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This article is a bit random, looking back 10yrs. It would be hard to validate the writer's take.
What about the current depth charts? That seems worthy of discussion... Which teams have the weakest QB's?
http://espn.go.com/nfl/insider/stor...harts-10-years-cleveland-browns-new-york-jets
The New York Jets had a quality defense last season. They have two very good veteran receivers in Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker. They have a promising tight end, Jace Amaro, coming back from a lost season. This would all make Jets fans feel pretty good if the quarterback situation didn't seem like a complete disaster.
The Jets and the team's starting quarterback last season, Ryan Fitzpatrick, have been dancing around contact terms for months. But as of now, Fitzpatrick remains a free agent, even though he says he wants to come back. Once a mediocre backup, Fitzpatrick has put up the best performances of his career in the past two seasons. He would be a colossal upgrade over the quarterbacks left on the Jets' roster.
Geno Smith was awful in his first two seasons and apparently lost the Jets' locker room before he lost his job last season. The selection of Christian Hackenberg in the second round was roundly disparaged by Draft Twitter. Third-stringer Bryce Petty didn't even understand how NFL defenses work when he was drafted out of Baylor last year. Jets fans lament: This has got to be the worst depth chart any team has had at the position in years.
Actually, it's not.
I went through rosters from the past 10 years, looking at where each NFL team's quarterback depth chart stood at the beginning of the season. And it's remarkable just how many really awful quarterback situations there have been.
Here are the 10 worst since 2007 based on what we knew about the players at the time. Veterans were judged by their recent performance in advanced stats, including ESPN's Total QBR and Football Outsiders' DYAR and DVOA (explained here). Young players from the first three rounds were judged by Football Outsiders' QBASE projections if they were chosen in the top 100 picks, and draft position if they were taken later.
10. 2016 Cleveland Browns
Robert Griffin III / Josh McCown / Cody Kessler / Connor Shaw
Perhaps Hue Jackson can somehow find a way to unlock the potential Robert Griffin III showed as a rookie, when he ranked third in the NFL with a 75.6 QBR. But Griffin fell to 42.1 in 2013 and 33.5 in 2014, then lost his job to Kirk Cousins.
Josh McCown will start if Griffin doesn't. McCown, of course, had that amazing half-season for the 2013 Bears, but based on DVOA ratings, that was the only year in his career he was ever above average. He had the worst DVOA in the league in 2014, and his QBR that year ranked ahead of only rookie Blake Bortles. Last year, McCown was a bit better (23rd in DVOA and 22nd in QBR), but he's going to be 37 this year, making him the third-oldest QB in the league behind Tom Brady and Drew Brees.
Third on the depth chart is Cody Kessler, a third-round rookie from USC with a dismal minus-201 QBASE. (The average QBASE for prospects since 1998 is 437, and the only quarterback with negative QBASE to eventually make a Pro Bowl was Brian Griese.) 2014 UDFA Connor Shaw is also around for training camp.
9. 2014 Tennessee Titans
Jake Locker / Charlie Whitehurst / Zach Mettenberger
Jake Locker was chosen eighth overall in the 2011 draft, but it's hard to think of what he had going for him by 2014. QBASE rated him a mediocre prospect coming out of college (261) because of poor completion rates. In the NFL, Locker couldn't seem to stay healthy, starting just 18 games in his first three seasons. He had 39.3 QBR in 2012, the only year in his career with more than 200 pass attempts. His 52.4 QBR in 2013 looks decent but is a bit deceiving because Locker mostly played the easier defenses on the Tennessee schedule. (In Football Outsiders stats for that year, incorporating opponent adjustments dropped his DVOA rank from 19th to 22nd.)
Locker's backup was Charlie Whitehurst (aka Clipboard Jesus). Whitehurst came into the league in 2006 with a horrible QBASE projection (minus-271) and then barely played. At age 32, with eight NFL seasons under his belt, Whitehurst had just 155 career pass attempts. When he came to Tennessee, he had only one season with more than 100 pass plays (2010) and Whitehurst put up a horrific 16.7 QBR that year.
