April 29, 2021 • 25 mins
Coach Billick and author Jim Dale review their assessment of the first-round Quarterback picks in the 2018 Draft class, Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen and Josh Rosen. Brian and Jim disclose what they got right and what they didn't using their Q- Factor philosophy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Brian Billick, and this is the Q Factor. There
is no such thing as a perfect athlete. And in fact,
you said at one point, probably the closest we've come
in recent years to an absolute block first round first
pick would be Andrew Luck. I always used to say,
(00:22):
I wanted, Yeah, I want a calm quarterback, but I
also want to know that you're smart enough to be afraid.
But you're smart enough to recognize whoa this is, this
is a lot and and you know buy or vieware,
so to speak. Let's now kind of bring it full
circle and let's talk a little bit about the five
(00:45):
principles that in the two thousand eighteen draft Baker Mayfield,
Sam Donald, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen, and Lamar Jackson. And
let's let's see how we did. Let's see what we
can extrapolate from it. Well, Jem spent quite a journey
for us. Uh, you know we've we when you when
you started us on this trek with the Q Factor
(01:06):
a couple of years ago, um, and and now three
actually three years removed from it. Um, I've enjoyed uh
doing the podcast. I think we we've learned and expanded
on our Q factor database in terms of what we approached.
Let's now kind of bring it full circle and let's
talk a little bit about the five principles that in
(01:28):
the two thousand eighteen draft Baker Mayfield, Sam Donald, Josh Allen,
Josh Rosen, and Lamar Jackson. Let's talk about what we
know now, even three years removed from that actual drafts.
We have the additional information where the book obviously traced
it the first two years. And let's let's see how
we did. Let's see what we can extrapolate from it.
(01:49):
Let's begin with Baker Mayfield. And again, the whole premise,
as you know from the get go, is that this
is a fifty fifty proposition in the first round. The
fact that we had five guys, we're gonna be Yea
or may one way or the other on this, just
on the sheer numbers. But let's begin with Baker Mayfield.
Your thoughts on what we thought going in, what what
(02:09):
his limitations or pauses we're going to be, and what
we've learned since what's your observation on Baker Mayfield. Well,
of course this is you know, this was your area
of expertise, and I learned along the way Um, I
would say one thing we said that that would apply
to all of them. We were skeptical or we had
cautions on all five because there is no such thing
(02:31):
as a perfect athlete. And in fact, you said at
one point, probably the closest we've come in recent years
to an absolute lock first round first pick would be
Andrew Luck and ironically, yet did it all turned out
to be true? And then he got out of the game.
But there are there are very few absolutes or close
(02:52):
to absolute. Um. Certainly, Baker Mayfield was by everybody's measurement,
was either number one and number two. Uh. We had cautions.
The cautions had probably more to do with character and
personality uh than abilities, and we were I would say,
to our credit, we said it really matters where he
(03:14):
ends up and who the coaches are, and we said
he had a high chance of success. I'm gonna give
a spoiler alert here if I could. I think that
we did pretty well in our five picks, and we
even well placed skepticism. UM. So I would say Baker
Mayfield lived up to the promise. It took him two
(03:35):
years to get there because of our over two years,
because of patting ourselves on the back the match with
the coaching staff and the and the management and once
it got right, he got right. Yeah, as we talked
about in the book, you really and common sense. But
it boils down to the three factors of physical, the
(03:55):
mental and emotional state of the player, and the ability
to make that jump into the NFL. And then finally
that match. And that was the concern, that double whammy
of a what is his maturity level coming in the NFL?
It was well documented in college and the dumb things
that he did and really the first couple of years
in the league, and more importantly the transition from Hugh Jackson,
(04:17):
uh than Hugh Jackson goes down to the the insecurity
in the organization, uh then Freddie Kitchens and now finally
with a what appears to be a secure coach of
the year from last year in Kevin Stefanski. That that
and the mature maturation of Baker Mayfield this last year.
(04:38):
UM to remind ourselves, the first year he didn't play
the latter head of the season had really great numbers,
but he was kind of playing on house money, right.
It was like, Okay, what am I gonna do? Throw
another interception? And what Cleveland's gonna lose an every game,
you know, stop the presses. The next year they loaded up,
looked like this was gonna be the year. They now
came in with expectations, and he was He was miserable,
he was terrible. Now was that the offense that Freddie
(05:00):
Kitchens was it? Too much pressure? Um? All of the above.
So this year more tempered and a more tempered Baker Mayfield.
I was encouraged near the end of the year because
this was a team that ran the ball well, played
good defense, and Baker Mayfield learned to manage the game.
He didn't have to throw the ball times. And I
(05:20):
loved his comment near the end of the season when
he said, yeah, I think I've grown up to the
point where I when I think about saying or doing
something stupid, I don't that that that that's come a
long way and and uh so okay. So at the
end of the day we were saying, we think it's
thumbs up on Baker's Mayfield, Baker Mayfield going forward, and
(05:41):
that he's going to be on the pop. We also
got a great insight in the course of writing the book.
We had a conversation with Gary Kubiak, who probably is
as good as good a guy at knowing talent as anybody.
