other hand, some of Haley’s concepts also fit Mayfields: his outstanding pocket movement will give the isolation routes the necessary time, screens and passes to tight ends and running backs, especially from play action across the middle, were a specialty of Mayfield’s college.

It will be exciting to see what this means in Run Game. Haley and Pittsburgh’s O-Line-Coach Mike Munchak mixed here, besides many zone elements Haley also liked to work with creative pull blocks – all with the goal of giving Le’Veon Bell time. He also used tight ends as well as partial fullbacks as blockers. Especially inside zone runs were used very often here and given the quality of the Browns’ Interior-O-Line Haley could bring these elements to Cleveland.

The forecast: Taylor is the ideal solution for 2018 and the Browns will be more patient. Jarvis Landry, Corey Coleman and Josh Gordon are a very exciting wide receiver trio, the depth behind and the tight-end corps are also very promising. The Browns have the weapons to succeed with Taylor and yet it’s hard to imagine Mayfield not coming into action at least in the last third of the season, even with a view to 2019 when he should be the clear starter. Tip: Mayfield starts at least 4 games.

The quarterback situation: Like the Browns at Mayfield, the jets have every opportunity to leave Darnold outside for a year. Josh McCown was brought back for a year after delivering one of his best NFL seasons last season. McCown gives New York stability, calm and experience and will help to keep an otherwise comparatively young and once again changed offense together.

Should McCown injure himself, the jets have the premium backup option in a way: Teddy Bridgewater was additionally brought in as a free agent, and assuming that his knee is now fit for play again – after all, he could train for a while in Minnesota and even came on a short assignment – he would probably be the most interesting backup QB of the coming season. This may also make him a trade candidate for the deadline.

The Scheme: Since the new Jets-Offensive-Coordinator Jeremy Bates did not have an offensive-coordinator position since 2011 and generally took a time-out from the NFL from 2013 to 2016, the forecast here is not quite easy. It makes more sense to look at one’s teachers over this time: There’s Jon Gruden and Mike Shanahan at the top, which suggests a mixture of West Coast offense and zone blocking in the run game.

This idea is generally regarded as Bates’ ideal. Bates, who has already worked with McCown in Chicago and last year as QB coach of the jets, would rely on a timing pass game with fast passes and a running back with patience and vision. The former could go very well with Darnold: In college Darnold was at times one of the most accurate registers, but his consistency is still noticeably lacking. He is far away from his Reads and finds weak points in the defense.

The West Coast Offense, where he has to make quick decisions, will challenge him and reduce his gunslinger plays. Ultimately it could be his scheme and Bates’ reputation as quarterback coach is much higher within the NFL than his current standing as coordinator. In this respect, the development for Darnold under Bates and behind McCown could be worth gold.

The forecast: The construction sites in the offensive line, the obvious problems at Darnold, especially the turnovers, question marks in the tight-end corps – and an ideal quarterback situation before the rookie: The jets, even though there is already talk of a competition in the training camp, leave Darnold out until very late in the season. Tip: Darnold starts at least 2 games.

The quarterback situation: No quarterback situation is more open: A.J. McCarron must first show that he is more than an NFL backup – currently he would be the starter in Buffalo. Nathan Peterman behind is not as bad as his bitter interlude in the pre-season suggests, but he is not currently an NFL starter either.

The Scheme: New quarterback, new coordinator and new scheme in Buffalo. Rick Dennison’s West Coast offense is over, ex-Patriots and Alabama coach Brian Daboll is now to judge the Bills. “It” means in this case very concretely: In Buffalo a version of the Erhardt-Perkins Offense – the basis of the Patriots-Offense for many years – will be played from 2018.

This means, among other things: Instead of excessive play calls, moves are divided into concepts, i.e. route combinations are combined alongside the protection call. About three specific routes on one side of the line can be called “Ghost” (one vertical and two horizontal routes), on the other side “Tosser” (two slant-like routes) – and so the name of the routes is simply “73 Ghost Tosser”.

The clou: these route concepts can be executed from different formations, whether personnel or as far as the formation is concerned, and so the offense gets a good portion of complexity from the perspective of the defense – while the quarterback can think strictly in routes, no matter who is on the field. Option routes and full-field reads are also unavoidable in the Erhardt-Perkins offense.

In college near Alabama, Daboll also let more shotgun and pistol formations play and used the athletics of his quarterbacks. This could suit Josh Allen, who was often used as a runner in college. As far as passing is concerned, Allen will need time either way in terms of accuracy, timing and anticipation. The Erhardt-Perkins Offense, as attractive as it becomes with time for the quarterback, also demands a lot mentally and until a rookie masters this scheme, it will take a while in any case.

The forecast: The (lack of) competition in Buffalo will ensure that the calls for Allen become very loud very quickly. The Bills would be well advised to be patient in view of the other construction sites in the offense – the offensive line is a huge problem, the receiving corps is dominated by question marks – nevertheless. But with games in the first half of the season in Minnesota, Green Bay and Houston and against the Chargers and Patriots at home a horror start into the season beckons. Tip: Allen starts at least 8 games.