Behind Locker and Whitehurst was sixth-round rookie Zach Mettenberger out of LSU. For a long time the Titans kept telling the media that Mettenberger was the next Tom Brady, but in the end, it turned out he wasn't even the next Jake Locker.
8.Oakland Raiders
Terrelle Pryor / Matt Flynn / Matt McGloin
The 2013 Raiders depth chart was topped by Terrelle Pryor, who was such a good quarterback that he's now a wide receiver. Pryor had a minus-18 QBASE as a third-round supplemental pick in 2011, and entering 2013, he had thrown 30 regular-season passes in his first two NFL seasons. Pryor won the job in camp over Matt Flynn, the former Green Bay backup who got a big free-agent contract from Seattle after his six-touchdown performance against Detroit in the final week of 2011. That game was a huge fluke; Flynn had just 26.4 QBR and minus-16 percent DVOA in his two games in 2010. Flynn lost the Seattle job to Russell Wilson before the 2012 season began, was traded to Oakland, then saw Pryor beat him out too.
For their third spot, the Raiders chose to keep undrafted rookie Matt McGloin out of Penn State over fourth-round rookie Tyler Wilson. The Arkansas product was the highest pick in the 2013 NFL draft who couldn't make his team's opening day roster.
7. 2013 Jacksonville Jaguars
Blaine Gabbert / Chad Henne / Ricky Stanzi
As a rookie in 2011, Blaine Gabbert had a DVOA rating of minus-42.5 percent, the second-lowest out of every quarterback with at least 400 passes since 1989. (The only player lower: David Carr for the 2002 Texans.) The next year, Gabbert was a little better, and his DVOA of minus-25.3 percent ranked 34th out of 38 quarterbacks with at least 200 pass attempts.
Gabbert's backup was Chad Henne, who was close to average in limited play in 2011 and then just as bad as Gabbert in 2012. He basically split the 2012 with Gabbert 50-50 and had roughly the same DVOA rating (minus-24.6 percent). However, Henne had been slightly above-average as a starter in Miami in 2009-2010, and was considered a respectable veteran backup, which is why the Jaguars don't rank higher on this list. The third-stringer was Ricky Stanzi, a 2011 fifth-round pick of Kansas City who never took a regular-season snap in the NFL.
6. Kansas City Chiefs
Brodie Croyle / Damon Huard / Tyler Thigpen
The 2008 Chiefs were what the 2016 Browns would look like if they didn't have Robert Griffin III. The role of Josh McCown was played by Damon Huard, who had an amazing half-season in 2006 which was similar to the great half-season McCown had in 2013. Like McCown, Huard was below average the entire rest of his career. As the Kansas City starter for most of 2007, he ranked 29th out of 30 qualifying quarterbacks with 29.6 QBR.
Late in that season, Huard was benched for Brodie Croyle, a third-round pick in 2006 who entered the league with a poor QBASE projection of minus-173. He barely played as a rookie; given a chance in his second year, he was even worse than Huard, with 28.5 QBR in six starts.
Backing up these two quarterbacks was Tyler Thigpen. Minnesota drafted Thigpen out of FCS Coastal Carolina in the seventh round of the previous draft but cut him before the 2007 season. He was picked up by Kansas City and went 2-for-7 with a pick in limited rookie action. Thigpen eventually started 11 games that season and is now primarily known for a panel at the 2013 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference during which Herm Edwards spent an hour blaming Thigpen for everything that went wrong for the Chiefs in 2008.
5. 2016 New York Jets
Geno Smith / Christian Hackenberg / Bryce Petty
It isn't impossible to imagine that Geno Smith could resurrect his career and become a quality NFL starting quarterback. He did manage one good game in 2015, with 66.2 QBR against an underrated Oakland defense when he came in to replace an injured Fitzpatrick. He was amazing in Week 17 of 2014, completing 20 of 25 passes for 358 yards with 94.0 QBR against Miami. On the other hand, scroll up and read about Matt Flynn again, then ask yourself how much we can really learn from a single great game in Week 17.
