Draft Countdown: History Shows Drafting Top QBs (hint, Matt Stafford, Lions) Key to Winning
NFL Picks | by Mike O'Hara | 04.7.2009/6:11PM
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(Another in a series leading up to the NFL Draft, April 25-26.)
History is not an accurate predictor in the NFL draft. But neither are scouting reports or any of the detailed analysis teams rely on to separate and identify – they hope—the best available prospects.
Quarterbacks have made an indelible imprint on the draft. When it comes to filling the most important position in team sports (excluding parachute packing), championships are won more often than not by teams that took their quarterback high in the draft.
The history of quarterback failures and successes is of extreme interest to the Lions and their fans because they have the first pick in this month’s draft.
The issue of whether the Lions should draft a quarterback has been debated since it became clear last season that the Lions would have the league’s worst record and collapse into the first pick.
There are choices this year among quarterback prospects.
Matthew Stafford of Georgia is the consensus choice among draft experts as the top quarterback prospect. Mark Sanchez of Southern Cal and Josh Freeman of Kansas State also have been rated as first-round prospects.
Whether the Lions make the right choice with the first pick—by drafting a quarterback or a player at another position—will not be known for three or four years.
But there can be no debate that talent wins out at quarterback.
In the 43 years of the Super Bowl history, the championship has been won 14 times by a team with a quarterback who was drafted first overall.
In 10 other games, the winning quarterback was a first-round
draft pick.
Some asterisks and explanations apply to these figures, but the raw data shows what quality means:
1. Almost one third of the Super Bowls (13 of 43) were won by a team with a quarterback drafted first overall.
2. More than half of the winners (23 of 43) were led by a quarterback drafted on the first round.
Quarterbacks with multiple championships skew the odds in favor of first overall picks. Terry Bradshaw was a four-time winner for Pittsburgh. Troy Aikman won three times for Dallas.
But the odds swing both ways. Joe Montana, a third-round draft pick, won four championships for San Francisco. Tom Brady, a three-time winner for New England, was a sixth-round pick. And Bart Starr, who won the first two Super Bowls with Green Bay, was a 17th-round pick.
Of course, another notable exception is Kurt Warner, who was never drafted but won a Super Bowl with the 1999 St. Louis Rams and lost narrowly in two others – with the 2001 Rams, and last season’s Arizona Cardinals.
Not all Super Bowl winners who were first-round picks or drafted first overall won the championship with the team that drafted them. But the point is, they were judged to have superior talent when they entered the NFL.
Here are the No. 1 picks and first-round picks who have won the Super Bowl, with the number of championships in parentheses:
Drafted first overall (13 championships)
Joe Namath (1): Drafted by the Jets in 1965 and signed to a $400,000 contract. Won Super Bowl III.
Terry Bradshaw (4): Drafted first by Pittsburgh in 1970.
Jim Plunkett (2): Drafted first overall by New England in 1971. Bounced around and landed with the Raiders, where he won two championships.
John Elway (2): Drafted first by Baltimore in 1983 but forced a trade to Denver and never played for the Colts. Elway won his two championships in his last two seasons (1997-98).
Troy Aikman (3): Drafted first by Dallas in 1989.
Peyton Manning (1): Drafted first overall by Indianapolis in 1998.
Eli Manning (1): Drafted first overall by San Diego in 2004 and traded on draft day to the Giants, where he won a Super Bowl.
Other first-round picks (10 championships):
Earl Morrall (1): San Francisco’s first-round pick in 1956. Made several NFL stops, including with the Lions, in 21 pro seasons. Won Super Bowl V in Baltimore in relief of John Unitas.
Len Dawson (1): Drafted fifth overall by Pittsburgh in 1957 and won Super Bowl IV with Kansas City.
Bob Griese (2): Miami Dolphins first-round pick, 1967.
Jim McMahon (1): Chicago’s first-round pick in 1982, led the Super Bowl Shuffle of the ’85 team.
Phil Simms (1): A surprise choice by the Giants in 1979, was nearly perfect on the ’86 team that won Super Bowl XXI. He also started most of the season in 1990 but gave way to Jeff Hostetler late in the year because of an injury.
Doug Williams (1): First-round pick of Tampa Bay in 1978. He had his greatest game in passing Washington over Denver in Super Bowl XXII.
Trent Dilfer (1): Tampa Bay’s first-round pick in 1994. Took over late in the year in Baltimore and led the 2000 team with a steady hand to its only Super Bowl championship.
Ben Roethlisberger (2): The third QB drafted on the first round in 2004, behind Eli Manning and Philip Rivers. Won Super Bowl XL and XLIII with the Steelers.
Notable cases
Steve Young: He signed with the USFL’s Los Angeles Express in 1984 before the NFL draft. When the league folded, he was the No. 1 pick – by Tampa Bay – in the Supplemental Draft. Young, a Hall of Famer, won the Super Bowl with the 1995 49ers.
Brett Favre: Favre was Atlanta’s second-round pick in 1991. In 1992, he was traded to Green Bay for a first-round pick. Favre played in two Super Bowls with the Packers, winning one.
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