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Lets play the blind resume game.  I’m going to give you four statlines, and you try to identify the players.  These are 2011 NFL season statistics.  Answers will follow immediately after the jump.

• Quarterback 1: 378 passing attempts, 62.4% completion, 6.7 yards per attempt, 15 TDs, 12 INTs, 6.2 NYPA
• Quarterback 2: 383 passing attempts, 61.9% completion, 7.9 yards per attempt, 15 TDs, 17 INTs, 7.1 NYPA
• Quarterback 3: 365 passing attempts, 60.0% completion, 7.9 yards per attempt, 12 TDs, 15 INTs, 7.1 NYPA
• Quarterback 4: 314 passing attempts, 58.0% completion, 7.4 yards per attempt, 13 TDs, 7 INTs, 6.4 NYPA

Three of these quarterbacks have shown a strong interception tendency this season while the other has a notable interception tendency over his career.  Which one is the best?  I’d say Quarterback 4 has been the most effective but his play has been significantly less sustainable than the others on this list, and that his numbers are probably based heavily on having a strong supporting cast.  As for the best quarterback, you’d want to go with one of the other three.  If I had to typecast solely on statistics, I’d say that QB2 and QB3 are younger, high-upside talents who will be at the apex of their craft someday while QB1 seems to be doing whatever he can to win with a limited supporting cast that makes his job difficult.  And I’d say that Quarterback 2 is having the best season on the list by a hair over QB3. Read more…

Tim Tebow is so different from the prototypical NFL quarterback that it has become impossible to judge him for what he is instead of what he represents.  This truism apparently applies to Tebow’s head coach as well.  John Fox called his own offense a “gimmick”.  And I think that’s a shame.

TV Analyst Steve Young interprets Fox’s comments as an indictment of Tebow and a cry for help to his front office.  Young alleges that Fox is insinuating that he is being forced to play Tebow and that the current offense can’t hold up long term.  Young cites the proliferation and failure of the wildcat as evidence that the Broncos are in fact running the ball only on a gimmick.

This is significant because if Young is correct in his assessment of Fox’s comments, then John Fox doesn’t understand why he has managed to turn around the fortunes of the Broncos this year.   If down the stretch this year the Broncos fail to win games, Fox is likely to credit a defensive adjustment to the “gimmick” offense he has been running with Tebow as the reason for the losing.  But that wouldn’t be accurate.  The Broncos are winning games on the strength of a revitalized rushing attack.  Here are individual advanced numbers from the Broncos runners this year:

• Tim Tebow – 43 runs, 327 yards, 77 DYAR
• Willis McGahee – 127 runs, 624 yards, 99 DYAR
• Knowshon Moreno – 37 runs, 179 yards, -1 DYAR
• Lance Ball – 55 runs, 227 yards, 45 DYAR

And here is some advanced numbers from receivers, minus the traded Brandon Lloyd.

• Eric Decker – 64 passes, 462 yards, 74 DYAR
• Eddie Royal – 34 passes, 135 yards, -54 DYAR
• Matthew Willis – 19 passes, 142 yards, 26 DYAR
• Demaryius Thomas – 15 passes, 66 yards, -30 DYAR
• Daniel Fells – 25 passes, 201 yards, 29 DYAR
• Spencer Larsen – 8 passes, 69 yards, 28 DYAR
• Dante Rosario – 6 passes, 30 yards, -4 DYAR
• Julius Thomas – 7 passes, 5 yards, -29 DYAR

When you look at all the “pacesetting” receivers who are struggling, the Broncos need to be running the football in order to have an offense.  There’s nothing gimmicky about running the ball.  The Broncos have one NFL caliber receiver right now in Decker, to go with their stable of tight ends.  But even with Knowshon Moreno’s torn ACL (probably ending his Broncos career), the Broncos still have three of their best offensive players who play in the backfield.

