What Happened to QBs in the 2015 NFL Draft and Will There Be More in 2016?

It's been over a decade since a team has won a Super Bowl without a star quarterback, and the NFL features more passing right now than ever before. That's why it was so strange to see that only seven quarterbacks went off the board during the 256-pick span of the 2015 NFL draft. 

That compared to 22 running backs, despite the fact teams throw more and run less than at any other point in NFL history. More wide receivers were picked among the top 40 selections than quarterbacks who were taken in the entire draft. And if you were a tight end in this draft, you were 2.7 times more likely to be picked than if you were a pivot. 

While there are only about 80 quarterbacks on NFL rosters each year, compared to well over 100 at positions like running back, receiver, corner and safety, seven is still a disproportionately low number, especially when you consider that we're talking about the ultimate premium position.

Position	Drafted	Proportion of draft	Approx. proportion of NFL	Difference
WR	35	13.7%	10.9%	2.8%
DL	43	16.8%	15.1%	1.7%
TE	19	7.4%	6.3%	1.2%
OL	46	18.0%	16.8%	1.1%
LB	36	14.1%	14.0%	0.1%
RB	22	8.6%	8.6%	0.0%
DB	46	18.0%	18.4%	-0.4%
QB	7	2.7%	4.6%	-1.9%
Specialist	2	0.8%	5.4%	-4.6%
Total	256	100.0%	100.0%	0.0%

If so many teams are desperate to find a franchise quarterback, why weren't more of them willing to use a simple late-round pick on one? Among the final 109 picks of the draft, only one—Northwestern product Trevor Siemian—was a quarterback. 

The last time fewer than eight quarterbacks were drafted, the majority of people reading this sentence weren't alive. The average cost of a new house was $10,000, a gallon of gas went for about 22 cents and the Cleveland Browns were the best team in a National Football League that contained just 12 franchises.

It was 1954. 

Year	QBs drafted
2015	7
1998	8
1996	8
1993	8
1994	9
Average	14.6

In fact, this marks the first time since before the turn of the century fewer than 11 quarterbacks have been selected. 

Pro Football Reference

How do we go from an average of 12.7 quarterback draft picks per year between 2000 and 2014, with a range of 11-17, to just seven in 2015? Has to be an aberration, right? 

There have been some clear trends based on the fluctuations in the last 15 years. Typically, 13-15 quarterbacks are drafted one year, followed by about 11 the next year. Logically, that makes some sense. An above-average 14 quarterbacks were drafted last year, which probably suggests that, statistically, this was going to be a down year at that position. 

But not this far down. 

There was also a consensus among analysts that this wasn't a particularly strong or deep quarterback class. Thank goodness underclassmen Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota and Brett Hundley declared early, but it's not as though last year's draft contained a ton of early-entry quarterbacks (just three: Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel and Teddy Bridgewater). 

It hurt the class when juniors Connor Cook, Cody Kessler, Dak Prescott and Cardale Jones decided to be cool and stay in school, and that's the main reason to believe the quarterback position will redeem itself next spring. 

CBS Sports projected that  nine to 14 quarterbacks would be drafted in 2015, but Walter Football had as few as six being drafted and Bleacher Report's Matt Miller ranked only six among the top 256 players on his predraft big board. But because it's a special position, QBs get extra credit. Miller still predicted that 10 quarterbacks would be drafted, including Brandon Bridge, Shane Carden and Bryan Bennett in Round 6. All three of those guys will instead have to attempt to enter the league as undrafted free agents. 

For what it's worth, Walter Football predicts that between 17 and 24 pivots will be drafted next spring, while Miller can see four going in the first round alone. 

After a ridiculous 20 quarterbacks were drafted in 1992, only 17 were taken in 1993 and 1994 combined. We also saw that familiar ebb and flow between 1995 and 1999, with 14 going in '95, only eight in '96, 11 in '97, only eight in '98 before 13 in '99. 

In those four particularly weak years in the 1990s, three undrafted quarterbacks went on to have strong careers. All of them—Kurt Warner, Jay Fiedler and Jeff Garcia—were victims of a quarterback unfriendly '94 draft that saw only nine pivots go off the board. But in the three drafts from that stretch—and the only drafts in the modern era—that contained fewer than nine quarterback selections, no UDFA signal-callers panned out. 

That's not surprising. 

Depending on who wins the starting job with the Houston Texans, only one or two quarterbacks who weren't drafted are slated to start the opening week of the 2015 season (Tony Romo, maybe Brian Hoyer). So typically, if teams aren't confident enough in you to draft you, your odds of making it big at that position are quite long. 

That doesn't mean mistakes weren't made this past weekend, and guys like Bridge, Carden, Bennett, Jerry Lovelocke and Connor Halliday will be doing everything they can to prove that was the case. 

But regardless of what those guys do, this draft appears to be an anomaly when it comes to the lack of love for the quarterback position. 

Brad Gagnon has covered the NFL for Bleacher Report since 2012.

Follow @Brad_Gagnon