And he said about Kevin Stefanski, You'll see this is
a very smart wise sound. I mean every adjective he
(06:03):
used to be kind about it could could have not
been applied to his predecessor. Yeah. And now the challenge
for Cleveland, as is always the case, and and and
this is the business aspect of it, is he's on
the cuffs now going into that fourth year of they've
started to start talking about a contract extension. All of
our rookies are in that from the two thousand eighteen
(06:24):
are coming up in that area. So the challenge now
is so that we can see the evaluation never ends
the challenges. Okay, we say Baker Mayfield is going to
be a franchise quarterback and he's on the upside. Now,
what are you paying? You're not gonna pay him, uh
Patrick Mahomes money. He's got to be north of you know, now,
any starting quarterback of any length that's going to get
(06:45):
a hundred million plus going forward, depending upon how much guarantee.
But where between that that half a billion that that
Patrick Mahomes is getting and and that that floor of
a hundred million. Where does where does Baker Mayfield land?
So that's the challenge going forward for Cleveland. Let's move
on to the to the next pick was with Sam
(07:07):
Donald and and again spoiler alert, I think we're both
in agreement that he's on the flip side of the
fifty proposition. And for the reasons that we kind identified.
Let's remember that Sam Donald had all the checks, you know,
came from a big school at usc UM, had all
the physical attributes, seemed to be a pretty cool character,
and going to a market like New York that was
(07:29):
a good, good, uh good place to be. Again on
the flip side. On the down side of it, he's
already he's already on his third coach if he indeed
stays in New York. He's went from uh being drafted
in New York. Uh and and now they made the
coaching change to Adam Gaze. Now he's gone. They're bringing
the new coach uh and Robert Sala. It's still at
(07:52):
this recording, we don't know if he's gonna stay with
New York or not. But my biggest concern, and we
Markin talked about it in the book, Look, was he
checked all these boxes. But I'll go back to the
the benchmark that Ron Wolf and Bill Pollion told us
about how does he show up in the big moments?
And that was the concern at sc and certainly, even
(08:13):
though with a very poor surrounding cast and an organization
that's in flux um, he just didn't seem to show
up in the big moments. Yeah. Well, the interesting thing
about that is there was an anecdote that we were
late in the book that it's either being cool under
pressure or not having enough passion, depending on which side
(08:35):
of the coin you're on. And his father, in fact,
tells a story that they joked about him because of
his lack of emotion. They called him a flatliner. Well,
you know, that's okay if it's pure compliment. If you
if it's you know, you got ice in your veins.
But he did seem to lack the passion. So if
Baker Mayfield may let off the charts on the passion side.
(08:57):
So Donald is a guy with a massive amount of
as a coal properties and abilities and uh and does
not have fire for lack of a better word, in
to your credit, I'm gonna say, when we got into extrapolations,
you went much further than than just extrapolating completion percentage
(09:18):
over three years or four years, but rather, is there
a way to extrapolate character and passion? And if you
dig deep enough into history and into the game films
of life, you do see patterns. Flatline is not a
good pattern to see, No, And to me, it's not
just the lack of maybe lack of passion, but it
is sometimes awareness. I always used to say, I want
(09:40):
to Yeah, I want a calm quarterback, but I also
want to know that you're smart enough to be afraid. Yeah,
but you're smart enough to recognize whoa this is, this
is a lot, and and you know buy or beware,
so to speak. Um, I don't know what's gonna happen
with Sam Donald at this point. My guess is they're
going to move on. Um, which I think the indictment
(10:00):
of that is with two picks in the first round,
with the New York Jets and new general manager and
Joe Douglas a new head coach, it would be a
huge advantage for them to convince themselves that that Sam
Donald is the guy, because now they could they could
get a whole bunch of picks for people that want
to come up to the second overall pick. They could
(10:21):
pick up a bunch of picks. They could really build
the nucleus for a good team if they wanted to
convince themselves. But he's the right guy. But I don't
think that's going to happen. I think they're gonna end
up either gonna picking it too or they'll trade back
but still be in a position to pick up one
of these rookie quarterbacks. Right And I think right now
the odds are they're saying they're going to pick a quarterback, Yeah,
(10:43):
number two, so or um or what you call justin
fields probably yeah, or Zach Wilson um. Yeah. Alright. The
next one is the most interesting one to me, when
we move on to John Allen, who was taken by
the Buffalo Bills. Again, guy that checked all the boxes
(11:04):
in every category. There was one huge outlier, and this
one I took on personally because I was a victim
of it. The lack of completion percentage. This is a
young man that went to Readley Junior College had basically
one really great year of wyoming. Great numbers, but the
completion percentage and that rarely gets better. And that was
(11:25):
our qualifier. Going in, we thought this guy's dynamic. Uh,
he could do a lot of things. But boy, we
we've got to be concerned. And going in had some
trepidation on us to which side of the equation he
would fall because of the completion percentage. Now, even though
we had success in the first two years, the completion
percentage was still not good and still was limiting. And
(11:47):
and I had a concern at the end of the
two years, and as we wrote about in the book,
that yeah, it looks to be like a positive, but
there's still some concerns here because that tend not to
get better. And then all of a sudden in the
third year just exploded in terms of his ability to
read defenses better than or close to completion percentage. Really
(12:10):
turned into a superstar um in terms of status. So
clearly he's above above the curve. Uh. But still it
leaves us as we try to formulate what is this formula?
It now puts an asterisk on the asterisk where you
take a player under, Well, I gotta put an asterisk here.
