BakoSaint

Derek Carr outplayed Tommy Devito today, but on the season DeVito had a better QB rating. Unheralded 7th round pick Brock Purdy is contending for MVP. Tons of random backups like O'Connell, Browning, etc are playing fairly well.

I wonder if something could be systematically changing about the talent to explain this. A rookie QB coming into the league today is probably about 23 years old. That means he was born in about 2000. One thing comes to mind that might be different for this QB. Youtube was founded in 2005. In 2006 it was bought by Google and really took off. In 2007 the first iPhone was released. What all this means is that access to instructional content really took off when today's rookies were 5-7 years old starting in pop warner and organized sports. It took off not just for them but for their parents, their siblings, their coaches. What required mailing a check for $39.95 to Delaware in before was suddenly available on everyone's phones. QB could be the most complicated position in sports, and the generation of young QBs coming into the league today grew up with an infinite supply of material at their fingertips. Peyton and Eli Manning had access to all this decades earlier because their dad was an NFL QB, but now in some sense every amateur coach and every amateur player have access if they know how to pick out the good advice from the bad. At the same time as more information has become available, protections for QBs have increased, so the game has become more mental and less a test of the ability to take big hits.

In light of this, I think the Saints may have picked the worst time to buy high on an aging mediocre ok QB when they do not have the team around him to win without him being great in big games. At the same time, I think Carolina for example may have picked the wrong time to pay an extreme premium of future draft picks for an undersized QB who has acquired all the right skills and had the opportunity to be in the right place to showcase them in college, because we may be in an era where there are more QBs with the right skills than colleges that are the right place to showcase them, leaving more gems in the later rounds of the draft.

Carr is alright, but I don't think he will ever win the big game, or get younger. But I don't think we need to break the bank to get the #1 prospect in the draft. I think the freedom of information that this new generation has had could close the gap between the top QBs who had the family resources or standout physical tools to get access to all the instruction early, versus the lesser prospects that formerly did not. I think there will be more surprises in the draft, because sometimes that elite 6-5 prospect who gets all the instruction and goes to the top school is not as good as the ok 6-3 prospect who now has access to a lot more instruction and a lot more informed coaches in this new information age, and turns out to be able to absorb it all a little better than that 6-5 prospect, even after attending a small school and not flashing as much without elite talent around him. I think as we move on past Carr in the long run, we can stand pat in the draft or at least avoid a future mortgaging trade up, and eventually find the right talent and succeed if we are smart. What we will need is the oline to protect them, and the coaches who are not still running pre-youtube pre-iphone pre-historic offenses.

SmashMouth

Been saying we need to play "Pretty Boy" Haener ... he's better than the kid playing in LV.

Sinner

Yeah. No. Carr ain’t it.

rezburna

Every good QB is mobile in 2023. Whether they’re as dynamic as Lamar, Jalen, or Josh Allen or play extenders like Burrow, Mahomes, and Dak…you gotta be able to move.

BakoSaint

Maybe also the risk of letting your QB be mobile is less. If RG3 goes down, you have late pick Cousins behind them. If Burrow goes down Browing is pretty good. If Lance and Garappalo go down maybe the backup turns into Purdy. If the information age is giving every young prospect many of the resources that used to be limited to a Peyton or Eli Manning, then in the event your QB does go down running, the difficulty of replacing them is less, so you can more afford to take the risk. And this would apply not just to the NFL but to college and high school. A high school can more afford to let their QB run if his backup is a competent youtube junkie who has been perfecting all his moves since age 6 than if his backup is a random baseball pitcher who tried to learn QB from watching Brett Favre on a blurry CRT. So at every level you have more depth at QB and you can more afford to take the risk of a running QB style so you produce more competent running QBs and can more afford to utilize them.

SmashMouth

Also with injuries that are bound to happen to mobile QBs, because they are mobile, you can no longer pay them cap strangling dollars. They're becoming like RBs almost, and you can get away with cheaper talent . Pay the DL and OL and pay the QB less than what they are getting paid now . Quick reading and deciding QBs like Brady and Brees are far fewer as we all know than average QBs than can scramble out of trouble.

Jaylen Daniels of LSU is good but I haven't seen him read quickly. Same goes for Caleb Williams. Both are reportedly at the top of the 2024 NFL draft.

rezburna

I’m almost as high on Daniels as I was on Stroud. If I was to draft him I’d give him the best offensive line in the league and let him air it out.

SmashMouth

K Major

Speaking of olines, Saints will need to bring in another RT in 2024.

Soon. Ramz (out tonight) knee is starting to wear down & it’s not going to get better with rest .

Big picture, we need to get younger. Mathieu, Cam, Maye, Taysom, MT, Demario etc. A lot of aging vets.

MatthewT

That great 2017 draft class is wearing down fast, really need to strike it big in the 2024 draft.

Speaking of the 2024 draft, it's not looking good for the Saints to land one of the best QB prospects, the good news is there are still decent prospects after the first 5 or 6 top guys are taken. Tulane's Michael Pratt could be an interesting prospect that will take a couple years to develop, he is projected to go around the 3rd round.