The zone option is not a difficult or gimmicky play, and any team in the NFL could run it.  The problem is that teams don’t want their quarterback to pull the ball and go, even if it’s the correct read.  With Tebow though, no one is so interested in protecting him from injury that they are not willing to let him do what he does best.  And that alone makes Tebow’s option ability tougher to defend than all but roughly 15 quarterbacks in the NFL.

Let’s look at Tebow compared to another lefty scrambler who won games early on, Michael Vick.

Both did one thing very well early in their careers: they turned the ball over very infrequently via the interception.  The Broncos can win with Tebow long term if they can cut strip sack fumbles out of the equation entirely.  That’s what has killed Tebow’s value this year: not his low completion percentage, but his four fumbles from the pocket.  In Josh McDaniel’s offense, he had one in three games.

The offense the Broncos are running right now isn’t some sort of gimmick, it is using personnel in the best way possible.  While the Broncos’ passing route tree itself remains ancient and confusing — even Kyle Orton couldn’t figure out how to make it work — but the Broncos can run the football better than any team in the game.  They don’t have the personnel to pull Tebow out and go in a different direction.  This is Tebow’s team.  The sooner the Broncos can accept that and not feel dirty after “ugly” wins, the sooner they can compete in the NFL.

Fox’s comments suggest that the Broncos aren’t building anything here, which is a shame.  Young’s comments suggest an intolerance of left handed running quarterbacks winning despite obvious flaws, which is merely ironic by comparison.

The Denver Broncos have beaten one good team this season: the Cincinnati Bengals.  They beat the Bengals with Kyle Orton, not Tim Tebow, at quarterback.  Despite the limited resume, the Denver Broncos put together two timely wins with Tim Tebow that make the Broncos a team that, very realistically, controls their own destiny in the AFC West.

This article is not a prediction that the Broncos can make it in the AFC West.  It is an acknowledgement that the Broncos and Tebow are very, very relevant down the stretch.  They play five of their final seven games against AFC teams who are still battling for a playoff berth.  They have a strong chance to hold tiebreakers against the Broncos, Chiefs, and Raiders at the end of the season.  And quite honestly, the Broncos need only to finish 9-7 to be in very good position to win the AFC West.

Of course, that would require a 5-2 (and by extension, 7-2) finish by a team starting Tim Tebow at quarterback.  But with Tebow, the Broncos have figured out that they can run the football on any team in the league.  They can run it on the Jets, they can run it on the Chargers, they can run it on the Patriots.  And Tebow’s arm then goes from a liability to a luxury once you consider that the base of the Denver offense is the read option.  Offensive Mike McCoy seems to be incredibly comfortable calling a spread offense.  And that makes Denver very, very dangerous.

The Broncos defense is a big liability that must be overcome by it’s offense, which is a very heavy weight to put on Tim Tebow’s shoulders.  Also on Tebow now: the loss of running backs Willis McGahee and Knowshon Moreno to injury.  The Chiefs got it together for the most part with Lance Ball as a primary runner, with Tebow needing to hurt the Chiefs deep with his arm in order to provide the difference in the game.

The most fascinating thing about Tebow is that for weeks all we heard about is the integration that would be required with the pro style offensive concepts and with new receivers in the wake of the Brandon Lloyd trade, and that Tebow was putting his offensive line in bad situations by not seeing the field and holding the ball too long.  Now, the complete opposite appears to be true: the Broncos will be a very young offense the rest of the way, and the team can look to Tebow as a stabilizing force.  The offense runs through Tebow now and it does so by using college concepts which fits the mentality of a very young team whose primary experience is college football.

It’s a fascinating case study made possible by the fact that the Broncos have adapted to their talent and they are winning instead of losing.  Because the ability to win appears to be legitimate, flawed opponents like the Jets and Chargers are going to have a tough time defending the Broncos.  Now, their season becomes a large game management puzzle.  They have a team that is difficult to play, though outtalented by even mediocre opponents.  The Broncos do not need to win every game, but they need to finish strong.  The plan here should be obvious: stay with a base gameplan of what got you here, and diversify.

