Well Joe, I guess Minnesota has either already won one of the 4 you predicted for the year, or maybe they’re a little better than you thought. A possible Darnold resurrection aside, did you look at the improvements they made on defense?
You are a lot higher on Goff than I am. There's a reason why he's in Detroit now and that's because he figuratively urinated down his leg in the Super Bowl against the most vulnerable of the Patriots' championship teams. No surprise then that when the Rams sent Goff to Detroit and got Matthew Stafford, they win a Super Bowl.
Joe kinda cheated with Purdy. SF is certainly the best team in the NFC West, but no way Purdy is better than Stafford or Smith, and I'd put him below Kyler Murray. Lotsa guys would look great with the Niners.
Just looking at last year's numbers, compare the 4 QB's and give Murray the benefit of the doubt and simply double his numbers a he only played in 8 games.
Purdy of course has more wins, but he threw for more yards, more TD, had a higher completion percentage, rating, and QBR. Even more telling, check out their yards/attempt:
9.6 // 7.6, 7.3, 6.7
Yeah, yeah. Better supporting cast. I get it. But his numbers destroy everyone else in that division. It's not close. A gap of 2 yards per attempt is massive. I can at least squint and see ranking Stafford higher due to his ungodly arm strength, but there's no way I'd rank a journeyman like Smith or a soon-to-be-journeyman like Murray above a guy who has continually delivered the goods.
Purdy is not one of the elite QB, but he is very good or at the very least, a very good fit in San Fran.
You all can keep underrating Purdy. He will just keep winning. It reminds me of the early years of Tom Brady. He wasn't putting up exciting fantasy numbers, so his talent went unnoticed. Belichick was given all the credit. Now, after the end of their marriage, Brady went 32-18 elswhere from ages 43-45 and won another Super Bowl. Belichick went 83-101 in around 11 seasons full of games without him.
Purdy is given short shrift as a system QB, playing for the most overrated offensive coach of our time ( a guy whom the majority of his best teams were led by great D coordinators instead, a couple of who are head coaches now.) Shanahan is a .500 coach without Purdy.
10 years from now when Purdy is still winning and Shanahan is gone, more people will know.
I was surprised to see that Trevor Lawrence and Daniel Jones are effectively the same QB stats wise: https://x.com/NFLonCBS/status/1770506927224565933. I wonder if Jones is ranked too low or Lawrence too high?
I believe Purdy has proven so far that he’s a good QB and not exclusively a product of the system, but #7? Feels like you cheated the rankings a bit in the NFC West to make the standings line up.
I wrote the same thing before I saw your comment, but I do believe he's just a product of the system at this point, we'll see how he does when his top four weapons age out.
I guess what I’d say is, in that system with those weapons he is good enough to perform like a top 10 QB. But true talent, 15-20 would be fair enough. And it would be the exception that proves the rule - the Niners are the one team with enough all-around talent to be a SB favorite with an average QB. The Rams in the same division are a good comp (no way Stafford is a lesser QB than Purdy). Goff put up very good stats in that system and they even made a SB. But when he was replaced with a true top 5-10 QB, they immediately won a championship. The Niners COULD win a title with Purdy, but replace him with Justin Herbert (sort of in a similar situation to Lions-era Stafford) and they’d be prohibitive favorites.
So to close the thought on Purdy, he’s proven to me that he’s a legitimate NFL starter. On teams with reasonable talent, he can be successful, but on a bottom-10 team he’d probably look pretty helpless. Not a ceiling-raiser. Again, similar to Goff’s career regarding how good he can look in a competent offense and how he looked like a total bust when he was playing with nothing around him.
(And this is about as much as you can typically expect from a QB, by the way. There typically aren’t more than 5ish guys at a time who are really going to perform regardless of the talent around them).
One the strongest I have ever seen. There was once a video of one of his throws somewhere where he avoided a safety and made an off balance throw caught on the other side of the 50 from the end zone that I used to play sometimes just to giggle and shake my head.
