Where have all the good NFL quarterbacks gone?

Ranking the 32 mostly awful starting NFL quarterbacks at the midpoint, plus Week 11 picks for every game

The NFL season is hitting the home stretch, but how many games do you really remember from the first 10 weeks? Has there been even one truly memorable game all season? Last week’s “best” game was an ugly Chargers-Jaguars showdown both teams desperately tried to lose, memorable for all the wrong reasons. It’s been a garbage season, punctuated by some of the worst quarterback play we’ve seen in a long time.

See, that’s the thing about the NFL. They sort of need good quarterbacks for it to be even a halfway decent product, and they need like 30 of them. Right now there’s only about 18, and one of them is posing for GQ covers instead of playing Sundays. The NFL badly misses exciting players like Aaron Rodgers, Deshaun Watson, Andrew Luck, and, yes, Colin Kaepernick.

In the meantime, quarterback play has gotten uglier than ever. An old generation of QBs needs to be taken out to grandpa’s farm, and the young’ns have yet to fill the gap outside of the two guys headlining Sunday night’s marquee matchup. Are Carson Wentz and Dak Prescott already both top five NFL quarterbacks? Are any of the old guys (besides Brady) good anymore? Are over half the league’s quarterbacks terrible?

Let’s take a stroll through the murky QB waters, and let me tell you, it gets ugly pretty quickly. This week alone Blake Bortles, Andy Dalton, Jay Cutler, Joe Flacco, and Drew Stanton are definitively the better quarterback in their matchups. So put on some protective gloves and rubber boots and let’s dig through this morass and make some Week 11 picks.…

Still the ones

1. Tom Brady 2. Russell Wilson

Two guys carrying flawed rosters as far as they can take them. Could they meet in another epic Super Bowl?

That happened fast

3. Drew Brees 4. Dak Prescott 5. Carson Wentz 6. Matt Ryan

Brees has seen his counting stats drop this year, but don’t mistake that for bad play. He’s just not needed as much now that he has a real defense and a run game. Ryan has regressed right back to his career averages after his bonkers MVP campaign, but he’s always been pretty good.

But holy cow, are Dak Prescott and Carson Wentz already both top five quarterbacks right now with just 25 games under their belts? Wentz has been magnificent and is the MVP favorite. He makes one or two wow plays every week and has the Eagles flying with 23 TDs and a sparkling 8–1 record.

Prescott might be even better. He’s been steady amidst all the distractions and has thrown just eight interceptions in his first 25 games with an incredible 50 touchdowns. Everyone’s talking about Wentz and Goff this season, but Prescott might be the best 2016 draft quarterback when it’s all said and done.

The “happy with our guy” crowd

7. Alex Smith 8. Marcus Mariota 9. Kirk Cousins 10. Derek Carr 11. Matthew Stafford 12. Cam Newton

These teams may not feel like their guy can win three or four straight playoff games and take them to the promised land, but it’s still as good as it’s been for their franchises in a long time.

Alex Smith is a career game manager but let’s acknowledge how fantastic he’s been this year. His 18 passing touchdowns are just five off his career high, and he’s thrown only one interception in 293 passes. The Chiefs have slipped off the record with a tough month, but Smith is having an MVP caliber season.

Rank the other five however you like. They’re all average or slightly above average quarterbacks who tend to be inconsistent from game to game or season to season. Mariota can be great but is always hurt. Cousins has remained pretty steady despite losing his offensive coordinator and much of his receiving corps. He’s about to get paid. Carr would be better if his receivers could catch. Stafford is great in the fourth quarter, but what about the first three? Newton is lethal as a runner, but he’s been erratic or bad as a passer much of the season.

These guys are all fine. They’re good, really. But do they all belong in the top 12 in the world?

LOL Jeff Fisher

13. Jared Goff 14. Case Bradwater

Three months ago, Goff looked like a bust after a disastrous rookie season, but it’s amazing what Sean McVay (and an offensive line, great run game, and real receivers) can do for an guy. Now Goff leads the NFL’s best offense.

