All Quarterback Development Strategies are Equally Wrong (Mailbag Pt. 3)

But that means all quarterback developmental strategies are equally right. Except the strategy not to have a strategy. I think.

Welcome to Part 3 of the Too Deep Zone Mailbag! It’s been quite a journey. Part 1 covered mostly train wrecks like the Cowboys and Jets. Part 2 dipped into the stats to learn more about the Ravens, Bengals, Chargers and other teams. Part 3 deals with big-picture questions. So light up a clove cigarette and get ready to get philosophical! 

Would you think the Pro Football Hall Of Fame (and other HOFs) would be better if they followed the LPGA model of having an objective threshold after which you automatically qualify? Or would you prefer to keep a little art in the process? Also, do you have an objective set of criteria for your personal HOF? – Kevin Toland

Dear heavens, please, no objective thresholds or criteria. 

Everyone agrees that Patrick Mahomes is a Hall of Famer right now, correct? (Glares at the members of the DVOA Discord who post things like I’m not sure about Drew Brees to keep their hands down.) Mahomes just cleared 30,000 passing yards. So maybe 30,000 yards can be an objective threshold! Except:

• It’s so low that guys like Ryan Fitzpatrick cleared it;

• It’s so high it disqualifies Len Dawson, Terry Bradshaw, Ken Stabler and many other legends;

• It would also have disqualified Mahomes if he retired three weeks ago. Do you think Mahomes clinched his Hall of Fame status in the last three weeks?

We can do the same thing with any other criteria, including Pro Bowl berths and such. Any threshold would either be trivially low or so high that it would disqualify legends of past eras. 

The “art” of the Pro Football Hall of Fame process, flawed and confusing at it is, boils down to lots of experts hand-analyzing the candidates and whittling down their numbers in stages. Any candidate who fails to meet some perceived threshold but still reaches the finalist stage must have some unique qualifications that pushed him ahead of many of his peers. I would rather see such uniqueness have its “day in court” when the enshrinement committee meets than see some interesting character from football history banned from consideration due to arbitrary benchmarks.

As for my personal head-canon: years of talking to Hall of Fame voters and studying the process has squashed it. I think in terms of who may reach the Finalist stage and who might get log-jammed with five similar players before he gets there. It makes me zero fun during casual Hall of Fame debates, which generally boil down to some hometown fan pounding the table for a favorite player who would be about the 37th most qualified candidate on any honest list. 

We have seen examples of teams that have great success with a great quarterback and mediocre receivers but also teams that have had great success with mediocre quarterbacks but great receivers. Given the relative difficulty of finding a quarterback versus finding great receivers, which way would you go about building a team? – Josh R.

Let me answer Josh’s second question and then double back. 

Also, if you could be isekai’ed into any fictional universe, which would you choose? – Josh R.

The Star Trek universe. No contest. A post-scarcity galaxy where humans have overcome nearly all of our problems and fly around space butting into other planets’ business in between hosting string-quartet concertos for each other and engaging in wild holodeck sex fantasies? SIGN ME UP. 

And now for the team building.

After years of interacting with highly-invested NFL fans through social media, Discord, message boards and the like, I often find myself answering variations on the following two questions within five minutes of each other:

• Why hasn’t my favorite team attempted the seven-year, 30-step team-building concept that my favorite analytics guru outlined in 2017? And …

• My favorite team’s record is 5-6. Why haven’t they fired both the coach and GM yet?

You see the paradox, right? It lies at the center of most conversations of how to build a team: everyone should be innovative and daring, and also summarily fired for any oddball decision which does not pay immediate dividends.