I was at UNLV when he was. He is also the best punter I have ever seen.
He never said he was good. He said he was one of the 15 strongest arms he could think of, and that is true. Unfortunately he was also lacking in some things like accuracy, leadership, sack avoidance, playing under pressure, etc.
Eh, he lasted 11 years and wasn't terrible for all of it. I feel like he's earned his spot in the Vinnie Testeverde Hall of Good Enough to Keep Get Paid. Jamarcus Russell is definitely not a member.
OK, Joe, I see you have the Bears playing only 15 games. I hope that means the two Packers games have been removed from the schedule out of mercy. I used to love Bears-Packers games because they were brutal and we won our fair share, but the last 10 or 15 years or so they are pure heartbreak. I also think you underestimate the Bears defense. The Monsters are back. They were good last year and added some depth and strength in the off season. They might even beat the Pack this year. Playoffs here we come.
The first 82 Bears-Packers games were absolutely owned by Chicago - that takes you up through the midway point of the 1960 season.
At that point, the Packers were 26-50-6 against the Bears.
Over the next 25 games, the Packers were totally dominant, going 20-5. They still didn't catch up.
The next 38 games restored normalcy (a.k.a. the Bears winning) to the rivalry; the Packers were only 11-16 over that time. And at that point, the all-time win-loss record stood at 57-71-6.
Since October 25, 1992, the Packers are 50-23 against the Bears. In that latter timeframe, the Packers have nearly as many season sweeps (18) as the Bears have total victories (23), including two five-year undefeated stretches (1994-1998 and 2019-2023, which could theoretically continue).
What's amazing is that the Bears' overall dominance in the rivalry was so great that the Packers didn't actually overtake the Bears until December of 2016! That was - and this is kind of amazing - the ONLY time the Packers led the all-time series, except for a brief stretch in the early 1930s.
I'm a Packers fan from Milwaukee, who was raised by my father to view the Bears as the Packers' chief rival, because that's how HE saw it. However, in the last 30 years (and since I moved to Minnesota), I would say that the biggest rivalry - both in my personal life and in the team's history - has moved west. But again, that could just be my subjective experience.
It's a fun read but not a serious exercise. QB is certainly the most important position on the field, but completely ignoring defense, special teams and the rest of offense doesn't seem like a way to have accurate ratings. Probably a bit of wishing on Joe's part to make the predictions seem more reasonable.
Your lips to God's ears, please. I can't take another year of my father-in-law (a born-and-raised Wisconsinite) brag yet again about sweeping us and how it's so easy to find a quarterback.
NFL Draft stock is obviously not all on arm strength ... but man, JaMarcus Russell could absolutely launch the football with little to no effort. That in no way, shape or form justifies the Raiders' decision in 2007 (especially with the next two picks being Hall of Famers) ... but oh man he could bomb a football! I'm off to YouTube!
JaMarcus' failures in the NFL had a lot to do with the Raiders being a terrible organization. He didn't do himself any favors, but the Raiders sabotaged him at every turn and made decisions that would doom him to fail by indulging his worst impulses. The mistake wasn't one of evaluation, but of development.
Because JaMarcus was awesome in college, and was largely unappreciated for it. Check this out
One of these QB's won the Heisman. The other wasn't even in the top ten of voting. And Troy Smith's 204 yards rushing isn't that much of a game-changer. Russell also authored 9 come from behind wins in college, showing off that clutch gene (he's QB B, by theway). Knock Russell's pro career once he discovered the joys of purple drank all you want, but JaMarcus was great in college and no one really noticed until it was over.
Joe, I think the Derek Carr game ends on fourth and goal from the 15, and he has three receivers in the end zone who are relatively covered so he throws a check down to the running back at the 15 who gets tackled at the 8.
I am more of the belief now than ever that context is probably the most important thing for a quarterback. Look what the Chiefs did with Mahomes. They had a playoff team with a placeholder quarterback. Then they drafted their franchise guy. Perfect way to do it. And then let him sit for a whole year. There will always be exceptions, but I think the best and safest way to do it is make the quarterback the last piece.