(12:30):
That got's a concern, but we've got an outlier in
terms of someone that it still was able to overcome
it and that's Josh Allen. Right. Well, you know you
also said something early on which I think that is
that is uh, it's a nuance to an extent or
a detail, but it's very important one that if you're
at you might be able to move up past the
(12:54):
magic sixty. And if you can, it makes a hell
of a difference. That just that just going from fifty
to sixty one or sixty two, he happened to jump
up to seventy. We also said early on when we
were doing the matches he was matched up with a
good coach and they were likely to stay with him
for a while, which was good. So he had every
(13:16):
opportunity to improve a little bit. Now he improved a lot,
but if he falls back to the low sixties, he's
still in pretty good shape right at Getting a Stefon
dig certainly helped. Let's go back to the organization, the
good match with the organization and the fact that they
wrapped some additional assets around him. So that's always going
to be the factor. Um. But yeah, had he this
(13:39):
year and they made the playoffs again and he runs
around and make some plays and that type of thing.
Had he stayed under that seventy then I would still
be sitting here concerned about the long term prognosa of
him truly and Buffalo being a championship caliber team because
of that, but not not if he stayed under sixty.
(14:02):
If he stayed under six, Yeah, that that that would
have been. But then the fact that he jumped over
the top of it was, uh, we've never seen the
likes of it. So so that still leaves us that
with when we evaluate going forward draft picks, that sub
sixty guy. For me, that still has to be a
major concern. And there will be teams that say, no, no,
(14:24):
we're okay with that because look at Josh Allen, And
to me, that's gonna say. But I'll say, in our evaluation,
as we great ourselves, we had essentially said Baker Mayfield, yes,
Sam Donald doubtful. We had him just below the cusp,
and we had Josh Allen right now on the cusp
with a slight plus. So to our credit, we said,
(14:45):
if we have to tip one way or the other,
we're gonna say because of factors like the team he's
going to end the and his steadiness and his he
gets a slight plus. So we were we were doing okay, Yeah,
unfortunately have to move on to Josh Rosen, which is
the classic with the classic first round miss at every level. Again,
(15:09):
not to to prognosticate or to to pat ourselves too
much on the back, but we we had concerns about
Josh Rosen from the get go. Had all the physical tools, uh,
seem to have the mental capacity. Again, you might question
the fire in the belly because uh, as we've talked
about in the book, Uh, some people are have looked
(15:30):
at a disqualifier a young man, the man comes from substance,
comes from a wealthy family. Is that a factor? There
are certainly outliers to that as well. The current crop
of quarterbacks coming up Zack Wilson, people are talking about that.
We we kind of put that to a side in
our evaluation. The biggest concern we had again, here's young
(15:51):
man who went through a lot of transition in college,
ends up coming in the NFL and getting bounced around
unceremoniously and uniquely. Arizona is all in and even trades
up to get him at ten and then bails on
him after only one year as they did on the coach,
which is even unique. And he's bouncing around the League.
(16:12):
He just re signed with San Francisco. Maybe he has
a chance under Kyle Shanahan to to redevelop the skills
or to have some stability that shows up. But the
biggest indictment we had in the process, and so did
the scouts, and we heard from a number of person
personnel people they just had they all had questions. They
(16:34):
just had doubt about his ability, his his desire for
the game, not the physical abilities. And it just as
to quote one of them, we just didn't get shot
in the asked with the guy right, he had an
interesting What we discovered was he had an interesting critique
which was not only that he perhaps came from uh,
(16:55):
you know, perhaps too much comfort or wealth, but he's
a very smart guy and he was he coachable or
was he sort of a guy would say I'm smarter
than the coach. Now, those are those are hard things
to find. I mean, I mean to to prove one
way or the other. I think it's ironic or almost
almost bizarre. We have we we observed two prejudices in
(17:19):
picking quarterbacks at either end of the economic scale We've
seen over years that finally seemed to be overcome. There
was for many, many years that kind of a prejudice
against um the that some people called thought might have
even been a racial one that was having to do
with you know, could could the dual threat quarterback make it?
(17:41):
Or was that? Or was he too much of a runner?
And at the other end, was it was the guy
who was too well to do and fancy too good?
You know? Neither one in and of itself makes any
sense at all. Obviously, obviously a rich kid could be
driven and a poor kid can be brilliant. But in
(18:01):
the case of Josh Rosen, maybe it was this other
factor of can you coach me? Yeah, And you bring
up a good point, because the inference is that if
the player is too intelligent, he's not coachable. But I
will I will use two examples, primary examples that I'm
familiar with firsthand. Uh Peyton Manning and Steve Young affluent backgrounds,
(18:26):
both extremely intelligent and will challenge you on every point.
But but we'll listen to ultimately what you need to do.
U talked with Gary Kubiak and Uh as well just
recently talked about with Peyton Manning and how he and
and and Peyton came to a meeting of minds in
(18:48):
terms of what they were gonna do. That ultimately led
to a Super Bowl in Denver because Peyton was very
determined about what he did. Gary, as Gary very humbly
as Gary kubiak is would say, but you know what,
my kind of my stuff is kind of okay too,
now so and and meld them together. But both both
Steve Young and Peyton Manning, although they will challenge you
(19:08):
on a daily basis as to why are we doing
this and is this the best way, they will listen
and they will work with you on that. Where Josh
Rosen tends to be just while I'm smarter than you,
I'm dismissive and this is the way I'm going to
do it. And again you wonder is there a coach
out there who might have been right for him? And yeah,
well we'll see, you know, and again we we we uh.
