Quarterback Crisis: How the NFL Learned to Love Benching First-Round Picks

Once tabbed as the future of their franchises at the most important position in sports, first-round quarterbacks are being sent to the pine at an alarming rate.

Of the three who came off the board in the first four picks of 2023 NFL Draft, two have already earned a spot on the bench less than halfway through their second season. Last year, another first-round QB went to the bench at the end of his second season, and his team dumped him in a trade a few months later. 

People who know what they’re talking about are worried about the state of quarterback development at the game’s highest level.

Kurt Warner thinks NFL teams have failed to teach quarterbacks how to properly play the position. Tom Brady believes teams have “dumbed the game down” to get QBs on the field early and denied them a deeper understanding of the job. 

Warner and Brady do not seem to be imagining that something is wrong in quarterbacks’ professional growth. The benchings of Bryce Young and Anthony Richardson this season stand in contrast to how NFL teams operated not long ago.

From the 2014 through 2017 draft classes, teams only benched one first-round QB before he’d had at least three full seasons on the job. That player was Johnny Manziel, whose benching by the Browns owed to his off-field behavior as much as anything.

Now, though, NFL teams are much more comfortable benching – and ultimately moving on from – highly drafted passers early in their careers. Eight quarterbacks from the 2018 through 2023 draft classes have eventually gotten sent to the bench for performance reasons, and six of those eight haven’t even gotten through two full seasons before their teams decided they liked other QBs more. 

That doesn’t even count others like Trey Lance, who was picked third overall by the 49ers in 2021 but was injured in the second game of his sophomore season. Lance did not get another chance (thanks to the rise of Brock Purdy) and is now serving as the third-string QB in Dallas.

Roughly a decade ago, you had to be a spiraling Johnny Football to be a first-round pick and find the bench so early in your career. Now, it is practically routine: If a team is going to bench its first-round pick quarterback, it’s probably going to do it before he’s had the chance to play even two seasons. 

The Shrinking QB Audition 

Plenty of first-round picks don’t get benched, or at least avoid it until many years into their career when a younger option comes along and beats them out.

The ones who do get benched make for a useful frame of reference, though: In cases in which NFL teams decide they messed up with a first-round QB draftee, how long does it take them to reach that conclusion?

Gradually, it has taken them less time.

Every situation is different. We mentioned how Manziel lost his starting job in his second season because the Browns didn’t think he was acting like an NFL quarterback.

Washington reached the same conclusion about Dwayne Haskins in 2020, sitting him down in his second season after he both played poorly and flouted the NFL’s COVID protocols. Zach Wilson apparently had lost the Jets’ locker room by late in the 2022 season.

Whether it’s because the team finds the quarterback to be a pain or simply an ineffective player, the window of time in which teams decide they don’t like their first-round picks has shrunk. Teams that benched first-round QBs taken between 2014 and 2018 did so in an average time of 3.4 seasons. Teams that have benched them from the 2019 draft class onward have done so in an even two seasons.

A Range of Reasons to Cut Bait 

What’s going on? I certainly wouldn’t argue with Warner and Brady that quarterbacks often don’t enter the NFL with the necessary toolkit to beat NFL defenses, and teams play them before they’ve equipped them.

The proliferation of run/pass options and one- or two-read passing concepts in college football has given QBs an easier assignment in decoding defenses than their predecessors had. After all, making life easy on the quarterback is more or less the entire job of every college offensive coordinator in 2024. 

The NFL’s rookie wage scale encourages teams to ditch quarterbacks as soon as they are reasonably sure that the pick won’t work out. The most valuable asset in football is a productive QB on a salary-depressed rookie deal, a la Brock Purdy in San Francisco this season as he plays the last of a four-year contract worth less than $4 million in total. The flip side of that, however, is that teams don’t have a major financial commitment to a first-round pick who appears to be headed to Bustville. 

Would the Rams have allowed Sam Bradford to start for three and a half seasons if he were on a regulated rookie contract established in the 2011 collective bargaining agreement? Perhaps not.

Bradford, the No. 1 overall pick in 2010, had similar numbers in his first three seasons to the ones Kenny Pickett, the 20 pick in 2022, had in his first two before the Steelers benched and traded him. (In fact, Bradford and Pickett had the same yards per attempt in these spans and nearly identical quarterback ratings and sack rates.)

The No. 20 pick isn’t the same sunk cost that the No. 1 pick is, but you can imagine that the Steelers’ decision to cut ties was easier because Pickett had an easily tradable contract, while Bradford had a deal with $50 million guaranteed as the top pick in an era before the 2011 CBA. 

That doesn’t explain why quarterbacks in 2022 and 2023 are getting such a shorter leash than quarterbacks in 2014 and 2015, though.

One theory? Head coaches and general managers have caught onto how much likelier they are to keep their jobs if they decisively bench a failing first rounder and replace him with a lower-upside QB who can make the team passable and get to the playoffs.

The Colts may be following this blueprint in turning to the nearly elderly Joe Flacco to replace Richardson. The leaders of 9-8 playoff teams do not tend to get fired, even if they offer no path to a Super Bowl. 

When It’s Over, It’s Over 

When a team benches a healthy quarterback, the coach or general manager might frame it as a temporary move – or at least go out of his way not to describe it as permanent. Asked last week if Richardson might ever play for the Colts again, Indianapolis coach Shane Steichen replied, “That would be great. We’ll see.”

Steichen didn’t want to close the door, but his answer alluded to something obvious: If an NFL team benches a first-round QB, he is about to be out of the team’s long-term picture. 

Sometimes the QB returns to make a handful of starts before he skips town. Jameis Winston returned from his benching in the middle of 2018 after two weeks, and he even started for the Buccaneers for all of 2019. But Winston is an outlier, and none of the benched first-round quarterbacks from the past 10 years signed a second contract with the team that sat him down.

Young might hope that his recent return to the lineup suggests he and the Panthers could still have a happy marriage. Probably not. 

Is Richardson cooked as an NFL player? Is Young? Not necessarily. But both are likely finished as long-term options for the teams that spent top four picks on them, no matter how many games either starts over the next few months or even the next year.

Recent history suggests both have a better chance of making a career renaissance elsewhere than with the teams that first dreamed about their success. 

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