To Start or Not To Start Stafford: A Historical Analysis

As training camp rapidly approaches, many eyes will be directed at a certain team in southeastern Michigan that went winless a year ago.

It's not because people outside of Michigan suddenly began to care about the Detroit Lions. 

It's not even because the country is eager to mock the hapless Motor City kitties.

The real reason that millions of people will be watching the Detroit Lions with eager anticipation is because of John Matthew Stafford.

Stafford, the quarterback with the Hollywood smile and the rocket arm has already begun to captivate the country, and he has yet to even scratch the surface of his marketing appeal. 

Stafford was the number one overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, and with that selection, and his ridiculous contract, comes tremendous pressure and expectations.

Not only are the Lions and all of their fans expecting a winner, but the sports world is looking for the next big superstar quarterback. 

Stafford is expected to become the next John Elway, and for a Lions franchise that has only had one Pro Bowl signal caller in the last 40 years, he is expected to be the next Bobby Layne (who, as you are probably well aware, went to the same high school as Stafford, although it is believed to be in different years).

So how do the Lions put Stafford in a position to succeed? 

There are two conflicting ideologies regarding the development of a quarterback. 

The first school of thought, from here on referred to as Option A, is that a quarterback needs to be groomed for a year or two before he can compete for the job.  He essentially needs to hold a clipboard and learn the ropes before he is given the keys to the car.  

In addition to helping a QB learn the ropes, it also is thought to help ease him into a psychologically brutal situation.

They second school of thought, from here on referred to as Option B, is that a quarterback needs to just be thrown into the game, sink or swim, and learn on the fly. 

The logic is that the experience of jumping right in will toughen the player up.  It also allows the team to find out right away if they made a solid investment or not.

In recent years, both sides have had their success stories (Carson Palmer for Option A, Matt Ryan for Option B) and their horror stories (Alex Smith for Option A, David Carr for Option B).

In the name of full disclosure, I should point out that I have always been a proponent of Option A, sitting a quarterback for a year or two. 

I have argued that a team that is bad enough to need a new quarterback probably has a multitude of holes and throwing a young player into that position is essentially like throwing a child to the wolves.

However, given my background is psychology, I know that it is important to not rush to judgment, but rather to gather evidence before jumping the gun. 

So I set out to analyze both options.  In order to do so, I enlisted the help of Pro-Football-Reference.com to check the players and stats.

My aim was to objectively analyze the best way to develop a pro football quarterback.

The Study

Over the past 30 years, the pro quarterback has evolved along with the game.  I noticed this when I wrote a story discussing the top 10 quarterbacks of all time. 

What I noticed was that the game has moved dramatically towards aerial attacks, and as a result, quarterbacks are judged much more harshly than ever before. 

For instance, Terry Bradshaw, largely viewed as one of the best QBs to ever lace up a pair of cleats was horribly ineffective by today's standards.  He only had four seasons with more than 20 touchdown passes and only four seasons with a QB rating over 80, none above 88, and finished with only two more touchdowns than interceptions for his career.

Therefore, I decided to focus on just the quarterbacks drafted over the last 30 years.

Furthermore, in order to have a fairly reasonable pool for evaluation, I limited my study to the first quarterback taken in the draft, not just the first round.  This is an important distinction as some quarterbacks that were the first to be drafted were not taken in the first round.

I assessed whether or not a quarterback was given the starting job in his first season.  In order to be fair to injuries and ineffectiveness, a quarterback was judged to be the season's starter if he started over 50 percent of his team's games.

The toughest part to gauge is what constituted a successful QB versus a bust.  Basically, I judged it the way that Detroit fans will judge Stafford. 

Detroit fans want Stafford to be a Pro Bowler and/or win a Super Bowl, and so therefore a QB is judged to be successful if he makes a Pro Bowl team and/or wins a Super Bowl. 

This does leave some gray area, since, for instance, Tony Banks won a Super Bowl with Baltimore, but if Stafford's career follows in Banks's footsteps he will undoubtedly be considered a bust.

(Truth be told, Banks lost his starting job to Trent Dilfer and therefore it should be noted that Banks does not receive credit for being the Super Bowl winner and therefore is not considered a success in this study).