(19:30):
We now have the Ryan Tannehill example. Again, what was
a classic first round bust in Miami goes to Tennessee,
the right coach, doing the right thing, right balance, and
now appears to be on you know, one of the
top quarterbacks in the NFL. Again an outlier because that
movement typically doesn't make a difference, but but you have, Uh,
(19:51):
if I'm not mistaken, you have a pretty high opinion
of Kyle Shanahan. And maybe he might be open minded
enough to see is there's still something here? Absolutely and
and and may have an opportunity with the questions about
Garoppolo and certainly the injury questions, and in a run
based offense where requires the quarterback to be very intelligent
(20:12):
quarterback to operate it, maybe, just maybe Josh Rosen has
found the right spot. Well, this brings us to our
last one, which was really made it the most interesting
of the of the group, and that's Lamar Jackson. The
fact that he snuck in with the last pick as
Baltimore brilliantly moved back in to beat all the teams
that would have been in line for him in the
second round, which is where most people thought Lamar Jackson
(20:34):
was going to go. And Lamar Jackson clearly has the
physical abilities. Uh is just a baller, as they say.
But as the ultimate example of our last criteria, a
player going to the right team that was willing to
wrap itself around what he did. That was the question
people had, will he last in the league? Being in
(20:56):
a running quarterback and Baltimore to their read it singularly said,
we'll wrap an offense around him and we don't care
if he runs the ball hundred times a game. This
is what we do. And they've had great success with
him because of it, right and he and as far
as our prognostication on him, we said, we brought up
(21:18):
all the all the cautions, the normal ones. You know, Kenny,
Kenny run that much, well, they let him run a
team he goes to and if he does run that
much as he putting himself in jeopardy. We also discovered
along the way interesting some data that showed that that
actually studying running quarterbacks versus pocket quarterbacks over time, that
(21:39):
the difference is almost infinitestable between getting hurt. So it's
one of those myths that's grown up. We learned from
some of the experts that a pocket quarterback can be
very vulnerable because he's standing still like a statue, and
he can get claubert. I mean, witness you know how
many times Ben Roethlisberger has been heard. And a running
(21:59):
around quarterback can stay healthy because he's on the move. Now,
that doesn't mean it happens to every running quarterback or
it happens to every to every pocket quarterback. But we
saw that with with Lamar, and I believe that what
you had concluded sort of bottom line was if a
couple of these ifs can be met, team wraps themselves
(22:21):
around him. He can keep himself healthy, maybe learned to
slide or get out of bounds. The term we said
is he can be of all the guys picked a
game changer. Well, guess what we I guess we got
really either we got smarter, we got lucky because he
absolutely came in halfway through the season and changed that
team's fate for them in the very first season. And
(22:45):
the fact that he truly is a unicorn because as
we talked about in the book going forward, and we're
going to take just a minute to talk about the
draft coming up and how it applies to our criteria,
but in the game that it has changes. And yes,
a more mobile quarterback is something everybody covets, but you
still have to win from the pocket. The end of
the day, it was a forty three year old pocket
(23:08):
quarterback that can't run that won the Super Bowl this year.
Everybody wants a certain level of athleticism in their quarterback. Uh,
if you. Let's extrapolated, if we will, just a little
bit to this year's draft. What's interesting again, a draft
that looks like there might be five guys taken, much
like a two thousand eighteen. At least four, but certainly
maybe five. You have the diversity of Trevor Lawrence and
(23:31):
Zach Wilson and Mac Jones, who all appeared to be
pocket quarterbacks with some athleticism. Okay, they're not. They're not stiffs.
They all can move around, but they're like we found
with Baker Mayfield, who can keep the play alive. Bacon
Rayfield we can't put in the category of a running quarterback.
He does make some plays with little eggs, but not
(23:52):
like he did in Oklahoma. And we noted that in
the book that he's not going to run around in
the NFL the way he did in Oklahoma. These guys
are gonna be proverbial pocket quarterbacks. But then you have
guys like like Justin Fields and Trey Lance that are
more mobile, physical quarterbacks that truly operate more outside the pocket,
(24:13):
and there are questions about their ability within the pockets.
So looking forward again, the more things change, the more
they stay the same. Uh, Nobody knows anything. UH. This
year's draft, again, we have a dichotomy of UH. It's
not a matter of everybody going to the mobile quarterback.
Everybody's going to the guy. You know. Everybody's saying, let's
(24:33):
go find me a Lamar Jackson. We'll slow down now.
There's not a lot of those cats running around here,
so let's be realistic about what we're going to see.
But I think the Q Factors in full full force
going into the UH the the two thousand twenty one
draft and will be interesting to follow it. So it's
been great fun. Jim, I hope that people have enjoyed
this podcast. We're gonna continue it on. Jim and I
(24:56):
are working on a series of The Q Factor for Business.
