Rookie Playoff Quarterbacks And Mark Sanchez' Place

Something happened on Mark Sanchez' way to a pretty disappointing rookie season. The Playoffs.

Yeah, I know, Mark Sanchez was named NFL rookie of the week for 16 straight weeks or something. It was a farce. A facade.

I looked into Sanchez playoff record relative to other rookie quarterbacks a couple of weeks ago - which I will get to momentarily - but decided to wait for Football Outsiders' Almanac before posting about it, since I thought there was a reasonable chance they would have addressed it. They didn't so I will.

I bring this up though, because I am glad I waited. FO published the most comparable rookie quarterbacks to Sanchez. It isn't a flattering list. While some of the players later on the list turned out to be great quarterbacks, including Aikman and Elway (neither of whom had good rookie years) his closest comparables had short and unimpressive careers, topped by Jamarcus Russell.

Make no mistake, Sanchez was awful in the regular season, and his awfulness was a bit masked by the otherwise outstanding team that was assembled around him. The Jets had the fewest passing attempts in the league, and not the fewest by a little but the fewest by a lot. New York attempted 391 passes, the second fewest came from Buffalo with 441. The league median was around 540. So with 150 fewer attempts than over half the league (that's 9 per game, boys and girls) one would think that defenses would be keying the run, that his looks would be good. But even with that huge advantage, Sanchez was one of the worst quarterbacks in the league, and his awfulness very nearly sabotaged the Jets playoff run.

But he did get to the playoffs and somehow this ugly old worm transformed itself into a beautiful butterfly.

Opponent	Cmp	Att	Yards	TD	INT	Rate
Cincinnati	12	15	182	1	0	139.4
San Diego	12	23	100	1	1	60.1
Indianapolis	17	30	257	2	1	93.3
Totals	41	69	539	4	2	92.7

That 93 rating would have put him 13th overall for the 2009 season, slightly behind Kurt Warner, Eli Manning and Donovan McNabb. More impressively though, he did it under the bright lights of the playoffs against teams that finished 7th, 17th and 12th in pass defense.

There haven't been many teams recently who made the playoffs with a rookie quarterback but it is still interesting to compare with those that did. In fact this is the whole point of this thing.

Going back to 1983 only 5 teams have made the playoffs with rookie quarterbacks, 4 of them this decade and Dan Marino.

Player	Games	Cmp	Att	Yards	TD	INT	Rate
Joe Flacco	3	33	75	437	1	3	50.8
Matt Ryan	1	26	40	199	2	2	72.8
Ben Roethlisberger	2	31	54	407	3	5	61.3
Dan Marino	1	15	25	193	2	2	77.6

So what do we make of this? It's hard to say for sure, except that Sanchez' performance in the playoffs was historically great, certainly the greatest post season in the last 30 years. Add in that regardless of how he got there, he is among excellent company. Anyone watching the AFC Championship could tell that this was no fluke either, with Sanchez poised and confident.

Quarterbacks either get it or they don't. They can either make plays or they can't. While it would be unprecedented for Sanchez to advance from the season he had to a place among the league elite in one year, it does appear that the playoffs were his 'Drew Brees' moment. The lights came on, the game slowed down, he got it.

FO doesn't expect great things from this year's Jet team, and they are probably right. The one thing they appeared to underestimate though is the progression of any rookie quarterback from his first to his second season. They always improve. Often that improvement is incremental and doesn't mean much in the big picture, but with that playoff run in his pocket we should have every expectation that Sanchez will no longer be a liability, and that his performance gain should offset losses elsewhere.

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The trade heard round the world

The Santonio Holmes to NY Jets for a 5th round pick should probably be sending more shockwaves through the NFL than the McNabb deal. There are a lot of interesting aspects and potential ramifications to this trade, a lot of which will probably play out in what could make for some very interesting playoff dynamics.


First and foremost, the Jets now have to be considered a legitimate Superbowl contender, under a couple big caveats. Every year, the NFL is full of "ifs," so this is really nothing new. "If" Peyton Manning gets hurt, do the Colts make the Superbowl? "If" Tom Brady doesn't blow his ACL, do the Pats miss it two years ago? The Jets have two big "ifs" to make them Superbowl contenders. The first is "if" Mark Sanchez builds on what amounted to an impressive, Joe-Flacco-like rookie season.