At some point, we need to start discussing whether Andy Reid is the greatest coach of all time. Went to the NFC championship game basically every year with Donovan McNabb. And now that he has an all timer in Mahomes, there’s no stopping them. Belichick was not a very good coach without Brady.
I cannot see Phil Rivers as a Hall of Famer. Hall of very good.
Young Belichick built a playoff team in Cleveland before the owner ruined things. Middle Belichick won 11 games with Matt Cassel! Old, Bradyless, Belichick had no offense, but he still did more on defense than anyone.
Please. Belichick took over a Cleveland team that had been to the AFC Championship game 3 of the last 5 seasons and the playoffs 4 of the last 5 and and led them to a 36-44 record over 5 years and one playoff appearance. It was not in his last year, in which he went 5-11.
He took over a Patriots team later that hadn't had a losing record in 5 years and had been to the playoffs 3 of the last 4, including a Duper Bowl loss and was 5-13 with Drew Bledsoe (A QB who was a winner before he got there and a .500 QB with two other teams over 70 games after he was jettisoned) before lucking into Brady.
Belichick never built anything without Brady, had the good luck to never have to take over a team in a really bad situation, and never built anything without Brady.
Also, in case you were wondering, that is the 3rd worst 5 year winning percentage in the Browns/Ravens franchise history. (Not counting any other 5 year percentages that the Belichick years were a part of, as you could cobble together a worse one using part of his tenure.)
Yes they gifted the old Browns history to the new Browns when they created them, but we all know which franchise it was. The one that would be by far, the most successful franchise in the history of the NFL if said history were left whole, with a .592 winning percentage over 1155 games. 62 of the 64 possible 5 year outcomes not involving Belichick were better than his 5 year term.
Another thing: that 11 win Cassell season is the default “gotcha” for the Belichick defenders. But it’s also five games worse than the Brady Patriots were the year before. That’s a pretty big drop off.
If they had dropped five games from 12-4, we probably wouldn’t be celebrating that Cassell season at all.
After the AFC preview, I tried to guess where Joe would rank the NFC QBs... only to find out some numbers were used 2-3 times and some not at all. Honestly, probably should have expected that, haha. Anyway, here are the complete rankings:
Honestly, this totally tracks. I love Joe’s writing and have followed him several places and will keep paying to read his stuff as long as he’s writing. One of the reasons is lists that skip and double fill numbers and countdowns that never finish and a school bus load of “Halls of ‘something’” that have four or five or 10 or 2 members each.
In short, he’s just like all of us losers out here doing our best.
Also possible he was leaving some room because of the rate that QBs get knocked out (already started with J.J. McCarthy). You never know when a back up will have an unexpectedly good season when shoved unto the breach. Yes, unto, not into. Blame it on Henry V, Act III, Scene 1.
Presented for consideration for the strongest arms... Warren Moon. Or is that just my memory playing games with me?
Well Joe, I guess Minnesota has either already won one of the 4 you predicted for the year, or maybe they’re a little better than you thought. A possible Darnold resurrection aside, did you look at the improvements they made on defense?
You are a lot higher on Goff than I am. There's a reason why he's in Detroit now and that's because he figuratively urinated down his leg in the Super Bowl against the most vulnerable of the Patriots' championship teams. No surprise then that when the Rams sent Goff to Detroit and got Matthew Stafford, they win a Super Bowl.
16 is too low, and you think 16 is "a lot higher" than it should be? Uh, ok.
Joe kinda cheated with Purdy. SF is certainly the best team in the NFC West, but no way Purdy is better than Stafford or Smith, and I'd put him below Kyler Murray. Lotsa guys would look great with the Niners.
Just looking at last year's numbers, compare the 4 QB's and give Murray the benefit of the doubt and simply double his numbers a he only played in 8 games.