We're doing a number of seminars around the country with
business schools. We're going to create a podcast Q Factor
for Business and extrapolate some of the principles about about
identifying top talent on the football field and how it
might extrapolate to top talent in the business field and
(25:18):
see if we can make those connections. You want to
look for it as you want to look for the
Q Factor podcast on Apples, Spotify, or wherever you find
your podcasts,
I'm Brian Billick, and this is the Q Factor. There
is no such thing as a perfect athlete. And in fact,
you said at one point, probably the closest we've come
in recent years to an absolute block first round first
pick would be Andrew Luck. I always used to say,
(00:22):
I wanted, Yeah, I want a calm quarterback, but I
also want to know that you're smart enough to be afraid.
But you're smart enough to recognize whoa this is, this
is a lot and and you know buy or vieware,
so to speak. Let's now kind of bring it full
circle and let's talk a little bit about the five
(00:45):
principles that in the two thousand eighteen draft Baker Mayfield,
Sam Donald, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen, and Lamar Jackson. And
let's let's see how we did. Let's see what we
can extrapolate from it. Well, Jem spent quite a journey
for us. Uh, you know we've we when you when
you started us on this trek with the Q Factor
(01:06):
a couple of years ago, um, and and now three
actually three years removed from it. Um, I've enjoyed uh
doing the podcast. I think we we've learned and expanded
on our Q factor database in terms of what we approached.
Let's now kind of bring it full circle and let's
talk a little bit about the five principles that in
(01:28):
the two thousand eighteen draft Baker Mayfield, Sam Donald, Josh Allen,
Josh Rosen, and Lamar Jackson. Let's talk about what we
know now, even three years removed from that actual drafts.
We have the additional information where the book obviously traced
it the first two years. And let's let's see how
we did. Let's see what we can extrapolate from it.
(01:49):
Let's begin with Baker Mayfield. And again, the whole premise,
as you know from the get go, is that this
is a fifty fifty proposition in the first round. The
fact that we had five guys, we're gonna be Yea
or may one way or the other on this, just
on the sheer numbers. But let's begin with Baker Mayfield.
Your thoughts on what we thought going in, what what
(02:09):
his limitations or pauses we're going to be, and what
we've learned since what's your observation on Baker Mayfield. Well,
of course this is you know, this was your area
of expertise, and I learned along the way Um, I
would say one thing we said that that would apply
to all of them. We were skeptical or we had
cautions on all five because there is no such thing
(02:31):
as a perfect athlete. And in fact, you said at
one point, probably the closest we've come in recent years
to an absolute lock first round first pick would be
Andrew Luck and ironically, yet did it all turned out
to be true? And then he got out of the game.
But there are there are very few absolutes or close
(02:52):
to absolute. Um. Certainly, Baker Mayfield was by everybody's measurement,
was either number one and number two. Uh. We had cautions.
The cautions had probably more to do with character and
personality uh than abilities, and we were I would say,
to our credit, we said it really matters where he
(03:14):
ends up and who the coaches are, and we said
he had a high chance of success. I'm gonna give
a spoiler alert here if I could. I think that
we did pretty well in our five picks, and we
even well placed skepticism. UM. So I would say Baker
Mayfield lived up to the promise. It took him two
(03:35):
years to get there because of our over two years,
because of patting ourselves on the back the match with
the coaching staff and the and the management and once
it got right, he got right. Yeah, as we talked
about in the book, you really and common sense. But
it boils down to the three factors of physical, the
(03:55):
mental and emotional state of the player, and the ability
to make that jump into the NFL. And then finally
that match. And that was the concern, that double whammy
of a what is his maturity level coming in the NFL?
It was well documented in college and the dumb things
that he did and really the first couple of years
in the league, and more importantly the transition from Hugh Jackson,
(04:17):
uh than Hugh Jackson goes down to the the insecurity
in the organization, uh then Freddie Kitchens and now finally
with a what appears to be a secure coach of
the year from last year in Kevin Stefanski. That that
and the mature maturation of Baker Mayfield this last year.
(04:38):
UM to remind ourselves, the first year he didn't play
the latter head of the season had really great numbers,
but he was kind of playing on house money, right.
It was like, Okay, what am I gonna do? Throw
another interception? And what Cleveland's gonna lose an every game,
you know, stop the presses. The next year they loaded up,
looked like this was gonna be the year. They now
came in with expectations, and he was He was miserable,
he was terrible. Now was that the offense that Freddie
(05:00):
Kitchens was it? Too much pressure? Um? All of the above.
So this year more tempered and a more tempered Baker Mayfield.
I was encouraged near the end of the year because
this was a team that ran the ball well, played
good defense, and Baker Mayfield learned to manage the game.
He didn't have to throw the ball times. And I
(05:20):
loved his comment near the end of the season when
he said, yeah, I think I've grown up to the
point where I when I think about saying or doing
something stupid, I don't that that that that's come a
long way and and uh so okay. So at the
end of the day we were saying, we think it's
thumbs up on Baker's Mayfield, Baker Mayfield going forward, and
(05:41):
that he's going to be on the pop. We also
got a great insight in the course of writing the book.
We had a conversation with Gary Kubiak, who probably is
as good as good a guy at knowing talent as anybody.