Meanwhile Case Keenum transformed from poor career backup with an 8–15 record into the leader of the surprising 7–2 Vikings. As good as the Eagles and Rams have been, it’s easy to forget Minnesota is right there with the NFC’s best despite playing without their star running back and top two quarterbacks all season. Sam Bradford is on the IR now, but we’ll always have that Week 1 start. Is Keenum the guy going forward? Teddy Bridgewater waits in the wings. What if Minnesota could combine them all? Case Bradwater? Brad Casebridge? Case Bridgeford? They’re all very white, and somehow all better than average quarterback options in 2017.

And to think Jeff Fisher had both of these guys and made them look like complete garbage…

2004 was a long time ago

15. Philip Rivers 16. Ben Roethlisberger 17. Eli Manning

This trio was selected together atop the 2004 draft and has been good a long time, but it’s time for these teams to find a succession plan.

Rivers is still doing Rivers things. He’s been the best of the three but still seems to let the Chargers find a way to lose every week. Big Ben leads an average offense despite having the league’s best RB-WR combo in his back pocket. Eli was never as good as either outside of two somewhat memorable four-game stretches, and he’s the furthest gone.

Each of these guys has played their entire career for the team they still lead, and at 35 (or 36 in Manning’s case), it’s time for both sides to move on. All the more reason to appreciate what Tom is doing at age 40.

The bottom half gets ugly quickly

18. Josh McCown 19. Jacoby Brissett 20. Andy Dalton 21. Joe Flacco 22. Jay Cutler

Remember, all of these guys are still closer to league average than they are to being at the bottom. These quarterbacks are terrible, so bad that their fans have already given up on the season… but none of them are even among the bottom 25% of the league’s starters.

McCown has actually been pretty good this season, good enough to screw the Jets out of a top five draft pick and a real quarterback. On the other hand, he’s 22–48 lifetime and his four wins already make this his second most successful season ever. Brissett gets sacked every time he moves, but the guy actually makes plays, and he’s done a surprising job for a guy that went from third-string bench warmer to starter on a new team.

Dalton has to be the most forgettably average quarterback in the league. He is forever fine. He’s probably five spots too low, but whatever. You’re probably surprised Joe Flacco is ranked so low. You probably haven’t seen his eight touchdowns and ten interceptions this year. Jay Cutler is a career loser with more than eight wins in a season just twice in a decade as a starter, tried to quit the sport, and is still a better starting option than ten other teams have. It’s bad. It’s really bad.

It’s no wonder the 49ers gave up their high second round pick for Jimmy Garoppolo. Isn’t Garoppolo better than every player in this tier? If that’s true, that means Garoppolo is already a league average starter, and a top-35 pick is a small price to pay for a player like that.

Blake Bortles is still terrible

23. Ryan Fitzpatrick 24. Drew Stanton 25. Blake Bortles

Bortles has improved at exactly nothing in four seasons as the starter, unless you count having an offensive line and the league’s best defense. How does this guy still have starting job?

What if the Jaguars had signed a competent backup they could turn to for a spark? What if they’d given up a draft pick for one of the Patriots quarterbacks? What if they give a blank check to Kirk Cousins this summer? What if they remembered that Colin Kaepernick is more than a GQ model and American citizen?

And yeah, let’s go there. Don’t read this list of putridity and for even one second think that Kaepernick isn’t instantly better than at least ten of these guys, let alone all of their backups. Is there seriously any question whether the NFL is blackballing him out of a job at this point? Are you blind?

The young guys

26. Mitch Trubisky 27. Brett Hundley 28. C.J. Beathard 29. Nathan Peterman 30. Tom Savage

Trubisky, Beathard, and Peterman are rookies. Hundley and Savage are rookies by playing time. They’re all bad until proven otherwise, and none of them have proven otherwise yet. Rookie quarterbacks are supposed to be bad (just no one tell Deshaun Watson, k?).

How many of these quarterbacks would you bet on still being an NFL starter in, say, three season? Over or under 1.5? Is there anything there besides Trubisky, and do you have any reason to think he’s the one outside of the draft pick investment the Bears made in him?