Smith had 38.6 QBR in 2013 and 44.3 QBR in 2014. According to Football Outsiders' DYAR metric, he was below replacement level in both seasons. Since 1989, only one quarterback has been below replacement level with at least 200 pass attempts in both of his first two seasons and then developed into a quality NFL starter: Troy Aikman in 1989-1990.
If the Jets don't re-sign Ryan Fitzpatrick, Smith will face a challenge in training camp from second-round pick Christian Hackenberg. But there's a reason so many people made fun of the Jets' selection of Hackenberg: Given the bubble screen-heavy structure of today's college offenses, a quarterback who completes 56 percent of his passes in college is simply not a good NFL prospect. Hackenberg's QBASE of minus-409 is tied for the fifth-worst out of any top 100-drafted quarterback since 1998.
Behind Hackenberg is Bryce Petty. Officially, only quarterbacks chosen in the top 100 get QBASE projections, and Petty was chosen 103rd overall in 2015. If he had a QBASE, it would have been minus-291.
4. Buffalo Bills
J.P. Losman / Trent Edwards / Craig Nall
Like Geno Smith, J.P. Losman forced us to ask ourselves, "How long can a highly drafted quarterback play badly before we give up on him?" But Losman was a worse prospect than Smith when he came out of college, with a QBASE of minus-25. As a rookie, Losman's minus-41.5 percent DVOA was the lowest of any quarterback with at least 200 passes. Unlike Smith, at least Losman came in (barely) above replacement level in his sophomore season, with minus-9.0 percent DVOA.
Backing up Losman was Trent Edwards, a third-round pick out of Stanford. Edwards completed only 56 percent of his passes at Stanford with a 36/33 TD/INT ratio, and his QBASE projection of minus-524 is the third-worst since 1998.
The third quarterback for the Bills that year was Craig Nall, a 2002 fifth-round pick of the Packers who had a strong performance in Week 17 of 2004 -- notice a pattern here? -- but otherwise barely played for four years in Green Bay before signing with Buffalo in 2006.
3. 2008 San Francisco 49ers
J.T. O'Sullivan / Shaun Hill / Alex Smith
Consider everything you think right now about Robert Griffin III. Now think back and try to remember what you thought of Alex Smith in 2008.
Griffin was taken No. 2 overall, only one pick later than Smith. He had a better college career than Smith. We didn't do QBASE projections back then, but our system shows Griffin (QBASE 1193) as a better prospect than Smith (QBASE 789) coming out of college. As noted above, Griffin was awesome as a rookie. Smith, on the other hand, had minus-88.6 percent DVOA, the worst season ever for a quarterback with at least 100 pass attempts. As bad as Griffin was in the next two seasons, Smith was worse, with 32.7 QBR in 2006 and 14.8 QBR in 2007.
Going into 2008, Smith looked like a completely lost cause. It seemed impossible to imagine that he could rescue his career and actually develop into a reasonable, league-average starting quarterback. In fact, he was so lost that he was bumped down to third string by the end of training camp, falling behind two journeymen with almost no actual regular-season playing experience. (He ended up going on injured reserve after Week 1 because of shoulder issues.)
Instead of Smith, the 49ers' opening day starter was J.T. O'Sullivan, the Saints' sixth-round pick out of Division II UC Davis in 2002. He bounced between seven teams (Chicago twice) before he ended up with the 2007 Lions. O'Sullivan had a poor minus-25.0 percent DVOA on 30 plays in 2007, but Mike Martz brought him along when he left the Lions for the 49ers that offseason, then made him the starting quarterback.
Behind O'Sullivan was Shaun Hill, who had a somewhat similar history. Hill went undrafted in 2002, but unlike O'Sullivan, he had played for only two teams: He was with Minnesota from 2002-2005 and then signed with San Francisco. Like O'Sullivan, Hill didn't play at all in the regular season for his first five years, 2002-2006. He did manage an above-average 3.1 percent DVOA on 84 pass plays in 2007. He was surprisingly adequate when he took over from O'Sullivan halfway through 2008 and has gone on to a long career as a capable NFL backup.