Purdy of course has more wins, but he threw for more yards, more TD, had a higher completion percentage, rating, and QBR. Even more telling, check out their yards/attempt:
9.6 // 7.6, 7.3, 6.7
Yeah, yeah. Better supporting cast. I get it. But his numbers destroy everyone else in that division. It's not close. A gap of 2 yards per attempt is massive. I can at least squint and see ranking Stafford higher due to his ungodly arm strength, but there's no way I'd rank a journeyman like Smith or a soon-to-be-journeyman like Murray above a guy who has continually delivered the goods.
Purdy is not one of the elite QB, but he is very good or at the very least, a very good fit in San Fran.
You all can keep underrating Purdy. He will just keep winning. It reminds me of the early years of Tom Brady. He wasn't putting up exciting fantasy numbers, so his talent went unnoticed. Belichick was given all the credit. Now, after the end of their marriage, Brady went 32-18 elswhere from ages 43-45 and won another Super Bowl. Belichick went 83-101 in around 11 seasons full of games without him.
Purdy is given short shrift as a system QB, playing for the most overrated offensive coach of our time ( a guy whom the majority of his best teams were led by great D coordinators instead, a couple of who are head coaches now.) Shanahan is a .500 coach without Purdy.
10 years from now when Purdy is still winning and Shanahan is gone, more people will know.
I was surprised to see that Trevor Lawrence and Daniel Jones are effectively the same QB stats wise: https://x.com/NFLonCBS/status/1770506927224565933. I wonder if Jones is ranked too low or Lawrence too high?
I believe Purdy has proven so far that he’s a good QB and not exclusively a product of the system, but #7? Feels like you cheated the rankings a bit in the NFC West to make the standings line up.
I wrote the same thing before I saw your comment, but I do believe he's just a product of the system at this point, we'll see how he does when his top four weapons age out.
I guess what I’d say is, in that system with those weapons he is good enough to perform like a top 10 QB. But true talent, 15-20 would be fair enough. And it would be the exception that proves the rule - the Niners are the one team with enough all-around talent to be a SB favorite with an average QB. The Rams in the same division are a good comp (no way Stafford is a lesser QB than Purdy). Goff put up very good stats in that system and they even made a SB. But when he was replaced with a true top 5-10 QB, they immediately won a championship. The Niners COULD win a title with Purdy, but replace him with Justin Herbert (sort of in a similar situation to Lions-era Stafford) and they’d be prohibitive favorites.
So to close the thought on Purdy, he’s proven to me that he’s a legitimate NFL starter. On teams with reasonable talent, he can be successful, but on a bottom-10 team he’d probably look pretty helpless. Not a ceiling-raiser. Again, similar to Goff’s career regarding how good he can look in a competent offense and how he looked like a total bust when he was playing with nothing around him.
(And this is about as much as you can typically expect from a QB, by the way. There typically aren’t more than 5ish guys at a time who are really going to perform regardless of the talent around them).
That list is missing Randall Cunningham. Even Elway thought his arm was obscene.
absolutely
One the strongest I have ever seen. There was once a video of one of his throws somewhere where he avoided a safety and made an off balance throw caught on the other side of the 50 from the end zone that I used to play sometimes just to giggle and shake my head.
I was at UNLV when he was. He is also the best punter I have ever seen.
Dak at #5? Seems a little high. I’d drop him into that #13 slot. That seems to be where his luck is.
Came here like a few other people to say Jamarcus Russell things. But that strongest-arm list ain't a bad run at "Good QBs with awesome arms" !
Jeff George was a good QB?
He never said he was good. He said he was one of the 15 strongest arms he could think of, and that is true. Unfortunately he was also lacking in some things like accuracy, leadership, sack avoidance, playing under pressure, etc.
God, I loved it when he was a Raider. You just knew he would blow a game in the 4th quarter if it was close
Eh, he lasted 11 years and wasn't terrible for all of it. I feel like he's earned his spot in the Vinnie Testeverde Hall of Good Enough to Keep Get Paid. Jamarcus Russell is definitely not a member.