In reality, the Broncos really aren’t playing out the rest of the season for themselves: even at 4-3, too many things would need to go right to put the Broncos into the playoffs.  But they can ruin the AFC playoff field for any number of teams.  And whoever has to play the Broncos the rest of the way has to make the difficult decision of how many Tebow-centric strategies they really want to work on during the week in order to beat a sub .500 team.  The Jets have a big problem: the game is three days and one practice away, and they just spend the last week preparing every waking hour from the Patriots.  The Jets really need to handle their business this week, and I’m just not sure how much of their business they really control.

First place could be on the line this week for the fighting Tebow’s  If they get this one, they have 11 days to get ready for the Chargers, a game that could knock the struggling Chargers out of playoff contention entirely.  I don’t think the Broncos can roll through December and get through that schedule untouched.  The Bears don’t figure to have much of an issue with this team, and frankly, I’m not sure the Vikings are going to struggle all that much with them.  But with the Jets and Chargers reeling, I have to point out that having Tim Tebow at the helm of a 6-5 1st place team is far more interesting than anything else in the NFL.  That’s a lot to ask of Tebow these next two weeks, but if he gets the job done, I think he’ll have established himself as an NFL player of some capacity.

I don’t think there is anything Tebow can do this year to be the Broncos quarterback of the future, but I think he’s in a good spot: Tebow’s expectations are relatively low, but he’s in the middle of the public spotlight and has a really good shot to succeed in the short term.  Success in the short term is not success in the long term, but it is the start of a long career.  That’s what’s at stake for Tebow in the rest of November.  As for the Broncos?  We’ll see.  They’re relevant right now, even with major roles being played by guys like Lance Ball and Cassius Vaughn.  Are they a playoff team?  Not yet, but they are well positioned to make noise in the AFC West this winter.

Five NFL quarterbacks have risen above the rest this year to all-pro consideration.

The basis for my reasoning is simple Net Yards per passing attempt, which subtracts for sack yardage and doesn’t penalize for interceptions or reward for touchdowns.

1. Aaron Rodgers
2. Tom Brady
3. Matt Schaub
4. Eli Manning
5. Tony Romo

Second Tier of NFL Quarterbacks (2011 season only)

• Drew Brees
• Ben Roethlisberger
• Cam Newton
• Philip Rivers
• Jason Campbell
• Michael Vick
• Ryan Fitzpatrick
• Matt Hasselbeck

Ed. note: Campbell and Brees are free agents after the season.

I think there are a couple of surprises on this list.  At the onset of the year, I would not have expected Michael Vick to remain in the top half of NFL passers, much less the top third, but he’s right up there.  And Matt Hasselbeck is a guy I was convinced he was finished.  He’s regressed a bit from his insane start, but is still up there driving his team to a surprising 5-4 start.  With Cam Newton, it’s not that surprising that a rookie ranks in this class, but that the rookie is Newton? That’s a surprise.  Campbell and Fitzpatrick? Not really surprises.  I wouldn’t give the contract the Bills gave Fitzpatrick to either of them, necessarily, because I don’t know if it’s smart to predict either will stay within the top third of passers in the league, but the fact that they are up there in their primes is not surprising at all.

There are a couple of important observations here before I get to a value discussion of Romo/Eli.  The first is that their are fewer ‘elite’ quarterbacks playing right now than in either 2009 or 2010.  We may not be entering a golden era for passing after all.  If we are, I’m pretty sure Aaron Rodgers is driving it.  Peyton Manning is hurt, but I doubt he would be performing at an “elite” level, even if healthy.

Matt Schaub is having an unbelievable year for the Texans, and is back to performing at an elite level after a down year.  But with Tony Romo and Eli Manning having career years, the quarterback play in the NFC East is single-handedly keeping offensive levels in this league high.  Without them, we could be looking forward to a Texans-Pats AFC Championship, and have the Packers waiting for the winner.  But the Cowboys and Giants are going to make this thing interesting in the NFC, and the Saints and 49ers are both likely to win at least one playoff game.  Because of the surprising quality of quarterback play in the NFC, that looks like one of the most interesting playoff fields in memory.  Whether it’s needing a referendum on who the real Matt Stafford is, wondering what Alex Smith can accomplish with a seemingly infinite number of chances to get things right, Rodgers and his dominance, this field has all sorts of great storylines.  The play of Tony Romo and Eli Manning will enhance that.