2. Arizona Cardinals
John Skelton / Kevin Kolb / Ryan Lindley
The Cardinals drafted John Skelton out of Fordham in the fifth round of the 2010 draft. He was forced to start four games as a rookie and was as terrible as you might imagine a fifth-round rookie with only FCS experience would be: Skelton completed just 48 percent of his passes with a miserable 22.7 QBR. So the next offseason, the Cardinals traded cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and a second-round pick to Philadelphia for Kevin Kolb.
Except, Kolb was also dismal for Arizona, finishing 31st out of 32 qualifying quarterbacks with 23.1 QBR in 2011. Skelton came back in when Kolb was injured for a few games but wasn't much better, with 33.8 QBR. However, he went 5-2 as a starter. Sure, the Arizona defense allowed less than 21 points in each game and all five wins came by less than a touchdown, but Skelton had shown he was "a winner." That made him the starter in 2012 with Kolb as the backup. Third string belonged to Ryan Lindley, a sixth-round rookie out of San Diego State. All three ended up starting games in a lackluster 5-11 season for the Cardinals.
However, I didn't rank this as the worst quarterback depth chart of the past 10 years because at least it could be argued that Kolb still had some potential based on his performance with the Eagles. Instead, the top spot goes to ...
1. 2011 Washington Redskins
Rex Grossman / John Beck / Jonathan Crompton
Donovan McNabb had a lousy first season with the Redskins, so Mike Shanahan traded him to the Vikings in July. That left Washington with two career backups to fight over the starting job: one with a terrible track record and one with almost no track record.
Rex Grossman eventually started in Week 1. In his 11-year NFL career, Grossman never had an above-average DVOA rating or completed 60 percent of his passes in a season. Grossman started three games when Shanahan benched McNabb the season prior, and put up a pathetic QBR of 23.6. When he topped the depth chart for the 2011 Redskins, Grossman had not thrown more than 250 passes in a season since 2006, the year he "led" Chicago to Super Bowl XLI (i.e. was dragged by the Bears' defense).
Grossman's backup was John Beck. As an overaged 26-year-old rookie in 2007, Beck had a horrific minus-54.9 percent DVOA and 8.9 QBR. He then wasted away on the Miami bench and didn't take a regular-season snap for three seasons.
Shanahan inexplicably had so much faith in Grossman and Beck that he didn't even carry a third quarterback on the active roster. Jonathan Crompton spent the year on the practice squad and would have been the backup if either Grossman or Beck had been injured. The Chargers' fifth-round in 2009 out of Tennessee, Crompton had already been cut by three teams before Washington signed him.
Indianapolis Colts
This depth chart might have been even worse than Washington's -- once it was clear Peyton Manning would miss the entire season. However, Manning's status was still a mystery when the Colts started training camp; deep into the regular season, the team was still holding on to hope Manning would be able to play. He was the true No. 1 on the depth chart, but Curtis Painter was a poor contingency plan, forcing the Colts to sign Kerry Collins out of retirement just two weeks before the regular season began.
There have been so many bad quarterback depth charts over the past decade that there's another whole top 10 list of teams I considered when preparing this article. Here they are to add to the discussion.
2009 Buffalo Bills (Edwards, Ran Fitzpatrick, Hamdan)
2009 St. Louis Rams (Bulger, Boller, Null)
2010 Carolina Panthers (Moore, Clausen, Pike)
2010 Cleveland Browns (Delhomme, Wallace, McCoy)
2010 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Freeman, Johnson, Carpenter)
2012 New York Jets (Sanchez, Tebow, McElroy)
2013 Buffalo Bills (Manuel, Tuel, Lewis)
2013 Cleveland Browns (Weeden, Campbell, Hoyer)
2016 Denver Broncos (Sanchez, Lynch, Siemian)
2016 Houston Texans (Osweiler, Weeden, Savage)
What about the current depth charts? That seems worthy of discussion... Which teams have the weakest QB's?
http://espn.go.com/nfl/insider/stor...harts-10-years-cleveland-browns-new-york-jets
The New York Jets had a quality defense last season. They have two very good veteran receivers in Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker. They have a promising tight end, Jace Amaro, coming back from a lost season. This would all make Jets fans feel pretty good if the quarterback situation didn't seem like a complete disaster.