The quarterback situation: Clear hierarchy in the desert. Sam Bradford is the starter – as long as he is fit. Mike Glennon is the backup – even if Bradford fails. This is the order in which the summer begins: Rosen is probably number two internally and will be able to let his shares continue to rise over the summer.

Bradford, however, will give the Cardinals the best chance of winning in 2018 and will start the season accordingly. Just like the Browns, there would be a “natural” transition, Bradford’s contract is essentially a one-year deal with a team option for a second year.

The scheme: The fingerprint of the new head coach Steve Wilks on this offense will be an emphasis of the run game – otherwise it’s Mike McCoy’s construction site. And here it gets exciting: McCoy is basically an aggressive play-caller, who wants explosive plays, but schematically also has a certain flexibility and has constantly shown that he can adapt to the qualities of his players.

McCoy has years of experience as a player and coach in the West Coast Offense, the Air Coryell (central elements: vertical passing, much pre-snap-motion, power run game, passes for running back) and also the Erhardt-Perkins Offense: McCoy worked 2009 in Denver under Josh McDaniels, influenced by the patriots. For Tim Tebow he built in zone reads, Philip Rivers gave him freedom via pre-snap motion on the one hand, and more security through more defined reads on the other.

A trademark of his scheme is its complexity and sheer scale – a fact that was partly responsible for his dismissal in Denver last season. For Josh Rosen this should not be a problem, on the contrary: the general assessment of roses is that he must be challenged and helped forward by his coach. McCoy’s scheme – who also has a lot of experience as a quarterback coach – should be able to do this.

The prognosis: Of all the quarterbacks in this draft class, Rosen is the candidate who can play best in the NFL. That should make for an interesting duel over the summer. If Bradford injures himself sometime during the season, Rosen – not Glennon – will take over, and it’s not very likely that the coaches will switch back. Tip: Rosen starts at least 8 games.

The quarterback situation: Similar to the Cardinals – also the Ravens have a clear starter. Joe Flacco will start the season, everything else is more than hard to imagine. Although he has improved over the past season and will benefit from improved individual quality in the offense as a whole, his time in Baltimore is coming to an end.

But first, no Ravens coach will raise the quarterback question in a meeting. Should Flacco injure himself, however, it would be an exciting situation. Robert Griffin III is currently still the first backup and stylistically a good choice behind Lamar Jackson. But in view of Griffin’s NFL appearances in recent years, one could well ask the question in this scenario whether it would not make more sense to throw Jackson directly in.

The Scheme: I had already addressed the new (old?) Ravens-Offense in the last column, among other things with focus on the coaches. Greg Roman (Offensive Coordinator during Colin Kaepernick’s weddings in San Francisco) and Marty Mornhinweg as well as James Urban (Offensive Coordinator and QB Coach in Philadelphia with Michael Vick) have a lot of experience, Lamar Jackson could not have wished for a better team when it comes to using his athletics and mobility sensibly.

And this point must not be forgotten: Jackson wasn’t a wild scrambler in college looking for the run. According to Pro Football Focus, 73 percent of his rushing yards came from planned runs, only 27 percent were scrambles. Jackson worked in college with full-field reads and complex route combinations, had responsibilities at the line of scrimmage, partly including protection calls.

As a passer, he is mainly concerned with footwork, the correction of which should also make his Accuracy significantly more constant. If that succeeds, it will be exciting to see how long the Ravens hold on to Flacco. Among other things, the Ravens have put a focus on being more versatile again this offseason. This explains the two high draft-pick investments in tight ends and the fact that Baltimore still has a fullback in the team.

Last season, the Ravens were far too inefficient in the Run Game and too predictable in the passing game. The newcomers were supposed to give them more possibilities in terms of personnel and at the same time make different play calls possible from the same formations – about 12 players (one Running Back, two Tight Ends).

Mornhinweg has a clear focus on passing, the nickname “Air Marty” is no coincidence, but without ignoring the run game. On the contrary, in Mornhinwegs Zone-Blocking-Scheme the Eagles once had outstanding run games with Brian Westbrook and then with LeSean McCoy, while the Ravens had the seventh most runs per game (28.8) in the pre-season.

Passing focuses on timing and rhythm, the routes are exactly matched to the quarterback’s dropback and check-downs or other secure pass options are usually built in. At the same time, the downfield passing is also an elementary part of Mornhinweg’s ideal of an offense.

These things should help a rookie quarterback. This is all the more true if Mornhinweg – who has worked with Vick and Steve Young and Donovan McNabb, who were both mobile quarterbacks – can build the Run Game around Jackson as the backbone of the offense.

The forecast: Baltimore’s offense looked desolate for long periods last year. This was definitely not exclusively, but also Joe Flacco. This will be more stable in the coming season, also because the line will be better than its wide-receiver and tight-end corps. Nevertheless, Flacco seems to have clear limitations even more clearly upwards than in previous years. So during the final spurt of the season there will be a quarterback exchange to give Jackson practice – provided the playoffs are out of reach. Tip: Jackson starts at least 3 games.

Page 1: Which rookie quarterback plays first?

Page 2: Who is improved? Who will be a comeback player? Where do title windows open?