‘They Just Know How To Win’, Superstar NFL Quarterbacks Never Come From Powerhouses. Why?
THE LAST ALABAMA QUARTERBACK TO WIN A PLAYOFF GAME WAS 41 YEARS AGO. On a cool January night underneath the Los Angeles lights, former Crimson Tide quarterback Richard Todd took a snap and flung a rocket to wide receiver Wesley Walls to the 1-yard line setting up a walk-in rush by Jets running back Scott Dierking to send New York to the AFC Championship Game. Todd would become the last Alabama signal caller to win an elimination game. That was 1983.
Since then, Alabama has won seven national titles and appeared in eight playoff games. The era of Nick Saban came and went, the playoff era begun, 32 players had been drafted and made the Pro Bowl– and yet not a single quarterback has able to secure a playoff victory. In fact, no Crimson Tide quarterback has been able to even achieve true superstar status– even Jalen Hurts (who spent some time at Oklahoma) has suffered massive collapses in his game at times.
Alabama has been a microcosm for the trend of quarterbacks in recent years. The fact of the matter is– game breaking quarterbacks don’t seem to come from powerhouse schools. Take some of the best quarterbacks in the NFL today: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers, Brock Purdy, Lamar Jackson– according to some semblance of statistics and probabilities, the best quarterbacks should be coming from the best schools.
Yet, this doesn’t seem to be the case. While some of the highest-paid quarterbacks might have some alma mater prestige under their belt, seldom are they the most accomplished. The true bigwigs of the sport come from schools like California, Wyoming, Texas Tech, Iowa State. Albeit not all of football’s faces come from miniscule schools, but they do at a higher proportion than any other position.
The reason might lie in the fact that it’s increasingly difficult to know and predict which quarterbacks will actually be successful in the NFL.
“Everybody is terrible at it,” Bleacher Report QB analyst Mark Schofield said to FanSided.
It’s become a fact, no matter what any NFL general manager will have you believe. In the past four drafts, 13 quarterbacks have been selected in the first round alone– of which only four became reputable starters in the league. At a 31% hit rate, you’d think picking a quarterback would be no better than closing your eyes and throwing a dart at a board– and you’d be correct.
QUARTERBACKS ARE A UNIQUE POSITION IN ALL OF SPORTS. It’s truly unlike any other. Glare at the vast expanses of sport and you’d be pressed to find another situation that demands the asks of the QB position.
“It’s the toughest transition you’ll see in sports to go from college quarterback to NFL quarterback, there are so many moving pieces and so much involved and we all get it wrong because of that,” Schofield said.
Being the lead role in the blockbuster cinema we call the NFL today has transformed from having a prerequisite of a strong arm to being a rocket-scientist with the ability to throw into needle-tight windows on the side. This advancement of the position has leveled the playing field for quarterbacks coming out college. It’s no longer a Division I prospect coming from Alabama or Ohio State. Instead, it’s just a Division I prospect. Make a big enough name at the FCS level and even you can get a chance– just take a look at Trey Lance or Carson Wentz.
Quarterbacks coming out of college in this era are tough to decipher. No matter what they did in college– whether they played Ohio State in the College Football Championship Game or if they were matched up with Shippensburg State, they’re all equally an enigma. It’s become a complex discipline to properly draft a QB.
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“Just because you’re good at algebra, does that mean you’re good at calculus?” Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel asked. “College football is a different game that has overlapping variables, but it’d be far-fetched to say at any position collegiate success dictates professional success.
It’s a different orchestration of an 11-person game, and there’s different nuances to it. … And that’s why it’s an inexact science, because the success of the quarterback in the collegiate platform is based upon compounding variables that you have to sift through.”
Contrary to other positions, the difference between small school quarterbacks and flagship schools isn’t nearly as metric.