The Jets and the team's starting quarterback last season, Ryan Fitzpatrick, have been dancing around contact terms for months. But as of now, Fitzpatrick remains a free agent, even though he says he wants to come back. Once a mediocre backup, Fitzpatrick has put up the best performances of his career in the past two seasons. He would be a colossal upgrade over the quarterbacks left on the Jets' roster.
Geno Smith was awful in his first two seasons and apparently lost the Jets' locker room before he lost his job last season. The selection of Christian Hackenberg in the second round was roundly disparaged by Draft Twitter. Third-stringer Bryce Petty didn't even understand how NFL defenses work when he was drafted out of Baylor last year. Jets fans lament: This has got to be the worst depth chart any team has had at the position in years.
Actually, it's not.
I went through rosters from the past 10 years, looking at where each NFL team's quarterback depth chart stood at the beginning of the season. And it's remarkable just how many really awful quarterback situations there have been.
Here are the 10 worst since 2007 based on what we knew about the players at the time. Veterans were judged by their recent performance in advanced stats, including ESPN's Total QBR and Football Outsiders' DYAR and DVOA (explained here). Young players from the first three rounds were judged by Football Outsiders' QBASE projections if they were chosen in the top 100 picks, and draft position if they were taken later.
10. 2016 Cleveland Browns
Robert Griffin III / Josh McCown / Cody Kessler / Connor Shaw
Perhaps Hue Jackson can somehow find a way to unlock the potential Robert Griffin III showed as a rookie, when he ranked third in the NFL with a 75.6 QBR. But Griffin fell to 42.1 in 2013 and 33.5 in 2014, then lost his job to Kirk Cousins.
Josh McCown will start if Griffin doesn't. McCown, of course, had that amazing half-season for the 2013 Bears, but based on DVOA ratings, that was the only year in his career he was ever above average. He had the worst DVOA in the league in 2014, and his QBR that year ranked ahead of only rookie Blake Bortles. Last year, McCown was a bit better (23rd in DVOA and 22nd in QBR), but he's going to be 37 this year, making him the third-oldest QB in the league behind Tom Brady and Drew Brees.
Third on the depth chart is Cody Kessler, a third-round rookie from USC with a dismal minus-201 QBASE. (The average QBASE for prospects since 1998 is 437, and the only quarterback with negative QBASE to eventually make a Pro Bowl was Brian Griese.) 2014 UDFA Connor Shaw is also around for training camp.
9. 2014 Tennessee Titans
Jake Locker / Charlie Whitehurst / Zach Mettenberger
Jake Locker was chosen eighth overall in the 2011 draft, but it's hard to think of what he had going for him by 2014. QBASE rated him a mediocre prospect coming out of college (261) because of poor completion rates. In the NFL, Locker couldn't seem to stay healthy, starting just 18 games in his first three seasons. He had 39.3 QBR in 2012, the only year in his career with more than 200 pass attempts. His 52.4 QBR in 2013 looks decent but is a bit deceiving because Locker mostly played the easier defenses on the Tennessee schedule. (In Football Outsiders stats for that year, incorporating opponent adjustments dropped his DVOA rank from 19th to 22nd.)
Locker's backup was Charlie Whitehurst (aka Clipboard Jesus). Whitehurst came into the league in 2006 with a horrible QBASE projection (minus-271) and then barely played. At age 32, with eight NFL seasons under his belt, Whitehurst had just 155 career pass attempts. When he came to Tennessee, he had only one season with more than 100 pass plays (2010) and Whitehurst put up a horrific 16.7 QBR that year.
