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Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33
I disagree about the draft producing elite QBs, we may have had a lull for a few years but I think Clausen, Luck, possibly Locker have the tools to be elite QBs. I think the prevalence of the spread offense in college has something to do with it too.
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I think the spread has a lot to do with it. There are hundreds of competent college QBs out there but NFL teams, on the whole, want to take these guys to the next level and make them do something completely foreign. That's going to eliminate a lot of potentially great players. And so there are like 10 colleges who, in any given year, might send a quarterback to the NFL draft who gets taken highly.
And because of the market conditions (spread quarterbacks undervalued, or not valued at all), guys are coming out earlier and earlier, which is of course, a negative indicator of potential. But it's worth a lot of cash, because the guys who are waiting around are getting picked apart as prospects.
And so the NFL draft isn't producing anymore Mannings, or Rivers', or Carson Palmers anymore...I think the polished, can't miss quarterback prospect is probably a thing of the past. Maybe once every three years, you'll get a Matt Ryan. Christian Ponder could be that guy next year, as they are incredibly similar. And I like Jacory Harris in a year or two.
But I think: if you're going to have to culture a successful environment anyway, why spend the top five pick on a quarterback? Why inflate the price of an asset beyond what it's actually worth--if you're the one going to be paying the bill anyway?