On a side note, I don’t mean to ignore Schaub’s play now that the Texans are winning heading into the Thanksgiving part of the NFL calendar instead of considering how to justify holding form next year, but Manning and Romo are having such great years compared to their career expectations and Schaub is really just being Matt Schaub.  I can get to him at a later date.  The Texans are for real, finally.

The Giants and Cowboys will fight it out in the NFC East over the final half season and it’s worth pointing out that neither has any running game to carry the load for the quarterbacks.  As a passer, Romo has no weaknesses, only that he’s had issues making intelligent decisions with sizable leads this year.  But it’s pretty shocking that Eli Manning has developed into a player without weaknesses.  I had him as the third rated fantasy quarterback heading into the season, because in terms of Net Yards per attempt, the only player in Manning’s stratosphere in terms of consistency and dominance was Philip Rivers over the last two seasons.  Manning has actually taken it up to another level while Romo’s improvement has been more marginal.

There was a time in the recent past where a Romo/Eli debate was silly because it was entirely based on Manning’s super bowl title, and nothing else that Romo had any control over.  A comparison of their on-field performance would have been foolish.  Romo was playing at a different level.  Now, with Romo playing some of the best ball of his career, there’s a legit argument to be made that Eli is playing even better.  It would seem ridiculous to leave either off of the NFC pro bowl roster, but Drew Brees lurks just beneath the level that these two are playing at and, being Drew Brees, that gives him an inside track at the pro bowl.  Manning plays a tougher slate of defenses the rest of the way, so if things hold serve, Manning would remain in the discussion for All-pro consideration.

Projecting forward, I don’t know if any Tony Romo comparables are relevant anymore.  Romo hasn’t just been great, he’s been remarkably consistent every season.  In a “down” year in 2008, Romo had a quarterback rating of 91.4.  He missed 3 games with a broken pinky.  It’s clear that Romo’s decline will eventually be driven by injury: it’s the only weakness he will take into his age 32 season.

And Manning?  What weaknesses does he have?  That his track record of dominance isn’t as long as Romo’s or Philip Rivers, or that he’s not as good as Aaron Rodgers?  Manning is just 30 years old, and he looks like the safest bet to dominate his division over the next five years.  If he’s able to do that in a division with Michael Vick and Romo, Eli is going to move himself into the hall of fame discussion.  That was unfathomable even at the beginning of the season.  And that contract the Giants gave to Manning?  It, somehow, looks like a bargain now.

Manning’s ascension only makes sense based on very recent evidence that was hidden under a mountain of interception numbers.  As recently as 2008, it seemed obvious that Eli would have been out of the NFL before older brother Peyton was, and certainly before Romo.  As it turns out, Eli is not quite halfway to Brett Favre’s consecutive starts record, but it’s conceivable he could get there.  It’s 11 more seasons for Eli at 16 games per, or 10 more seasons at 18 games per after this one.  Eli Manning, of all people, was not supposed to threaten to play 20 seasons for one team (or consecutive).  Philip Rivers, sure, but Manning?

Because of the seasons that Romo and Eli Manning are enjoying, we have to re-examine our quarterback age curves and realize that the league is going to be strong at the QB position well past the time that Peyton Manning and Tom Brady hang it up.

The answer to this question is very simple.  It’s explaining the process that will be difficult.

The Kansas City Chiefs began the season 0-3, and it was a particularly dreadful start.  The Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions are both good teams.  But in back to back losses to open the season, the Chiefs lost by a margin of 89-10.  They were, at that point, the worst team in professional football.  Since that start, the Chiefs are 4-1 (winning four consecutive games), and have outscored opponents 118-81.  Only two things have happened to foster the rebirth of playoff hopes: Matt Cassel has gone from liability to asset, and the defense has consistently improved from a low point in the second half of 2010 to become one of the league’s best in 2011.