Behind Locker and Whitehurst was sixth-round rookie Zach Mettenberger out of LSU. For a long time the Titans kept telling the media that Mettenberger was the next Tom Brady, but in the end, it turned out he wasn't even the next Jake Locker.
8.Oakland Raiders
Terrelle Pryor / Matt Flynn / Matt McGloin
The 2013 Raiders depth chart was topped by Terrelle Pryor, who was such a good quarterback that he's now a wide receiver. Pryor had a minus-18 QBASE as a third-round supplemental pick in 2011, and entering 2013, he had thrown 30 regular-season passes in his first two NFL seasons. Pryor won the job in camp over Matt Flynn, the former Green Bay backup who got a big free-agent contract from Seattle after his six-touchdown performance against Detroit in the final week of 2011. That game was a huge fluke; Flynn had just 26.4 QBR and minus-16 percent DVOA in his two games in 2010. Flynn lost the Seattle job to Russell Wilson before the 2012 season began, was traded to Oakland, then saw Pryor beat him out too.
For their third spot, the Raiders chose to keep undrafted rookie Matt McGloin out of Penn State over fourth-round rookie Tyler Wilson. The Arkansas product was the highest pick in the 2013 NFL draft who couldn't make his team's opening day roster.
7. 2013 Jacksonville Jaguars
Blaine Gabbert / Chad Henne / Ricky Stanzi
As a rookie in 2011, Blaine Gabbert had a DVOA rating of minus-42.5 percent, the second-lowest out of every quarterback with at least 400 passes since 1989. (The only player lower: David Carr for the 2002 Texans.) The next year, Gabbert was a little better, and his DVOA of minus-25.3 percent ranked 34th out of 38 quarterbacks with at least 200 pass attempts.
Gabbert's backup was Chad Henne, who was close to average in limited play in 2011 and then just as bad as Gabbert in 2012. He basically split the 2012 with Gabbert 50-50 and had roughly the same DVOA rating (minus-24.6 percent). However, Henne had been slightly above-average as a starter in Miami in 2009-2010, and was considered a respectable veteran backup, which is why the Jaguars don't rank higher on this list. The third-stringer was Ricky Stanzi, a 2011 fifth-round pick of Kansas City who never took a regular-season snap in the NFL.
6. Kansas City Chiefs
Brodie Croyle / Damon Huard / Tyler Thigpen
The 2008 Chiefs were what the 2016 Browns would look like if they didn't have Robert Griffin III. The role of Josh McCown was played by Damon Huard, who had an amazing half-season in 2006 which was similar to the great half-season McCown had in 2013. Like McCown, Huard was below average the entire rest of his career. As the Kansas City starter for most of 2007, he ranked 29th out of 30 qualifying quarterbacks with 29.6 QBR.
Late in that season, Huard was benched for Brodie Croyle, a third-round pick in 2006 who entered the league with a poor QBASE projection of minus-173. He barely played as a rookie; given a chance in his second year, he was even worse than Huard, with 28.5 QBR in six starts.
Backing up these two quarterbacks was Tyler Thigpen. Minnesota drafted Thigpen out of FCS Coastal Carolina in the seventh round of the previous draft but cut him before the 2007 season. He was picked up by Kansas City and went 2-for-7 with a pick in limited rookie action. Thigpen eventually started 11 games that season and is now primarily known for a panel at the 2013 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference during which Herm Edwards spent an hour blaming Thigpen for everything that went wrong for the Chiefs in 2008.
5. 2016 New York Jets
Geno Smith / Christian Hackenberg / Bryce Petty
It isn't impossible to imagine that Geno Smith could resurrect his career and become a quality NFL starting quarterback. He did manage one good game in 2015, with 66.2 QBR against an underrated Oakland defense when he came in to replace an injured Fitzpatrick. He was amazing in Week 17 of 2014, completing 20 of 25 passes for 358 yards with 94.0 QBR against Miami. On the other hand, scroll up and read about Matt Flynn again, then ask yourself how much we can really learn from a single great game in Week 17.