Remember when Joe and Mike swore off the NFL?
Wish that would have stuck so I could get more baseball coverage
The thing with the cannon arm guys, is the "throw it 70 yards from your knees" play rarely gets called.
OK, Joe, I see you have the Bears playing only 15 games. I hope that means the two Packers games have been removed from the schedule out of mercy. I used to love Bears-Packers games because they were brutal and we won our fair share, but the last 10 or 15 years or so they are pure heartbreak. I also think you underestimate the Bears defense. The Monsters are back. They were good last year and added some depth and strength in the off season. They might even beat the Pack this year. Playoffs here we come.
The first 82 Bears-Packers games were absolutely owned by Chicago - that takes you up through the midway point of the 1960 season.
At that point, the Packers were 26-50-6 against the Bears.
Over the next 25 games, the Packers were totally dominant, going 20-5. They still didn't catch up.
The next 38 games restored normalcy (a.k.a. the Bears winning) to the rivalry; the Packers were only 11-16 over that time. And at that point, the all-time win-loss record stood at 57-71-6.
Since October 25, 1992, the Packers are 50-23 against the Bears. In that latter timeframe, the Packers have nearly as many season sweeps (18) as the Bears have total victories (23), including two five-year undefeated stretches (1994-1998 and 2019-2023, which could theoretically continue).
What's amazing is that the Bears' overall dominance in the rivalry was so great that the Packers didn't actually overtake the Bears until December of 2016! That was - and this is kind of amazing - the ONLY time the Packers led the all-time series, except for a brief stretch in the early 1930s.
I'm a Packers fan from Milwaukee, who was raised by my father to view the Bears as the Packers' chief rival, because that's how HE saw it. However, in the last 30 years (and since I moved to Minnesota), I would say that the biggest rivalry - both in my personal life and in the team's history - has moved west. But again, that could just be my subjective experience.
It's a fun read but not a serious exercise. QB is certainly the most important position on the field, but completely ignoring defense, special teams and the rest of offense doesn't seem like a way to have accurate ratings. Probably a bit of wishing on Joe's part to make the predictions seem more reasonable.
Your lips to God's ears, please. I can't take another year of my father-in-law (a born-and-raised Wisconsinite) brag yet again about sweeping us and how it's so easy to find a quarterback.
NFL Draft stock is obviously not all on arm strength ... but man, JaMarcus Russell could absolutely launch the football with little to no effort. That in no way, shape or form justifies the Raiders' decision in 2007 (especially with the next two picks being Hall of Famers) ... but oh man he could bomb a football! I'm off to YouTube!
JaMarcus' failures in the NFL had a lot to do with the Raiders being a terrible organization. He didn't do himself any favors, but the Raiders sabotaged him at every turn and made decisions that would doom him to fail by indulging his worst impulses. The mistake wasn't one of evaluation, but of development.
Because JaMarcus was awesome in college, and was largely unappreciated for it. Check this out
Quarterback A: 203/311, 2542 yards, 65.3%, 8.2 yds/att, 30 TD, 6 INT
Quarterback B: 232/342, 3129 yards, 67.8%, 9.1 yds/att, 28 TD, 8 INT
One of these QB's won the Heisman. The other wasn't even in the top ten of voting. And Troy Smith's 204 yards rushing isn't that much of a game-changer. Russell also authored 9 come from behind wins in college, showing off that clutch gene (he's QB B, by theway). Knock Russell's pro career once he discovered the joys of purple drank all you want, but JaMarcus was great in college and no one really noticed until it was over.
The only college football game Al Davis probably watched that year was JaMarcus Russell shredding a mediocre Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl.
Joe, I think the Derek Carr game ends on fourth and goal from the 15, and he has three receivers in the end zone who are relatively covered so he throws a check down to the running back at the 15 who gets tackled at the 8.