Whether the Chiefs can sustain this depends on whether Cassel’s improvement is sustainable (hint: it probably isn’t), and whether the Chiefs defense called by Romeo Crennel is for real (hint: it probably is).  I don’t think the Chiefs can compete with the Chargers and Raiders if both aren’t true, but even if its not, it is remarkable that the Chiefs are even at this point.

Even at 4-3, Kansas City is still trying to win with one of the league’s worst offenses and perhaps the least consistent down-to-down quarterback in the NFL.  When you’re a bad team, inconsistent beats consistently bad, but it’s hard to forget the five game stretch that Cassel put together starting in January of 2011 against Oakland and continuing until he got back on track against Minnesota this October.  For that span, there probably wasn’t a quarterback in the league worse than Cassel.  Since then, he’s managed to outplay his opponent on the other sideline for pretty much every game.

In there lies the Chiefs’ problem.  They have been able to protect Cassel from scrutiny for one reason: Donovan McNabb, Curtis Painter, Kyle Boller, Carson Palmer, and a struggling Philip Rivers have been all that the Chiefs played against over the last month and a half in terms of the opposing quarterback.  This week, Kansas City draws Matt Moore.  At this point, the only difference between Matt Cassel and Kevin Kolb, beyond time in the current offensive scheme, is that Kansas City has been able to manage Cassel’s deficiencies in light of an awful start, and Arizona just digs Kolb a bigger hole every time they drop him back to pass.  The Kansas City OL is proficient at giving Cassel time to throw, but it is unable to win the line of scrimmage on runs.  Consequently, they don’t have a good running game.  They do, however, have Jackie Battle.

I’m going to try to explain why, in light of what happened to cause me to write the paragraph above, the Chiefs are poised to have a better offense with Battle than they had last year when Jamaal Charles finished second in the NFL in rushing.  A year ago, the Chiefs were incredibly careful with Charles’ workload, as he in fact, did not lead the 2010 Kansas City Chiefs in carries.  Thomas Jones did.  Because of the huge contract given to Charles after the season, there is no reason to restrict Battle in the same way.  Battle is not a complete player back there, as he will not make plays out of the backfield, and is not considered a better pass blocker than the veteran Jones (although when you’re trying to find a role for a guy like Jones, that’s an easy “evaluation” to make).  He will not supplant Charles atop the depth chart in 2012, and since they pretty much have the same role in the offense, Battle’s best value after the season may be as trade bait.  So for the Chiefs, you might as well let Battle exceed 300 carries.  Doing so will cause the Chiefs to enjoy their best running game in years, even with the liability they have up front creating huge holes.  And of course, Battle lacks the breakaway speed of Charles, meaning it will take more carries to cover the same amount of yards.

The takeaway for Chiefs fans is that the team is not worse off following the injury to Charles.  Battle would have no role in the offense if Charles were healthy.  Those are Charles’ carries to be had.  Battle wouldn’t even be active every week (7 offensive snaps Weeks 1-3).  All of this means the Chiefs need less Cassel, which means that it’s easier to manipulate the playbook to the benefit of the quarterback.  The Chiefs aren’t going to be able to improve on offense unless they can get a significant contribution from rookie first round draft pick Jonathan Baldwin, though rookies typically struggle through a long adjustment period.  With Cassel prone to wild swings of inconsistency, things probably won’t stay all rosy for the Chiefs on offense.

Defensively, it is another story.  The Chiefs have two of the best defensive players in football playing linebacker: OLB Tamba Hali and ILB Derrick Johnson.  Last year, the struggles of Ron Edwards and Shaun Smith made the Chiefs an easy target to run on as the season wore on.  It’s a different group this year.  Kelly Gregg has been a big improvement on the nose.  The Chiefs have salvaged the career of Tyson Jackson, who has gone from an epic bust to a backup to a quality starter over a three year career.  The 2011 Chiefs are one of the best teams in the league against the run and must now find a way to get pass pressure from someone who isn’t Hali.  The Chiefs know this: they have put up with plenty of negatives with rookie OLB Justin Houston because he has developmental pass rushing skills.  Houston made no impact in the Chiefs 1-3 start, but has begun to pressure passes in the three games since.  They have a better run defender on staff in Andy Studebaker, but they are apparently willing to sit through rookie mistakes in order to find a pass rusher.