Smith had 38.6 QBR in 2013 and 44.3 QBR in 2014. According to Football Outsiders' DYAR metric, he was below replacement level in both seasons. Since 1989, only one quarterback has been below replacement level with at least 200 pass attempts in both of his first two seasons and then developed into a quality NFL starter: Troy Aikman in 1989-1990.
If the Jets don't re-sign Ryan Fitzpatrick, Smith will face a challenge in training camp from second-round pick Christian Hackenberg. But there's a reason so many people made fun of the Jets' selection of Hackenberg: Given the bubble screen-heavy structure of today's college offenses, a quarterback who completes 56 percent of his passes in college is simply not a good NFL prospect. Hackenberg's QBASE of minus-409 is tied for the fifth-worst out of any top 100-drafted quarterback since 1998.
Behind Hackenberg is Bryce Petty. Officially, only quarterbacks chosen in the top 100 get QBASE projections, and Petty was chosen 103rd overall in 2015. If he had a QBASE, it would have been minus-291.
4. Buffalo Bills
J.P. Losman / Trent Edwards / Craig Nall
Like Geno Smith, J.P. Losman forced us to ask ourselves, "How long can a highly drafted quarterback play badly before we give up on him?" But Losman was a worse prospect than Smith when he came out of college, with a QBASE of minus-25. As a rookie, Losman's minus-41.5 percent DVOA was the lowest of any quarterback with at least 200 passes. Unlike Smith, at least Losman came in (barely) above replacement level in his sophomore season, with minus-9.0 percent DVOA.
Backing up Losman was Trent Edwards, a third-round pick out of Stanford. Edwards completed only 56 percent of his passes at Stanford with a 36/33 TD/INT ratio, and his QBASE projection of minus-524 is the third-worst since 1998.
The third quarterback for the Bills that year was Craig Nall, a 2002 fifth-round pick of the Packers who had a strong performance in Week 17 of 2004 -- notice a pattern here? -- but otherwise barely played for four years in Green Bay before signing with Buffalo in 2006.
3. 2008 San Francisco 49ers
J.T. O'Sullivan / Shaun Hill / Alex Smith
Consider everything you think right now about Robert Griffin III. Now think back and try to remember what you thought of Alex Smith in 2008.
Griffin was taken No. 2 overall, only one pick later than Smith. He had a better college career than Smith. We didn't do QBASE projections back then, but our system shows Griffin (QBASE 1193) as a better prospect than Smith (QBASE 789) coming out of college. As noted above, Griffin was awesome as a rookie. Smith, on the other hand, had minus-88.6 percent DVOA, the worst season ever for a quarterback with at least 100 pass attempts. As bad as Griffin was in the next two seasons, Smith was worse, with 32.7 QBR in 2006 and 14.8 QBR in 2007.
Going into 2008, Smith looked like a completely lost cause. It seemed impossible to imagine that he could rescue his career and actually develop into a reasonable, league-average starting quarterback. In fact, he was so lost that he was bumped down to third string by the end of training camp, falling behind two journeymen with almost no actual regular-season playing experience. (He ended up going on injured reserve after Week 1 because of shoulder issues.)
Instead of Smith, the 49ers' opening day starter was J.T. O'Sullivan, the Saints' sixth-round pick out of Division II UC Davis in 2002. He bounced between seven teams (Chicago twice) before he ended up with the 2007 Lions. O'Sullivan had a poor minus-25.0 percent DVOA on 30 plays in 2007, but Mike Martz brought him along when he left the Lions for the 49ers that offseason, then made him the starting quarterback.
Behind O'Sullivan was Shaun Hill, who had a somewhat similar history. Hill went undrafted in 2002, but unlike O'Sullivan, he had played for only two teams: He was with Minnesota from 2002-2005 and then signed with San Francisco. Like O'Sullivan, Hill didn't play at all in the regular season for his first five years, 2002-2006. He did manage an above-average 3.1 percent DVOA on 84 pass plays in 2007. He was surprisingly adequate when he took over from O'Sullivan halfway through 2008 and has gone on to a long career as a capable NFL backup.
