Albert Breer discusses Patriots’ NFL Draft Scenarios, redshirting young quarterbacks

Fred Toucher: Bert, there has been a dramatic trend in the NFL playing quarterback.

Albert Breer: I keep this chart, and it's actually been really helpful to me to kind of organize all this. But it shows when every first-round quarterback started his first game since 2000. And if you go back to the early part of the century, you'll see there are a lot of guys who had to wait. Chad Pennington didn't start until his 41st game, right?

Albert Breer: Rex Grossman until his 14th game, Philip Rivers 33rd game. Even Eli Manning in the 10th game, Jason Campbell in the 26th, Aaron Rodgers in the 46th, Brady Quinn in the 25th, JaMarcus Russell in the 16th game. So there was a lot to wait for. No, but I mean, but the point is like just taking the name. I understand there are a lot of examples. Then, in '08, was the inflection point. Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco started from the beginning. Both made the playoffs. Ryan looked great. Flacco got his team into the AFC title game. Yeah, right. Like they lost to the Steelers in the AFC title game. And the whole thing flipped. So starting in '08. And that's 16 draft cycles, right? 48 quarterbacks have gone in the first round, right? Only two did not start a game as a rookie. Those two are Jordan Love and Jake Locker. There are four others that I think you could consider redshirts. Right. Because they only got in because of injury or because there was a coach firing, whatever. That's Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Patrick Mahomes, and Paxton Lynch. So like that's six out of 48 if you want to say actually had a plan to be redshirted, executed, or didn't wind up winning the job.

Albert Breer: So, in a lot of these cases, you had quarterbacks who were sitting behind established veterans or sometimes these teams were in contention. It's hard to find bad teams that followed through with a plan to redshirt a quarterback. Well, why is that? It's because what happens is a lot of times these teams get in these situations and they say we're going to redshirt them, we're going to redshirt them, we're going to redshirt them. And there is so much pressure on them to play the kid. And then you get to the point where you're 1 in 5 or you're three and eight. And on radio stations like this one, what are they saying? You know, why don't you play this draft pick that you're going to lose? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there is, there is to lose. As you throw the kid out there, you crush his confidence. And at that level of the sport, it's almost impossible to get it back once it's lost. But I think they're more apt to do it in recent years because there's less chance that he's going to get literally crushed. Right? Because of the way the game is officiated now. Yeah. If a kid's not ready and he can't read coverage and he can't pick up blitzes, then yeah, he's going to go out there. He's going to get killed.

Albert Breer: I think in a lot of cases, what a GM and a head coach are worried about are two things: their own job security, what the owner thinks and likes. That's the reality of it. Sometimes these bad teams, the quarterback will come in, and the coaches because the team was bad the year before. I mean, it's like a self-fulfilling thing. Yeah. You're drafting in the top five because you're bad. You either have a new coach who is looking to start anew with a new quarterback who probably wants to play him anyway, or you have a coach who's on his last legs because the team was bad the year before. So now that coach has got to find a way to convince his owner to keep him, and now you get to the point where you're three and seven, well, what's a way to keep your job? Throw the rookie out there. He plays okay. It's like, well, you can't fire me now. Like, do you want to mess with the kid's development? So like I think these things again, it's like it's a part of the NFL. It's really screwed up as far as developing players. It's like a lot of these kids do need time to sit. And it's as the college game has veered further away from what the pro game is because of the schemes and the all. That stuff is so different now. It's so many levels of the college game. Sometimes you have kids who aren't as ready to play, who need it more, but they're being thrown into this environment where they're being forced to play no more to play faster.