Here’s why a pass rush is so important: the Chiefs play four safeties with Eric Berry on IR: Kendrick Lewis, Jon McGraw, Donald Washington, and Sabby Piscatelli.  None of them are very good.  Lewis is going to be a starter on this team for the forseeable future, but McGraw, Washington, and Piscatelli will never start in this league again.  A pass rush can protect these players when Kansas City runs into the part of their schedule that includes Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, and Aaron Rodgers over a five game stretch.  The Chiefs are running out of time to develop it: the Pats game is just over two weeks away.

Still, I believe in the Chiefs defense.  As long as Hali is healthy, the Chiefs can get creative in their coverages and not feel like they are about to be exposed.  Hali is relentless, one of the best OLBs in football, and because of Derrick Johnson, might not be the best player on his own defense.  Going forward, the Chiefs need to add depth in the front seven.  Right now, a clean bill of health can save them the rest of the season.  For all the injuries the Chiefs have had to deal with this year, they are healthy where it matters.

Kansas City looks likely to rebound to 6-3 because of how soft Miami and Denver have been this year, but the next five games get brutal at that point.  And on the other side of those five games, the Raiders wait in a game that could easily decide the AFC West.  So because of what happened the last two weeks against quality division opponents, the Chiefs presence atop the division standings is very real.  And they have a good shot at sustaining this performance, and getting to at least 7-7.  They’ve done it because in light of injury, they were forced to become a different team: a pressure-based defense, and a pass-first offense.  And the Chiefs have proved they can adapt where other, weaker teams have failed, making them one of my biggest preseason misses of the 2011 NFL season.

In this January 28th article, I addressed the difference between the relative strengths of the upcoming quarterback classes.  I thought the 2011 QB class was one of the strongest in memory, but that perhaps there were some stronger, less-risky classes on the horizon to reward teams that waited on quarterbacks in 2010 and 2011 such as the Washington Redskins and Seattle Seahawks.  To quote myself from January:

2012 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Andrew Luck (Stanford), Terrelle Pryor (Ohio State), Ryan Lindley (SDSU), Nick Foles (Arizona), Ryan Tannehill (Texas A&M), Dominique Davis (ECU), Kirk Cousins (MSU), Stephen Garcia (South Carolina), Jacory Harris (Miami), Mike Paulus (William & Mary), Dan Persa (Northwestern).

This has all the makings of the strong class.  What it’s missing is a second big name QB prospect that scouts love that could get in line right behind Andrew Luck as a franchise type player worthy of top five consideration.  It could get that still from the ranks of the underclass (remember, even in 2012, Luck would be considered an underclassmen by draft standards — though he’ll be a Stanford graduate).  But even without another player worthy of top five consideration, this QB class offers plenty of depth.

You can toss Pryor out of this discussion now.  Mike Paulus is not having much of a season for DI-FCS William & Mary, so he’s out.  Ryan Lindley is falling at SD State.  Stephen Garcia was having an awful year and has been kicked off of the team at South Carolina.  He won’t be drafted.  But Jacory Harris is enjoying his best season under Al Golden and could be back into mid-round discussion.  Now we need to add projected first round senior Robert Griffin III of Baylor, even though like Luck, Barkley, and Jones, he has a year of eligibility left.  Russell Wilson has been so unreal for Wisconsin this year that he needs to be in the discussion.  And my list pretty egregiously left off Boise State senior Kellen Moore, who is going to get a big boost in his draft prospects thanks to the early success of Andy Dalton.  Another guy who should be added to this list is G.J. Kinne of Tulsa.  And finally, despite his advanced age, some team is going to draft Oklahoma State’s Brandon Weeden in the second or third round to be their starting quarterback.