In studying these quarterbacks, I found some really interesting stories. 

For instance, in the last 30 years, a quarterback did not go in the first round four times: 1984, 1985, 1988, 1996, and one of those years, 1988, a QB was not taken until round three—Chris Chandler.

In 2000, a year in which the first QB was not taken until No. 18, Marc Bulger and Tom Brady were taken in the 6th round and are considered to be miles better than any QB taken before them. 

In fact, there were four times as many QB's taken in the sixth round as there were in the first and second combined!

In 1996, Tony Banks was the first QB taken, a second rounder, and three of the seven rounds were completed without a single signal caller.

More amazingly was that in 1988, six of the 12 rounds were without QBs, including four of the first seven!

The Results

Over the past 30 years, 15 of the first 30 quarterbacks taken were judged as being successful.

(Note: Matt Ryan is being judged as a success based on his stellar rookie year and the fact that the Lions would be ecstatic if Stafford played as well as the Atlanta Falcons QB.  However, if we instead removed Ryan due to his inexperience and moved back one year to include 1978, we would still have the same amount since Doug Williams was a first year starter and won a Super Bowl, making him a success).

The lucky 15 are as follows:

Matt Ryan

Vince Young

Eli Manning

Carson Palmer

Michael Vick

Peyton Manning

Steve McNair

Drew Bledsoe

Troy Aikman

Chris Chandler

Vinny Testaverde

Jim Everett

Randall Cunningham

Boomer Esiason

John Elway

Of those listed, seven (Ryan, Young, Peyton, Bledsoe, Aikman, Chandler and Elway) were all first-year starters.

Of the rest, six were second-year starters and two (McNair and Cunningham) were third-year starters.

So it would seem, just from a quick glance, that it only matters slightly whether or not to employ Option A over Option B.

However, I wanted to dig a little deeper since not all of these QB's are judged equally.  For example, Peyton Manning should be judged as being quite a bit more successful than Chandler.

To delve deeper, I gave each QB one point for each Pro Bowl appearance, and an additional point for each Super Bowl victory. Again, the QB had to be the SB winner, so Bledsoe does not receive a point for the ring that Brady brought him.

Based on this deeper scoring system, 12 QB's had two or more points. 

Of those 12, only five were first-year starters.  Therefore, it seems as though the margin is growing slightly.

However, if we delve a little deeper, and separate the successful from the very successful, something different happens. 

Of the six quarterbacks with four or more points, essentially the cream of the crop, four were first-year starters: Peyton Manning, Bledsoe, Aikman and Elway. 

The two that were not, Randall Cunningham and Boomer Esiason are generally considered good, but not transcendent quarterbacks.  Each had a handful of good years, but neither was a Super Bowl winner. 

Of the 30 quarterbacks that were the first at their position drafted in the last 30 years, there are three that are easily considered to be head and shoulders above the rest. 

Elway, Aikman and Peyton Manning each won at least one Super Bowl, and Elway and Manning each won an MVP award. 

All three have a couple things in common.  Each was a first-year starter and each was the first overall pick in their respective drafts.

The Lesson

So what does this tell us about what the Lions should do with Stafford?

Well, it appears that the safer of the two options would be Option A, which would entail the Lions to sit Stafford for the first season and allow him to learn from a veteran quarterback, and avoid getting sacked worse than Rome. 

This should lead to about a 27 percent chance that he will be a successful quarterback in the NFL.  Many Lions fans will agree that this would be a major coup considering their lack of success with QBs.

However, if the Lions want a chance at a very successful QB, a chance at greatness, they have a 10 percent chance of Stafford reaching those heights if he starts immediately, if the past 30 years acts as a guide.

Personally, I still think that Stafford should sit during his first season.  This has less to do with Stafford's draft status than it does the situation the Lions are in

I feel that Daunte Culpepper gives the Lions a better chance to win today.

However, the Lions are in a position to take a chance right now, and although it is a high-risk chance, it gives the best shot at a high reward.

Remember, Stafford already has one thing in common with the top three quarterbacks on this list—he was the first player selected overall.  If the Lions choose to start him right away, he would have both things that each of the three have in common.

However, so did Tim Couch.  You make the call.