Small schools also play in conferences that are much less diverse in terms of competition. While schools like Georgia and Michigan might rarely be in games that are in contention of going either way, quarterbacks from small schools aren’t afforded that luxury. Take Jordan Love from Utah State for example, during his senior year– the Aggies were in seven contests decided by 21 points or fewer. Compared to Bryce Young’s 2022 season with the Crimson Tide, who only had five, Love gained valuable experience over his time year-over-year with Utah State even with an extra two games a year.
“It’s simple,” The Sideline Catch head quarterback analyst Olin Hanson-Rhodes says. “They just know how to win games, close games. They don’t have much wiggle room when it comes to the stiff competition they’ll have to face come draft time.”
The extra time spent in close games can be a make or break for players to develop their off-the-field skills. It can mean the difference between a Super Bowl winning quarterback and one that folds at the first indication of pressure. Learning how to deal with adversity is a trait that must be honed through experience. While some have a natural inclination, it’s just as much of a muscle as it is a characteristic. It must be exercised.
This paradox has only gotten more complicated over time, but it’s a situation as old as the league itself.
“Young passers are uniquely difficult to analyze,” Bob Oates for the Los Angeles Times said in a 1985 article. “The Dallas Cowboys say their computers are almost worthless in evaluating quarterbacks.
What puzzles scouts and computers alike is, first, that it takes more than talent to play this position well, and, second, that the required intangibles are hard to quantify.
Of these intangibles, NFL coaches say that self-confidence is as important to quarterbacks as their talent. They say that toughness–mental and physical–is at least as important as either talent or confidence. And they say that opportunity is the other critical factor–the opportunity to start and continue to play.”
ONE OF THE OTHER BIGGEST FACTORS in levelling out the playing field for quarterbacks from big and small schools is the intangibles that play such a big role in analyzation. Most positions are dictated by their talent on the field, but the captain of the ship that has so much under their aegis needs to be more than just a big arm and a head on their feet.
“You are the de facto leader of that team and you have to act accordingly,” Schofield said. “You have to be in there on Monday working on the next gameplan and practice the right way and be able to step into a huddle as a 22 year old rookie on Day 1 and command the eyes around you even if some of the guys have been in the league for 15 years.”
Intangibles can be developed anywhere regardless of school. Toughness and the ability to work through adversity can be built at a blue blood like Clemson just the same as it can be done at a Division III school. It doesn’t truly matter, even on the topic of dissecting defenses and understanding the X’s and O’s.
A Michigan defense might have trivial differences from a Eastern Illinois but the base remnants are still essentially the same things. No matter what level of college football a quarterback plays, they still have to understand the same coverages and with ideas trickling down to lower levels faster than ever– the gap is closing fast.
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Quarterbacks these days come a dime a dozen, perfect for college teams who can sometimes get away with a decent quarterback. A good defense makes up for a mid-tier pass-thrower in the college world, but not in the NFL. Clemson can get by with just a B level quarterback while a team like North Dakota State might need an A level passer.
Trying to figure out a quarterback’s intangibles is tough, especially their ability to handle adversity. Most athletes have never encountered anything in life like the pressure and the roadblocks they will face in the NFL. That’s why tightness of competition might play a bigger role than some people think in the development and the progression of a player.
It’s great if a player dominates his way through college, winning every game in blowout fashion. However, general managers and analysts would much more like to see wins consisting of a mix of subjugation and razor-thin margins. They want to see a killer instinct when things get tough– a trait that might be more prevalent in smaller-schools rather than the perennial stalwarts.
“It is a combination of scouting and development skills,” veteran NFL agent Leigh Steinberg says. “All the quarterbacks that haven’t made it, they can’t all have been bad draft picks. They just can’t. Drafting and the evaluation process is way too thorough.”
The take makes sense when you think about it. Less weight is being placed on where a player goes to school and how they played there makes more sense. Physical traits don’t matter nearly as much but the quarterback’s ability to grow is the hallmark of a true successful NFL passer. If a quarterback shows coachability– which some passers simply lack, it doesn’t matter if they went to Texas or James Madison— they’ve shown the ability to figure it out. The path is all the same and the trait is the same no matter what school the quarterback has gone to.