So from the January discussion, five more names are in draft consideration, and three are out, a positive net gain.  Now, we need to address the possibility that Andrew Luck, Matt Barkley, Robert Griffin, and Landry Jones all stay in school through the 2012 college football season.  With Luck, this would obviously just be a power play based on a certain team holding the first overall pick: the fact that the Dolphins and the Colts have the best chance of getting the first overall pick makes it moot.  But even if Barkley, Jones, and Griffin all decide to stay in school, Luck headlines a very impressive class.  The remarkable thing is that all three of those underclassman would likely be first rounders if they come out (but not necessarily if they all come out, thanks to supply and demand).

Here are some early projections on the 2012 NFL Draft QB Class:

First Overall Types: Andrew Luck, Stanford; Matt Barkley, USC

It has been a long time since any draft has had a first overall type: Aaron Rodgers, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, and Ben Roethlisberger being the last four quarterbacks worthy of justifying the first overall pick.  All of those guys came from the 2004 and 2005 drafts.   This draft could have two guys in it stronger as prospects than anyone taken in the last five drafts.

If we were to rank all quarterbacks drafted between 2006 and 2011 in terms of how they are perceived today nationally, we would probably get something like Cam Newton first, followed by Matt Ryan second, and then either Sam Bradford or Joe Flacco fourth, then Josh Freeman, then Matt Stafford or Colt McCoy or Jay Cutler, and then Kevin Kolb, Mark Sanchez, and Tim Tebow around guys such as Blaine Gabbert and Christian Ponder and Jake Locker (these aren’t my rankings, mind you).  On draft day, either Luck or Barkley would propel ahead of anyone except Newton and Ryan before they play a snap.  Which tells you that QB output over the last six drafts or so hasn’t been very good beyond the performance of first overall picks.  When we limit the sample to quarterbacks who aren’t the first guy taken in their draft after 2005, Matt Barkley is being compared to guys like Sanchez, Cutler, McCoy, Flacco, and Freeman.  You have to like those odds that if there’s a true “first-overall” type in that group, it’s Barkley.

Top 15 types: Landry Jones, Oklahoma; Nick Foles, Arizona

This is a class where, even after the first overall types, there are two “franchise” quarterback prospects out there to draft early with little chance of failure.  Foles has been a production machine ever since 2010, and although he’s a fifth year senior who will be a 23 year old rookie, he is physically as built for the position as for anyone in this class.  Jones is a top ten prospect in any year, whether he decides to come out in 2012 or 2013 will not change that.  He has already broken most of Sam Bradford’s records, and though he lacks the raw college efficiency of his predecessor, he has been running an offense that is specifically more rooted in pro style concepts than what Bradford was running three years ago.  He also comes to the NFL with a cleaner bill of health.

Mid to Late First Rounders: Ryan Tannehill, Texas A&M; Robert Griffin III, Baylor; Kellen Moore, Boise State; Kirk Cousins, Michigan State

If you’ll count them up, that’s EIGHT guys I have a preliminary first round grade on.  There are not eight teams that would consider spending a first rounder on a quarterback, and it doesn’t consider another guy, Weeden, who performs like a first rounder at the college level, but is 28 years old. He’ll be in the NFL, but I don’t think he’ll be particularly successful there.  Tannehill has to be the most fascinating prospect in this draft, because he played receiver at Texas A&M for the first two years of his career.  That makes him really a four year player, but one who has only been playing the QB position for two seasons.  There are no comparables for that kind of career path, only in the other direction.  Griffin could stay in school or he could come out, either way, he’s one of an impressive class of quarterbacks the Big XII is producing at the current moment.

Second rounders: Jacory Harris, Miami (Fl.); Dominique Davis, ECU

I’m just helping to frame the depth of the class another way: with these two rising quarterbacks coming off of great seasons, the draft goes 10 players deep with potential starters.

Combined with the quality of the free agent class, any team that wants a quarterback will be able to get one cheaply.  This might be a year where the top names (non-Luck division) consider staying in school for promise of future riches.