The second is "if" all these newly acquired trouble-makers on their roster play to their on-field talent, and don't derail the team with their off-field problems. The Jets now look like the Raiders of old (and honestly, of today) in that they're willing to take a risk on any player with a little bit of talent in order to get better. Peter King noticed the same thing in his MMQB article today. This is pretty interesting, because it could give them a shot at a Superbowl, or it could blow up in their faces and have them picking in the top ten next year.

Now we need to turn our attention to the Steelers a bit. The media is billing this as a shot across Roethlisberger's bow; a clear warning sign for him to get his act straight or else he'll wind up shipped out. It's a pretty rampant rumor right now that the Steelers were likely to release Santonio if no one wanted to trade for him.

The trade itself is fairly shocking simply given the fact that they didn't try to get even reasonable compensation for him. A fifth round pick? I'm assuming it's the Jets' original fifth round pick, thus making it a pretty low one. For a guy that was the Superbowl MVP two years ago and had over 1,200 receiving yards last year? With no off-field troubles, the guy has low first / high second round talent.

In other news, Brian Xander is in an office somewhere cursing the Steelers for resetting the market on Brandon Marshall.

But we need to consider for a second that this isn't so much a warning shot at Big Ben as it is a preview of what's to come. Not that it's likely to happen, or that it's anything more than pure speculation on my part, mind you. But we need to consider the possibility that Roethlisberger is the next one on the block, and they may be aggressively shopping him right now.

This, of course, would be unprecedented. A two time Superbowl winning quarterback in his 20s with a career rating over 90 is not someone that any team in the NFL would ever think they might want to trade for any compensation. But let's take stock for a moment. This isn't the first time Ben's had some fairly major issues. And it's not just the initial sexual assault allegations. There was the infamous motorcycle incident four years back as well. As one of my friends noted, it's the third off-season he's created a major distraction / black eye for the organization, but the first time it hasn't happened after a Superbowl win.

And this isn't the Raiders we're talking about here. The Steelers are more in fact the anti-Raiders. They ditch trouble-makers at the first sign of it, and they don't look back. For all the lauding the Patriots get about not falling in love with players, let's remember how quick the Steelers were to dismiss Joey Porter, Plaxico and Randle-El. What's their tolerance level for Big Ben, given both his proclivity for distraction balanced against his impressive on-field talent?

And more interesting, what sort of compensation could they get for him? Last year, Jay Cutler fetched Denver a couple first round picks. Roethlisberger is clearly more talented, but if they're trying to off-load him, can they expect to get much even close to that level? With a potential suspension looming, the balance of an 8 year $102MM contract and a whole host of off-field distractions, how much would a team be willing to give for him?

The situation deserves some pretty intense scrutiny. It's been a really interesting off-season this year, and is only bound to get better.

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A Quick Walk Through The League

My gut says that it takes about three weeks in the NFL to start to get an honest read on the quality of the various teams, divisions and races. Too many teams are too close for a couple of random results to overly color our impressions during the first couple weeks of the year. Last year the Bills stomped the Seahawks in week one and then went on the road to beat the Jaguars in week two. Both of their opponents were supposed to contend for their respective division and Jacksonville was the sweetheart pick to win the AFC. Obviously Seattle and Jacksonville were pretenders, and Buffalo eventually came crashing to earth after a moment in the sun.

So now it's time to take a poke at the teams that are surprising and disappointing. Which are the aberrations? Which are the trends? We will start today with the AFC.

Miami 0-3
Trend. I wrote an enormous article in my head around the beginning of August on how the Dolphins entire 2008 was a mirage and that they were bound to be worse in '09. Even Vegas had them as a 7 win team this year, surprising considering the Dolphins are coming off an 11 win season. I'm not going to go into all the reasons here, but the short shot was that Miami was extremely lucky (and by 'exteme' I mean 'statistically outlying') but even so their pythagorean win total would have put them at a little under 9 wins. Take away the luck with injuries and turnovers and yeah, this was probably a 6-7 win team. They won't lose them all but considering their start and considering that the Henne era and associated growing pains may be permanent with Pennington's injury, it is easy to project them as a 4-5 win team this year.