2. Arizona Cardinals
John Skelton / Kevin Kolb / Ryan Lindley
The Cardinals drafted John Skelton out of Fordham in the fifth round of the 2010 draft. He was forced to start four games as a rookie and was as terrible as you might imagine a fifth-round rookie with only FCS experience would be: Skelton completed just 48 percent of his passes with a miserable 22.7 QBR. So the next offseason, the Cardinals traded cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and a second-round pick to Philadelphia for Kevin Kolb.
Except, Kolb was also dismal for Arizona, finishing 31st out of 32 qualifying quarterbacks with 23.1 QBR in 2011. Skelton came back in when Kolb was injured for a few games but wasn't much better, with 33.8 QBR. However, he went 5-2 as a starter. Sure, the Arizona defense allowed less than 21 points in each game and all five wins came by less than a touchdown, but Skelton had shown he was "a winner." That made him the starter in 2012 with Kolb as the backup. Third string belonged to Ryan Lindley, a sixth-round rookie out of San Diego State. All three ended up starting games in a lackluster 5-11 season for the Cardinals.
However, I didn't rank this as the worst quarterback depth chart of the past 10 years because at least it could be argued that Kolb still had some potential based on his performance with the Eagles. Instead, the top spot goes to ...
1. 2011 Washington Redskins
Rex Grossman / John Beck / Jonathan Crompton
Donovan McNabb had a lousy first season with the Redskins, so Mike Shanahan traded him to the Vikings in July. That left Washington with two career backups to fight over the starting job: one with a terrible track record and one with almost no track record.
Rex Grossman eventually started in Week 1. In his 11-year NFL career, Grossman never had an above-average DVOA rating or completed 60 percent of his passes in a season. Grossman started three games when Shanahan benched McNabb the season prior, and put up a pathetic QBR of 23.6. When he topped the depth chart for the 2011 Redskins, Grossman had not thrown more than 250 passes in a season since 2006, the year he "led" Chicago to Super Bowl XLI (i.e. was dragged by the Bears' defense).
Grossman's backup was John Beck. As an overaged 26-year-old rookie in 2007, Beck had a horrific minus-54.9 percent DVOA and 8.9 QBR. He then wasted away on the Miami bench and didn't take a regular-season snap for three seasons.
Shanahan inexplicably had so much faith in Grossman and Beck that he didn't even carry a third quarterback on the active roster. Jonathan Crompton spent the year on the practice squad and would have been the backup if either Grossman or Beck had been injured. The Chargers' fifth-round in 2009 out of Tennessee, Crompton had already been cut by three teams before Washington signed him.
Indianapolis Colts
This depth chart might have been even worse than Washington's -- once it was clear Peyton Manning would miss the entire season. However, Manning's status was still a mystery when the Colts started training camp; deep into the regular season, the team was still holding on to hope Manning would be able to play. He was the true No. 1 on the depth chart, but Curtis Painter was a poor contingency plan, forcing the Colts to sign Kerry Collins out of retirement just two weeks before the regular season began.
There have been so many bad quarterback depth charts over the past decade that there's another whole top 10 list of teams I considered when preparing this article. Here they are to add to the discussion.
2009 Buffalo Bills (Edwards, Ran Fitzpatrick, Hamdan)
2009 St. Louis Rams (Bulger, Boller, Null)
2010 Carolina Panthers (Moore, Clausen, Pike)
2010 Cleveland Browns (Delhomme, Wallace, McCoy)
2010 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Freeman, Johnson, Carpenter)
2012 New York Jets (Sanchez, Tebow, McElroy)
2013 Buffalo Bills (Manuel, Tuel, Lewis)
2013 Cleveland Browns (Weeden, Campbell, Hoyer)
2016 Denver Broncos (Sanchez, Lynch, Siemian)
2016 Houston Texans (Osweiler, Weeden, Savage)
uke:
