On April 30, a quarterback is almost certain to go No. 1 overall in the NFL draft for the 13th time in the last 20 years. And while there was a great deal of optimism about all of those quarterbacks at the time they were drafted, the numbers suggest that only sometimes was that optimism warranted. For all their throws that leaped off the film, red flags should have jumped off the stat sheet for previous No. 1 picks such as Tim Couch and David Carr. Those same warning signs apply to Jameis Winston.
Our new quarterback-adjusted stats and experience (QBASE) system finds that, even ignoring his off-field concerns, the odds are against Winston ever becoming an elite quarterback.
Marcus Mariota, on the other hand, has all the statistical markers that previous elite quarterbacks have had. Other college quarterbacks whose numbers looked as good but who failed in the NFL have had at least one statistical weak point that marked them as potentially fraudulent, according to QBASE. By the numbers, Mariota has no such weakness. While the numbers may mean a little less in his case due to Oregon's system, highly drafted quarterbacks with his statistical resume have been the best bets to succeed in the NFL. QBASE does not call Mariota a sure thing. But, in contrast to Winston, Mariota would be worth the top pick in the draft.
To predict NFL success for this year's quarterback class, QBASE looks at a range of statistics that we describe in detail at the end of the article. Those statistics account for the opposing defenses that each quarterback faced and the quality of his offensive teammates. Based on those adjusted stats, QBASE conducts 50,000 simulations to estimate the defense-adjusted yards above replacement (DYAR) each quarterback will generate in Years 3-5 of his NFL career.
QBASE finds that only two quarterbacks in the 2015 draft are better than even-money bets to avoid being NFL busts, and the presumptive No. 1 pick is not one of them.
Jameis Winston (Florida State)
The model gives Winston a 61.3 percent chance of being a bust (less than 500 DYAR in Years 3-5) and just a 12.8 percent chance of being at least an upper-tier quarterback. His projection here is higher than it would be if the stats did not correct for his tough schedule. Florida State faced only the 10th-toughest schedule overall according to our numbers, but it faced the nation's toughest set of opposing defenses in 2014. Still, Winston's projection puts him just third in the 2015 draft class, well behind both Mariota and Brett Hundley.
If Tampa Bay picks him, QBASE will give Winston the third-lowest projection among the 13 quarterbacks drafted No. 1 overall since 1996. David Carr and Michael Vick are the only two top selections who ranked lower. And nobody with a QBASE projection in Winston's neighborhood has been worth the top pick.
QBASE finds fault with Winston for the same reasons it disliked Couch and Carr. All three quarterbacks started for only two college seasons and had good-not-great stats in their last college season. Winston has the same weakness as Couch: His adjusted yards per attempt is not as good as his completion percentage. QBASE also docks Winston a little for not playing better despite some elite teammates.
Note that the projection does not account for the hard-to-quantify potential concerns surrounding Winston's off-field issues. Any adjustment for those issues could push Winston's bust potential even higher.
Marcus Mariota (Oregon)
Mariota has the highest QBASE projection since 2012. Since 1995, only six quarterbacks -- Philip Rivers, Carson Palmer, Donovan McNabb, Russell Wilson, Robert Griffin III and Peyton Manning -- had better projections. QBASE sees Mariota as a three-year starter who posted huge numbers without any weak point. Adjusting for opposition and teammates, Mariota's adjusted yards per attempt in his last college season, relative to other Division I quarterbacks, trails only Wilson and Griffin. In addition, QBASE likes that Mariota's completion percentage is high relative to his peers.
But are Mariota's numbers a product of the talent that surrounded him and the system in which he played? Mariota's projection accounts for Oregon having two tackles and a center projected to go in the early rounds of the 2015 and 2016 drafts, but makes no adjustments for Oregon's unusual pace of play. Questions about Mariota's ability to adapt to a more standard NFL offense do lend a note of caution to his projection. At the same time, the model also ignores Mariota's potential off-field strengths. And the two other quarterbacks with top-10 projections who got the most questions about their college production translating to the NFL -- Wilson and Aaron Rodgers -- both turned out well, although the concerns with Wilson and Rodgers were different from those with Mariota.
Simply put, there has not been a quarterback in the last three drafts with Mariota's chances of being an upper-tier to elite-level quarterback. He is far from a sure thing, but quarterback-hungry teams should not let Mariota slip by.
Brett Hundley (UCLA)
QBASE likes Hundley better than any quarterback from the 2013 or 2014 drafts. While he is about equally likely to be a bust as an upper-tier quarterback, Hundley has considerable upside for a team grabbing him in the second round. His 30.5 percent chance of being upper-tier or elite ranks him far ahead of Winston. While not as highly ranked as his completion percentage, even Hundley's adjusted yards per attempt stat is more impressive than it seems at first glance. Hundley faced the third-toughest set of opposing defenses in Division I last year. (As noted earlier, Florida State had the toughest schedule; Alabama was No. 2.) He also had fewer future early-round offensive teammates than either Mariota or Winston.
On the other hand, our version of adjusted yards per attempt does not penalize Hundley for the sacks that he took at an unusually high rate. Hundley took fewer sacks last year, but adjustments for his propensity for losing yards could push Hundley's projection down as much as 200 DYAR.
Bryce Petty (Baylor)
Petty projects to be substantially worse than replacement level, in large part because QBASE questions the opposition that he faced in 2014. Petty accumulated his college stats against the 70th-toughest slate of opposing defenses. His 6.1 percent chance of developing into an upper-tier quarterback makes Petty not worth a third-round selection.
Garrett Grayson (Colorado State)
Grayson projects poorly for some of the same reasons as Petty. He faced college football's 73rd-toughest set of defenses last year. If Grayson gets picked late in the third round, he will have the ninth-lowest projection of any top 100 quarterback in the last 20 years.
Sean Mannion (Oregon State)
Mannion, like most middle-round quarterbacks, is a likely bust. But he has the highest chance of NFL success outside the top three prospects. With a 10 percent chance of being an upper-tier quarterback, Mannion is the only quarterback in the next group worth taking a middle-round flier on.
Methods
To project NFL success for the 2015 quarterback prospects, we build on earlier models that have used statistics and experience to forecast player outcomes. Our new model, QBASE, incorporates a series of improvements that simplify the model to improve prediction. QBASE is based on three main elements:
1) College performance, adjusted for opposition and teammates: The strongest predictor of NFL success. To account for a changing college game, we look across three aspects of performance: A) completion percentage, B) adjusted yards per attempt, and C) team passing efficiency from Football Outsiders' S&P ratings. The best prospects succeed across all three of these areas, so we take the minimum performance across the three areas. A quarterback who has an inflated completion percentage because of a screen-heavy offense (e.g. Brandon Weeden) thus can get caught by his lower adjusted yards per attempt.
QBASE makes two important adjustments to the raw numbers by accounting for the strength of opposing defenses and the quality of a quarterback's teammates. The first of these corrections makes our measure more accurate for a player such as Josh Freeman, who faced the 99th-best set of defenses in his last college season. The second correction gives more credit to players such as Philip Rivers, who succeeded in college without great surrounding talent, as opposed to a player such as Matt Leinart, who played for an NFL finishing school. We measured teammate quality based on the draft value of offensive teammates in both the player's draft year and the following year. For this year's prospects, these measures are based on mock drafts for both 2015 and 2016.
2) College experience, adjusted for quality: Our previous measure of total games started has been replaced with a measure that counts seasons with at least 200 attempts, with adjustments to count poor seasons less than good ones. Experience counts, but successful experience counts more. This variable can capture the better quality of players who get more starts and more opportunities to improve, as well as the underappreciated idea that players who succeed in a smaller sample may not live up to that short-term success. Mark Sanchez could have gotten lucky to do so well in his one season as a starter. Four-year starter Russell Wilson? Not so much.
3) Projected draft slot: Based on scouts' ratings of quarterbacks' intangibles, accuracy and other attributes for recent years, the draft slot accounts for how scouting information predicts players' NFL success. I used mock drafts to project draft slot for this year's quarterbacks.
Andrew Healy is an economics professor at Loyola Marymount University, a staff writer for Football Outsiders and a contributor to ESPN Insider.