And he said about Kevin Stefanski, You'll see this is
a very smart wise sound. I mean every adjective he
(06:03):
used to be kind about it could could have not
been applied to his predecessor. Yeah. And now the challenge
for Cleveland, as is always the case, and and and
this is the business aspect of it, is he's on
the cuffs now going into that fourth year of they've
started to start talking about a contract extension. All of
our rookies are in that from the two thousand eighteen
(06:24):
are coming up in that area. So the challenge now
is so that we can see the evaluation never ends
the challenges. Okay, we say Baker Mayfield is going to
be a franchise quarterback and he's on the upside. Now,
what are you paying? You're not gonna pay him, uh
Patrick Mahomes money. He's got to be north of you know, now,
any starting quarterback of any length that's going to get
(06:45):
a hundred million plus going forward, depending upon how much guarantee.
But where between that that half a billion that that
Patrick Mahomes is getting and and that that floor of
a hundred million. Where does where does Baker Mayfield land?
So that's the challenge going forward for Cleveland. Let's move
on to the to the next pick was with Sam
(07:07):
Donald and and again spoiler alert, I think we're both
in agreement that he's on the flip side of the
fifty proposition. And for the reasons that we kind identified.
Let's remember that Sam Donald had all the checks, you know,
came from a big school at usc UM, had all
the physical attributes, seemed to be a pretty cool character,
and going to a market like New York that was
(07:29):
a good, good, uh good place to be. Again on
the flip side. On the down side of it, he's
already he's already on his third coach if he indeed
stays in New York. He's went from uh being drafted
in New York. Uh and and now they made the
coaching change to Adam Gaze. Now he's gone. They're bringing
the new coach uh and Robert Sala. It's still at
(07:52):
this recording, we don't know if he's gonna stay with
New York or not. But my biggest concern, and we
Markin talked about it in the book, Look, was he
checked all these boxes. But I'll go back to the
the benchmark that Ron Wolf and Bill Pollion told us
about how does he show up in the big moments?
And that was the concern at sc and certainly, even
(08:13):
though with a very poor surrounding cast and an organization
that's in flux um, he just didn't seem to show
up in the big moments. Yeah. Well, the interesting thing
about that is there was an anecdote that we were
late in the book that it's either being cool under
pressure or not having enough passion, depending on which side
(08:35):
of the coin you're on. And his father, in fact,
tells a story that they joked about him because of
his lack of emotion. They called him a flatliner. Well,
you know, that's okay if it's pure compliment. If you
if it's you know, you got ice in your veins.
But he did seem to lack the passion. So if
Baker Mayfield may let off the charts on the passion side.
(08:57):
So Donald is a guy with a massive amount of
as a coal properties and abilities and uh and does
not have fire for lack of a better word, in
to your credit, I'm gonna say, when we got into extrapolations,
you went much further than than just extrapolating completion percentage
(09:18):
over three years or four years, but rather, is there
a way to extrapolate character and passion? And if you
dig deep enough into history and into the game films
of life, you do see patterns. Flatline is not a
good pattern to see, No, And to me, it's not
just the lack of maybe lack of passion, but it
is sometimes awareness. I always used to say, I want
(09:40):
to Yeah, I want a calm quarterback, but I also
want to know that you're smart enough to be afraid. Yeah,
but you're smart enough to recognize whoa this is, this
is a lot, and and you know buy or beware,
so to speak. Um, I don't know what's gonna happen
with Sam Donald at this point. My guess is they're
going to move on. Um, which I think the indictment
(10:00):
of that is with two picks in the first round,
with the New York Jets and new general manager and
Joe Douglas a new head coach, it would be a
huge advantage for them to convince themselves that that Sam
Donald is the guy, because now they could they could
get a whole bunch of picks for people that want
to come up to the second overall pick. They could
(10:21):
pick up a bunch of picks. They could really build
the nucleus for a good team if they wanted to
convince themselves. But he's the right guy. But I don't
think that's going to happen. I think they're gonna end
up either gonna picking it too or they'll trade back
but still be in a position to pick up one
of these rookie quarterbacks. Right And I think right now
the odds are they're saying they're going to pick a quarterback, Yeah,
(10:43):
number two, so or um or what you call justin
fields probably yeah, or Zach Wilson um. Yeah. Alright. The
next one is the most interesting one to me, when
we move on to John Allen, who was taken by
the Buffalo Bills. Again, guy that checked all the boxes
(11:04):
in every category. There was one huge outlier, and this
one I took on personally because I was a victim
of it. The lack of completion percentage. This is a
young man that went to Readley Junior College had basically
one really great year of wyoming. Great numbers, but the
completion percentage and that rarely gets better. And that was
(11:25):
our qualifier. Going in, we thought this guy's dynamic. Uh,
he could do a lot of things. But boy, we
we've got to be concerned. And going in had some
trepidation on us to which side of the equation he
would fall because of the completion percentage. Now, even though
we had success in the first two years, the completion
percentage was still not good and still was limiting. And
(11:47):
and I had a concern at the end of the
two years, and as we wrote about in the book,
that yeah, it looks to be like a positive, but
there's still some concerns here because that tend not to
get better. And then all of a sudden in the
third year just exploded in terms of his ability to
read defenses better than or close to completion percentage. Really
(12:10):
turned into a superstar um in terms of status. So
clearly he's above above the curve. Uh. But still it
leaves us as we try to formulate what is this formula?
It now puts an asterisk on the asterisk where you
take a player under, Well, I gotta put an asterisk here.
