Changing of the Guard

The Young and the Old

If there was a consistent storyline to be found across the first weekend of the NFL playoffs, it was a battle of the generations among the quarterbacks. Each of the six games featured a starting quarterback in his 30s facing off against one in his 20s, and that even understates the disparities. The closest in age were 32 year old Russell Wilson and 26 year old Jared Goff. 33 year old Ryan Tannehill and 24 year old Lamar Jackson were the only other pair of quarterbacks born within a decade of each other.

The outcomes of these games split almost perfectly down the conference lines. On the NFC side, Tom Brady and Drew Brees both advanced to the second round despite being over 40. On the AFC side, 25 year old Baker Mayfield is the oldest quarterback left alive. The average age of the four remaining quarterbacks in the AFC is 24.5 years. The average age in the NFC is 36.8, and that is dragged down by Goff, the closest to an outlier remaining.

The disparity between the two conferences is jarring. On one side we have Brady, Brees, and Aaron Rodgers, three of the greatest to ever play the position clawing for possibly a last chance at glory. On the other side we have the breakout players from the past three seasons—Patrick Mahomes in 2018, Jackson in 2019, Josh Allen in 2020—to go along with third-year player Baker Mayfield. Mahomes is already well on his way to joining the list of all-time greats, but for the other three this postseason could provide the foundation for the legacies they are trying to create.

The evolution of the quarterback position across the league has taken an interesting path over the past decade. As players like the Brady, Brees, and Rodgers-along with Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, and Philip Rivers-sustained their careers well into their 30s, there was some concern about the lack of young quarterbacks excelling in the league. Here is the list of notable quarterbacks to enter the league from 2006-2015: 

2006: Vince Young, Matt Leinart, Jay Cutler

2007: JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn
2008: Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco
2009: Matthew Stafford, Mark Sanchez, Josh Freeman
2010: Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow
2011: Cam Newton, Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick, Tyrod Taylor
2012: Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Ryan Tannehill, Nick Foles, Russell Wilson, Kirk Cousins
2013:
2014: Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel, Teddy Bridgewater, Derek Carr, Jimmy Garoppolo
2015: Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota

Ten years, producing a total of two MVP awards and one or two Hall of Famers (depending on your opinion of Ryan). There is a decade-long gap at the quarterback position, the same gap that showed up between the quarterbacks that faced off this past weekend. Fortunately, the past few years have seen an explosion of young talent at the quarterback position, and the weakness of the generation before has given them plenty of space to thrive

The differences between the generations is just as evident when you watch them play as when you look at the dates of their births. Brady and Brees are two of the purest pocket passers to ever play in the league, and while Rodgers was a threat with his legs early in his career, he’s scaled back his heroics somewhat this year. Even Goff, by far the youngest, is a bit of a throwback, one of the last pure pocket-passers to enter the league.

The AFC side sees a wide variety of styles, but each of the four remaining quarterbacks could be described very simply as a “playmaker”. Jackson is the most dangerous quarterback rushing threat the league has ever seen. Mahomes and Allen are fantastic athletes with explosive arms that allow them to attack any part of the field when the play breaks down. And while Mayfield may not athletically match up with the others, he plays with a gunslinger style that this year has resulted in more positives than negatives.

This is the consistent trend among the newest generation of quarterbacks. They are all fantastic athletes, and they are all capable of improvising outside the structure of the play to create opportunities down the field. In the modern NFL, where offensive line talent is at an all-time low and pass rush talent is at an all-time high, and where possessions can’t simply be thrown away when something goes wrong, the most valuable trait a quarterback can possess is the ability to create offense on his own.

What is fascinating about these eight remaining teams is that outside of the quarterback position, the divide between the AFC and the NFC aren’t that stark. You would expect teams to be built around the strengths of their quarterbacks, and to thus have very different offensive styles for the veteran pocket passers than the young playmakers.

But of the teams remaining, this is not the case. Rodgers and Mayfield both lead offenses that are heavy on play action and getting the quarterback on the move to open receivers down the field. Brady and Allen both run heavily vertical assaults to electric field-stretching receivers. Jackson leans on a diverse running game and the opportunities this creates over the middle of the field. Brees runs an equally diverse passing game that distributes the ball on short routes to similarly grind his way down the field. And Mahomes lives in a system that combines a little bit of everything to make one of the most dangerous offenses the NFL has ever seen.

That is probably the most interesting development from the emergence of these young quarterbacks over the past few years, as well as the continued success of the veterans. There hasn’t been a dramatic shift in the styles of offense played as a result. And the shift that has happened has impacted both generations in similar ways.

Rodgers struggled for the past five years before being revitalized in this new scheme, just as Mayfield was helped this year by a similar scheme after a rough 2019. Many thought that Brady was a poor fit for Bruce Arians’s vertical attack, yet he’s been even more successful in Tampa Bay than he was his last few years in New England.

One clear trend across the eight remaining teams is that they all have excellent offensive lines. Stylistically there are some differences, but if you were to list the best eight offensive lines in the league, it wouldn’t look all that different from the eight remaining (Indianapolis, New England, and a healthy Philadelphia could slide in over Los Angeles or Buffalo, but it would be worth a conversation). Quarterbacks may be changing, but the way you construct your roster and scheme around them isn’t all that different now than it was in the past.

The Other 52 Players

Roster building in the NFL is a tricky game, and having an elite quarterback is basically a cheat code. The value of that position is so out of whack from the rest of the players on the field that wrapping them beneath the same salary cap almost feels wrong. Each year we seem to see a new quarterback set the mark for the most expensive contract—Carr, Garoppolo, Cousins, Stafford, and Ryan have all held that title at one point or another—and while it seems that Mahomes has set a new standard that will last a couple years, the trend will likely remain the same. A quarterback’s salary is set by whoever signed the biggest deal before, because the leverage held by even a competent player at that position is enough to run through any objections a front office might have.