Cincinnati 2-1
Trend. Consider that they are an immaculate deflection away from being 3-0 (as opposed to those pretender Broncos) and it is easy to see this team competing for the playoffs again. Their problems the last two years is that they had no one who could spell Palmer through his series of awful injuries. They still don't but Palmer is back and apparently healthy the offense may be effective enough to continue to put up Ws. Their defense last year was very good, a fact disguised by the duration and field positions the offense gave them. Palmer has been terribly erratic, but has shown a few flashes of returning to brilliance; in the first half against Green Bay, his game winning (sic: losing) drive against Denver, and then down the stretch today. I expect Palmer to continue to approach his previous level as the season progresses. The offensive line isn't what it once was, but it is also much better than last year's. With Benson providing adequate running this team should ultimately win more than it loses.

Cleveland 0-3
Trend. Pretty obvious one. I have to think that George Kokinis is re-thinking his decision to marry Eric Mangini. Mangini is simply a maniac. He spent his first off-season trying to get rid of every skill position player on the team while pissing off all of the rookies and lesser free agents. The team has scored exactly one offensive touchdowns in their last nine games. Yes they will win games, but I have no clue when or how. Right now it seems impossible.

Denver 3-0
Mirage. This is sort of a softball too. Before the year everyone was predicting a horrible season for this team, the villagers were gathering torches and pitchforks even before the first game, but lo and behold they won. And then won again, and then again. While it is probably fair to re-assess this team a bit the winning was much more a product of one miracle and two opponents than actually putting a quality product on the field. We already mentioned the Cincinnati game that they had no business winning. Their other wins were against Cleveland (noted) and then the Raiders who have problems of their own. Denver's schedule will give them a chunk of wins but this team will level out. The offense will be okay, but this defense which is currently number one can't possibly be in the top half of the league. It has has holes everywhere and talent nowhere. Good opponents will carve this team up and it will be very difficult for the offense to provide enough of a response.

New York 3-0
Trend. As hard as it is for me to believe, there is no reason to think that this team won't continure to play well and win. Their first three games weren't cupcakes and included a psuedo-showdown game with the Patriots. While Mark Sanchez has been the story, the defense has been the reason for the team's success and may be the best in the AFC so far. Their opponents have averaged ~ 10 ppg against them while scoring 25 ppg against their other opponents. The offensive line is one of the top five in football, if not the best and the running game is solid. Oh yeah, that Sanchez guy? He's pretty good too, with the best rookie start since Roethlisberger. He should continue to improve. Set the sun on the Patriots domination of that division, New York is a 12-plus win team. This week's game at New Orleans should be an entertaining meeting of an immovable object and an irresistable force.

There are others. Tennessee has lost three tough games, and there is something wrong with that team. Doesn't matter much, no team has ever overcome an 0-3 start to go to the playoffs. Tennessee won't be the first. Baltimore looks like the real deal but their start is no surprise. Pittsburgh also looks broken and is probably a bit overdue for some rebuilding, but I just can't see counting them out yet.

Time and motivation willing, I will continue with the NFC later this week.

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The Art of the QB Non-Competition

To nobody's real surprise, Mark Sanchez has been named the starting QB for the Jets. Somewhat by surprise, it wasn't because he had a great game Monday against the Ravens. Instead, he seems to win it based on the fact the Jets have a new, brash head coach that both saw a rookie first round pick succeed last season as well as realize he has no one attractive enough to start in front of Sanchez.

Therein lies the fun of the Jets "quarterback competition" we had seen early in the pre-season. It was never really a competition. One would say the only way it was is if Sanchez played so poorly in his first start that he worked his way out of a job. The problem is, one might think he'd have done that by throwing a pick six his first pass as a starter and nearly throwing two others prior to notching a TD pass against what amounted to mostly Ravens backups.

And so we're left to wonder if there was really any QB competition to begin with. Is it possible for him to have played his way out of the job? Would Clemens have played well enough to win the job if he'd have done more than what little he did in his two games?

One has to assume not, which begs the question, "Why even announce it as a QB competition?" I see two main arguments here, one on either side of this question.

Arguing for competition, one would think making it a competition would push Sanchez to raise his game. Make it a ruse, make him earn it, and if he plays up to the task he'll get it. Closely connected to this, if he blows up completely, Rex always has the option to keep him on the bench for a while and not look like a fool.

However, on the flip-side of this argument, coming out and giving him the job allows him more time to work with the starting team, and working against starting defenses. This could be particularly important for a rookie QB. So in my personal opinion, if there's basically nothing he could have done to lose the QB "competition" that was set early in camp, Rex probably should have simply given him the job.

That's the beauty of being an armchair quarterback (so to speak) I guess.

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