(12:30):
That got's a concern, but we've got an outlier in
terms of someone that it still was able to overcome
it and that's Josh Allen. Right. Well, you know you
also said something early on which I think that is
that is uh, it's a nuance to an extent or
a detail, but it's very important one that if you're
at you might be able to move up past the
(12:54):
magic sixty. And if you can, it makes a hell
of a difference. That just that just going from fifty
to sixty one or sixty two, he happened to jump
up to seventy. We also said early on when we
were doing the matches he was matched up with a
good coach and they were likely to stay with him
for a while, which was good. So he had every
(13:16):
opportunity to improve a little bit. Now he improved a lot,
but if he falls back to the low sixties, he's
still in pretty good shape right at Getting a Stefon
dig certainly helped. Let's go back to the organization, the
good match with the organization and the fact that they
wrapped some additional assets around him. So that's always going
to be the factor. Um. But yeah, had he this
(13:39):
year and they made the playoffs again and he runs
around and make some plays and that type of thing.
Had he stayed under that seventy then I would still
be sitting here concerned about the long term prognosa of
him truly and Buffalo being a championship caliber team because
of that, but not not if he stayed under sixty.
(14:02):
If he stayed under six, Yeah, that that that would
have been. But then the fact that he jumped over
the top of it was, uh, we've never seen the
likes of it. So so that still leaves us that
with when we evaluate going forward draft picks, that sub
sixty guy. For me, that still has to be a
major concern. And there will be teams that say, no, no,
(14:24):
we're okay with that because look at Josh Allen, And
to me, that's gonna say. But I'll say, in our evaluation,
as we great ourselves, we had essentially said Baker Mayfield, yes,
Sam Donald doubtful. We had him just below the cusp,
and we had Josh Allen right now on the cusp
with a slight plus. So to our credit, we said,
(14:45):
if we have to tip one way or the other,
we're gonna say because of factors like the team he's
going to end the and his steadiness and his he
gets a slight plus. So we were we were doing okay, Yeah,
unfortunately have to move on to Josh Rosen, which is
the classic with the classic first round miss at every level. Again,
(15:09):
not to to prognosticate or to to pat ourselves too
much on the back, but we we had concerns about
Josh Rosen from the get go. Had all the physical tools, uh,
seem to have the mental capacity. Again, you might question
the fire in the belly because uh, as we've talked
about in the book, Uh, some people are have looked
(15:30):
at a disqualifier a young man, the man comes from substance,
comes from a wealthy family. Is that a factor? There
are certainly outliers to that as well. The current crop
of quarterbacks coming up Zack Wilson, people are talking about that.
We we kind of put that to a side in
our evaluation. The biggest concern we had again, here's young
(15:51):
man who went through a lot of transition in college,
ends up coming in the NFL and getting bounced around
unceremoniously and uniquely. Arizona is all in and even trades
up to get him at ten and then bails on
him after only one year as they did on the coach,
which is even unique. And he's bouncing around the League.
(16:12):
He just re signed with San Francisco. Maybe he has
a chance under Kyle Shanahan to to redevelop the skills
or to have some stability that shows up. But the
biggest indictment we had in the process, and so did
the scouts, and we heard from a number of person
personnel people they just had they all had questions. They
(16:34):
just had doubt about his ability, his his desire for
the game, not the physical abilities. And it just as
to quote one of them, we just didn't get shot
in the asked with the guy right, he had an
interesting What we discovered was he had an interesting critique
which was not only that he perhaps came from uh,
(16:55):
you know, perhaps too much comfort or wealth, but he's
a very smart guy and he was he coachable or
was he sort of a guy would say I'm smarter
than the coach. Now, those are those are hard things
to find. I mean, I mean to to prove one
way or the other. I think it's ironic or almost
almost bizarre. We have we we observed two prejudices in
(17:19):
picking quarterbacks at either end of the economic scale We've
seen over years that finally seemed to be overcome. There
was for many, many years that kind of a prejudice
against um the that some people called thought might have
even been a racial one that was having to do
with you know, could could the dual threat quarterback make it?
(17:41):
Or was that? Or was he too much of a runner?
And at the other end, was it was the guy
who was too well to do and fancy too good?
You know? Neither one in and of itself makes any
sense at all. Obviously, obviously a rich kid could be
driven and a poor kid can be brilliant. But in
(18:01):
the case of Josh Rosen, maybe it was this other
factor of can you coach me? Yeah, And you bring
up a good point, because the inference is that if
the player is too intelligent, he's not coachable. But I
will I will use two examples, primary examples that I'm
familiar with firsthand. Uh Peyton Manning and Steve Young affluent backgrounds,
(18:26):
both extremely intelligent and will challenge you on every point.
But but we'll listen to ultimately what you need to do.
U talked with Gary Kubiak and Uh as well just
recently talked about with Peyton Manning and how he and
and and Peyton came to a meeting of minds in
(18:48):
terms of what they were gonna do. That ultimately led
to a Super Bowl in Denver because Peyton was very
determined about what he did. Gary, as Gary very humbly
as Gary kubiak is would say, but you know what,
my kind of my stuff is kind of okay too,
now so and and meld them together. But both both
Steve Young and Peyton Manning, although they will challenge you
(19:08):
on a daily basis as to why are we doing
this and is this the best way, they will listen
and they will work with you on that. Where Josh
Rosen tends to be just while I'm smarter than you,
I'm dismissive and this is the way I'm going to
do it. And again you wonder is there a coach
out there who might have been right for him? And yeah,
well we'll see, you know, and again we we we uh.