I am more of the belief now than ever that context is probably the most important thing for a quarterback. Look what the Chiefs did with Mahomes. They had a playoff team with a placeholder quarterback. Then they drafted their franchise guy. Perfect way to do it. And then let him sit for a whole year. There will always be exceptions, but I think the best and safest way to do it is make the quarterback the last piece.
At some point, we need to start discussing whether Andy Reid is the greatest coach of all time. Went to the NFC championship game basically every year with Donovan McNabb. And now that he has an all timer in Mahomes, there’s no stopping them. Belichick was not a very good coach without Brady.
I cannot see Phil Rivers as a Hall of Famer. Hall of very good.
Young Belichick built a playoff team in Cleveland before the owner ruined things. Middle Belichick won 11 games with Matt Cassel! Old, Bradyless, Belichick had no offense, but he still did more on defense than anyone.
Please. Belichick took over a Cleveland team that had been to the AFC Championship game 3 of the last 5 seasons and the playoffs 4 of the last 5 and and led them to a 36-44 record over 5 years and one playoff appearance. It was not in his last year, in which he went 5-11.
He took over a Patriots team later that hadn't had a losing record in 5 years and had been to the playoffs 3 of the last 4, including a Duper Bowl loss and was 5-13 with Drew Bledsoe (A QB who was a winner before he got there and a .500 QB with two other teams over 70 games after he was jettisoned) before lucking into Brady.
Belichick never built anything without Brady, had the good luck to never have to take over a team in a really bad situation, and never built anything without Brady.
Also, in case you were wondering, that is the 3rd worst 5 year winning percentage in the Browns/Ravens franchise history. (Not counting any other 5 year percentages that the Belichick years were a part of, as you could cobble together a worse one using part of his tenure.)
Yes they gifted the old Browns history to the new Browns when they created them, but we all know which franchise it was. The one that would be by far, the most successful franchise in the history of the NFL if said history were left whole, with a .592 winning percentage over 1155 games. 62 of the 64 possible 5 year outcomes not involving Belichick were better than his 5 year term.
Another thing: that 11 win Cassell season is the default “gotcha” for the Belichick defenders. But it’s also five games worse than the Brady Patriots were the year before. That’s a pretty big drop off.
If they had dropped five games from 12-4, we probably wouldn’t be celebrating that Cassell season at all.
And now even Older Belichick is dating a 25 year old so clearly he does more on offense than we ever gave him credit for.
Ever see that video of Alan Iverson, as a high school QB, throwing a ball 70 yards?
Dude had a cannon.
After the AFC preview, I tried to guess where Joe would rank the NFC QBs... only to find out some numbers were used 2-3 times and some not at all. Honestly, probably should have expected that, haha. Anyway, here are the complete rankings:
1. Mahomes
2. Allen
3. Jackson
4. Burrow
5. Prescott
6. Hurts
7. Purdy
8. Stroud
9. Herbert
10. Rodgers
11. Love
12. Stafford
13.
14. Tagovailoa
15. Cousins
16. Lawrence AND Goff
17. Williams
18. Smith
19. Murray
20.
21. Mayfield
22. Wilson/Fields
23.
24. Richardson
25. Watson
26. Levis AND Carr
27.
28. Brissett/Maye AND Daniels AND Young
29. Minshew/O'Connell
30. Jones
31. Nix
32. Darnold
Honestly, this totally tracks. I love Joe’s writing and have followed him several places and will keep paying to read his stuff as long as he’s writing. One of the reasons is lists that skip and double fill numbers and countdowns that never finish and a school bus load of “Halls of ‘something’” that have four or five or 10 or 2 members each.
In short, he’s just like all of us losers out here doing our best.
I guess we know why he "flunked" out of accounting. Haha
In Joe’s defense don’t Goff and Lawrence both wear #16?
Also possible he was leaving some room because of the rate that QBs get knocked out (already started with J.J. McCarthy). You never know when a back up will have an unexpectedly good season when shoved unto the breach. Yes, unto, not into. Blame it on Henry V, Act III, Scene 1.