The Bills started 5–2. They’re still leading the race for the final AFC wildcard spot. And yet they benched a top 10 or 15 starting quarterback in Tyrod Taylor for Peterman. Good luck with that.

LOLZ Browns

31. Brock Osweiler 32. Whoever the Browns are starting this week

DeShone Kizer? Kevin Hogan? Cody Kessler? If the Browns could actually settle on an option for more than 45 minutes at a time, they might have a decent answer at quarterback. Of course, they could’ve just kept Brock Osweiler instead of paying him to play for the Broncos. Or they could have drafted the five guys in the tier above, or they could have taken Deshaun Watson or Carson Wentz or really just about anyone else on the list.

But hey — then they wouldn’t be the Browns.

Let’s get to this week’s picks…

The stay aways

Cincinnati +2.5 at Denver

Five games this week feature a pair of below average quarterbacks, and that’s below average in 2017 when average is basically having two legs and an arm that can throw eight yards (coincidentally, the same criteria that made Chad Pennington a first round pick).

Miami PK vs Tampa Bay

This is the hurricane make-up game. Are we sure we can’t just give both these teams the week off anyway?

Houston PK vs Arizona

Seriously, who is watching these games? This is what the NFL is giving us?

Baltimore -2 at Green Bay

The Packers are a home underdog for the second time in a month and Aaron Rodgers just rolled over in his grave and hurt his shoulder again, and somehow Green Bay fans are convinced it’s Minnesota’s fault. They should be more concerned about their offensive line against this Ravens D.

Stay away (but make some money)

Kansas City -10 at New York Giants

Andy Reid is 16–2 after a bye week. Maybe you’ve heard. The Giants are 1–9 and just lost to the winless 49ers.

Jacksonville -7.5 at Cleveland

On the one hand, Blake Bortles is a two-score road favorite. On the other hand, the Jaguars are only going to need about 14 points to cover this one.

Detroit -2.5 at Chicago

The Lions have won seven of eight against the Bears and are still in the division hunt with a Thanksgiving visit from the Vikings on the horizon.

Three touchdown underdogs

Washington +8 at New Orleans Oakland +7 vs New England Tennessee +7 at Pittsburgh (Thursday)

If the NFL has taught us anything this year, it’s that no one is actually good. The Saints, Patriots, and Steelers look like they might be good, but are they two-score-favorites-over-another-decent-team good? If Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, and Marcus Mariota are all really top ten quarterbacks this season, then they probably shouldn’t be two-score underdogs against anyone. Take the points, the dogs, and the backdoor cover possibilities.

The game of the week

Los Angeles Rams +2.5 at Minnesota

I hope they let Jeff Fisher do the ceremonial coin toss.

And if really you think I’m only picking against the Vikings because I’ve been wrong about them all season and we desperately need this win before a difficult three-game road stretch that will determine the rest of the season, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Week 11 best bets

Los Angeles Chargers -4 vs Buffalo

The Bills benched a top-15 quarterback for a fifth round pick you’ve never heard of, and the line didn’t even budge. Buffalo didn’t do their rookie any favors giving him his first start on the road against one of the best pass-rushing tandems in the league in Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram. Peterman might wish he’d kept his day job as Elaine’s boss.

Philadelphia -3.5 at Dallas

This is an absolute must win for the Cowboys if they want to have any shot at the division, but we just saw how bad the Dallas offensive line looks right now, and Philly’s front seven might be the best in the league. The Eagles have won five of seven in Arlington with both losses in the final minute, and Carson Wentz always plays his best under the brightest lights of Texas.

Seattle -3 vs Atlanta (Monday)

Wow, back-to-back fun primetime matchups! Let’s keep this one simple: Seattle isn’t losing at home on a Monday night. And even if they do, the refs will probably find a way to make sure they win anyway. Monday Update: Seattle’s defensive injuries are piling up, especially in that once vaunted secondary. Let’s stick with the Seahawks but remove them as a best bet.

Week 10 record: 7–6–1 Season record: 70–70–7 Best bets: 17–12–1 Locks: 1–1

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