(19:30):
We now have the Ryan Tannehill example. Again, what was
a classic first round bust in Miami goes to Tennessee,
the right coach, doing the right thing, right balance, and
now appears to be on you know, one of the
top quarterbacks in the NFL. Again an outlier because that
movement typically doesn't make a difference, but but you have, Uh,
(19:51):
if I'm not mistaken, you have a pretty high opinion
of Kyle Shanahan. And maybe he might be open minded
enough to see is there's still something here? Absolutely and
and and may have an opportunity with the questions about
Garoppolo and certainly the injury questions, and in a run
based offense where requires the quarterback to be very intelligent
(20:12):
quarterback to operate it, maybe, just maybe Josh Rosen has
found the right spot. Well, this brings us to our
last one, which was really made it the most interesting
of the of the group, and that's Lamar Jackson. The
fact that he snuck in with the last pick as
Baltimore brilliantly moved back in to beat all the teams
that would have been in line for him in the
second round, which is where most people thought Lamar Jackson
(20:34):
was going to go. And Lamar Jackson clearly has the
physical abilities. Uh is just a baller, as they say.
But as the ultimate example of our last criteria, a
player going to the right team that was willing to
wrap itself around what he did. That was the question
people had, will he last in the league? Being in
(20:56):
a running quarterback and Baltimore to their read it singularly said,
we'll wrap an offense around him and we don't care
if he runs the ball hundred times a game. This
is what we do. And they've had great success with
him because of it, right and he and as far
as our prognostication on him, we said, we brought up
(21:18):
all the all the cautions, the normal ones. You know, Kenny,
Kenny run that much, well, they let him run a
team he goes to and if he does run that
much as he putting himself in jeopardy. We also discovered
along the way interesting some data that showed that that
actually studying running quarterbacks versus pocket quarterbacks over time, that
(21:39):
the difference is almost infinitestable between getting hurt. So it's
one of those myths that's grown up. We learned from
some of the experts that a pocket quarterback can be
very vulnerable because he's standing still like a statue, and
he can get claubert. I mean, witness you know how
many times Ben Roethlisberger has been heard. And a running
(21:59):
around quarterback can stay healthy because he's on the move. Now,
that doesn't mean it happens to every running quarterback or
it happens to every to every pocket quarterback. But we
saw that with with Lamar, and I believe that what
you had concluded sort of bottom line was if a
couple of these ifs can be met, team wraps themselves
(22:21):
around him. He can keep himself healthy, maybe learned to
slide or get out of bounds. The term we said
is he can be of all the guys picked a
game changer. Well, guess what we I guess we got
really either we got smarter, we got lucky because he
absolutely came in halfway through the season and changed that
team's fate for them in the very first season. And
(22:45):
the fact that he truly is a unicorn because as
we talked about in the book going forward, and we're
going to take just a minute to talk about the
draft coming up and how it applies to our criteria,
but in the game that it has changes. And yes,
a more mobile quarterback is something everybody covets, but you
still have to win from the pocket. The end of
the day, it was a forty three year old pocket
(23:08):
quarterback that can't run that won the Super Bowl this year.
Everybody wants a certain level of athleticism in their quarterback. Uh,
if you. Let's extrapolated, if we will, just a little
bit to this year's draft. What's interesting again, a draft
that looks like there might be five guys taken, much
like a two thousand eighteen. At least four, but certainly
maybe five. You have the diversity of Trevor Lawrence and
(23:31):
Zach Wilson and Mac Jones, who all appeared to be
pocket quarterbacks with some athleticism. Okay, they're not. They're not stiffs.
They all can move around, but they're like we found
with Baker Mayfield, who can keep the play alive. Bacon
Rayfield we can't put in the category of a running quarterback.
He does make some plays with little eggs, but not
(23:52):
like he did in Oklahoma. And we noted that in
the book that he's not going to run around in
the NFL the way he did in Oklahoma. These guys
are gonna be proverbial pocket quarterbacks. But then you have
guys like like Justin Fields and Trey Lance that are
more mobile, physical quarterbacks that truly operate more outside the pocket,
(24:13):
and there are questions about their ability within the pockets.
So looking forward again, the more things change, the more
they stay the same. Uh, Nobody knows anything. UH. This
year's draft, again, we have a dichotomy of UH. It's
not a matter of everybody going to the mobile quarterback.
Everybody's going to the guy. You know. Everybody's saying, let's
(24:33):
go find me a Lamar Jackson. We'll slow down now.
There's not a lot of those cats running around here,
so let's be realistic about what we're going to see.
But I think the Q Factors in full full force
going into the UH the the two thousand twenty one
draft and will be interesting to follow it. So it's
been great fun. Jim, I hope that people have enjoyed
this podcast. We're gonna continue it on. Jim and I
(24:56):
are working on a series of The Q Factor for Business.
We're doing a number of seminars around the country with
business schools. We're going to create a podcast Q Factor
for Business and extrapolate some of the principles about about
identifying top talent on the football field and how it
might extrapolate to top talent in the business field and
(25:18):
see if we can make those connections. You want to
look for it as you want to look for the
Q Factor podcast on Apples, Spotify, or wherever you find
your podcasts,
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