In the end, all quarterbacks fall into three basic camps when it comes to money: rookie deal, placeholder, or franchise starter. This last category is huge in number, with players ranging from Goff to Rodgers to Garoppolo to Watson. And yet the money they’re making is all in pretty much the same ballpark. So having someone that is truly elite provides tremendous value, higher production at virtually no extra cost.

The goal of every GM should be to find this guy. If you get him, then everything becomes easy after that. The Minnesota Vikings are a perfect example of what happens when you have a quarterback who is just pretty good. You can build an excellent roster around him, you can even compete for a title for a couple of years, but the window is always short before the cap costs of sustaining a roster that talented catch up with you. And when that happens, the fall is steep and sudden, and you usually find yourself starting from square one.

The Chiefs are an example of the opposite side of the coin. They have Mahomes locked up through 2030, and their window stretches basically that entire decade. His extension hasn’t kicked in yet, which means they still have the money to spend on a loaded roster. They will hit some rough patches in a couple years—players like Travis Kelce will age out of their primes, others like Tyreek Hill and Chris Jones will start to weigh on the cap—but Mahomes has the talent to carry them through these years at a competitive level. And by the end of his contract, $50 million a year might not even be in the top ten of quarterback salaries.

For teams without a transcendent talent like Mahomes, the challenge becomes one of timing. It’s nice to believe you can just roll out a competitive team year-in and year-out, but ultimately that’s not realistic. NFL players have such short careers, and sometimes it’s less important which players you build your roster around than when you build it around them. A smart GM will aim for a window, a two or three year stretch when his players will all be in their primes and reasonably affordable. Of course, recognizing and taking advantage of these windows is not nearly as easy as it sounds.

The Future of the Quarterback Position

A couple years ago it was common to hear people fretting about what the league would do when players like Brady and Brees retired, with no exciting young quarterbacks looking ready to fill their shoes. That isn’t a problem anymore. Mahomes and Jackson have already won MVPs. Allen and Mayfield took massive leaps in their third seasons. Deshaun Watson is a star, if the Texans ever stop sabotaging his career. Both Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert are coming off stellar rookie seasons, and while Tua Tagovailoa wasn’t as impressive, he still has tons of potential. And next year things will get even more exciting, with the long-awaited debut of Trevor Lawrence, almost certainly in Jacksonville.

Did you notice anything about the quarterbacks I just named? They’re all on the AFC side of the league. The four left alive in the playoffs are not the only young stars in the AFC. Of the sixteen teams in the conference, at least half right now have reason to be confident they are set at the most important position for the next decade.

Once again, the disparity between the two conferences is stark. About the only name on the NFC side that I could have added to the list above is Kyler Murray in Arizona. Dak Prescott is the next most exciting young star, but he’s already 27 years old, coming off a major leg injury, and playing for a team that has never seemed that committed to keeping him around.

Apart from that, what young quarterback is there to get excited about in the NFC? Daniel Jones has played two years, and he’s been bad in both of them. Goff has proven to be a solid starter and nothing more through five seasons in the league. Jalen Hurts was only promising when compared to the quarterback he replaced. Taysom Hill is 30, and he doesn’t know how to throw a football. I suppose Jordan Love may still theoretically exist, but he wasn’t even good enough this year to claim the second spot on the depth chart.

Even with a promising quarterback draft class ahead, the NFC is not in great shape. The first three picks all belong to AFC teams. I expect both the Jaguars and the Jets to select a quarterback, sending the top two options over to the AFC. Things could get interesting if Atlanta decides to select a replacement for Matt Ryan, or if someone like Carolina, Washington, Chicago, or San Francisco leaps up to try to secure one of the next names on the board. But we are still talking about the third or fourth options available this year.

For the most part the NFC is locked into aging quarterbacks with large cap hits. Wentz, Goff, and Cousins will likely still be starting for their teams when 2022 rolls around. Stafford, Ryan, and Garoppolo could be shown the door sooner than that, but there is no clear replacement plan in place. The NFC is on a rapid track to becoming a wasteland for quarterback talent.

Obviously this is great news for the few teams that are set at the position. I expect this to be the final year for Brees, but both Brady and Rodgers will be back in 2021 on loaded offenses, with little in the way of challengers. Wilson struggled over the second half of 2020, but I expect him to bounce back next year. After that, things are a bit wide open in the NFC.

This openness has to be a bit tantalizing for the other teams in the conference. Teams like Chicago, Minnesota, and Atlanta sit at a tipping point now, where they have to decide whether to tear things down and rebuild or to try to stretch their current cores out for another year or two. They have to decide window they are trying to target. If they tear things down now, they have a chance to build a contending roster for 2023-2025, around the time the last of the old guard will drift away into retirement. If they linger too long, they could be looking more at 2025-2027, a future that is far less certain.

The AFC has the opposite problem. Five years from now, it’s likely that a few truly elite quarterbacks will be forced to watch the postseason from home each year. And even the ones who make the postseason will likely have to run a gauntlet of players like Mahomes, Jackson, Allen, and Mayfield, stars with playoff experience under their belts.

For an AFC team trying to plot their future, now is probably as good a time to strike as any. Both Pittsburgh and Indianapolis are facing offseason questions of whether move on from their veteran quarterbacks after disappointing first round exits. Normally I'd support them on this, but what exactly is the long-term plan here? By the time they're able to rebuild their rosters to competitive levels again, the current crop of fresh-faced quarterbacks will be smack-dab in the primes of their careers. I don’t think the Colts or the Steelers have what they need to compete for a Super Bowl next year, but in a conference loaded with future stars at the quarterback position, 2021 may be their last realistic chance for the next decade.