The Year of the Class of 2018
The 2024 season saw the redemption of Sam Darnold, the canonization of Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, the validation of Baker Mayfield and the reinvigoration of Saquon Barkley.
The road back from draft-bust oblivion makes the journey to Mordor look like a stroll down Easy Street. The path is paved with broken promises and wishful thinking, lined with naysayers and hucksters, dotted with the pitfalls of tarnished reputations, tattered self-confidence and the bruised body and bad habits caused by weekly pummelings. Failed quarterback prospects embark on the redemption road seeking fresh starts and second chances, but most fade slowly into the fog or irrelevance, forgotten by everyone except the bitterest fans and the cynical scribes of “Worst Draft Pick Ever” listicles.
Sam Darnold’s penitent’s pilgrimage took him from the Jets to the Panthers, Adam Gase to Matt Rhule, frying pan to fire, clown to the left to joker to the right. Darnold served as an understudy to the 49ers’ Mister Cinderelevent for a year before signing on for a hitch as J.J. McCarthy’s mentor/stunt double. That’s what a downward spiral looks like from its final turn, folks.
And now here’s Darnold leading a team that could clinch the #1 seed in the NFC playoffs next week, ranking third in the league in passing yards and fourth in touchdown passes and looking much like the player the Jets were hoping for when they selected him third overall in the brilliant, complicated, star-crossed Class of 2018.
Darnold is one of the central characters of the 2024 NFL season, the hero who unlocks his superpowers in the third act. He would be a shoo-in for the Comeback Player of the Year Award if the Associated Press didn’t have a stick up its ass about the precise definition of a “comeback.” He is both a symbol of hope and a vexing reminder that both fans and sock puppets like me are often too quick to shovel dirt on a still-breathing prospect. And he could easily end up in the Super Bowl.
I am one of many who have been slow to embrace Darnold this year. He carries the baggage of not just his Jets and Panthers disappointments but of the fluky 2017 and 2022 Vikings. But Darnold is no longer the kid the New York tabloids used as a hacky-sack or Rhule used to prolong his seven-year plan. He is no Case Keenum, who threw 13 fewer touchdown passes in a much less impressive Vikings season.
And if Darnold is another Kirk Cousins, destined to be a B-tier starter who keeps his teams competitive and relevant for a decade, that’s a heck of a lot better than where he was headed six months ago.
The road also traveled
If we’re talking about torturous journeys back from the draft-bust brink, someone needs to hold Baker Mayfield’s beer.
Mayfield was the Class of 2018’s rebel without a cause. The Browns tried to tear him apart. Hue Jackson said one thing, Todd Haley said another, and the two coaches played chicken until they drove the franchise off a cliff.
Just as Mayfield established himself as a mid-tier starter, Jimmy Haslam decided that this Faust fellow drove a pretty fair bargain: all of the Browns’ money, the team’s future and its soul in exchange for the morally bankrupt man behind the curtain. Mayfield got dumped on the Panthers’ doorstep as an unwanted challenger for Darnold. The two quarterbacks battled while Rhule fiddled. The Panthers burned. Mayfield ended the 2022 season filling in for injured Matthew Stafford in Los Angeles, his third team in an eight-month span.
The Buccaneers signed Mayfield to replace Tom Brady until they could come up with a better option, like maybe trying to coax Brady out of retirement again. It was a job for an affordable, expendable man, and Mayfield was forced to compete with the nondescript Kyle Trask to earn it. By Thanksgiving of 2023, the Buccaneers were 4-7, and Mayfield – who lacks the preferred temperament for a mentoring backup – appeared ready for the next stop on his journey to the dustbin.
But the Buccaneers went 4-1 down the 2023 stretch, then beat the Eagles in the playoffs. Mayfield, who played credibly when the Bucs were losing, got hot. The Bucs rewarded him with a three-year contract. Mayfield spent the 2024 season proving again that he’s a capable NFL starter unworthy of scorn and derision.
Mayfield has thrived in an ecosystem which was created to keep the greatest quarterback in history healthy and happy into his mid-40s. Like Darnold, he was fortunate to land on a solid roster with a stable coaching staff but reduced expectations, strange circumstances conducive to career necromancy. Great prospects usually land in miserable situations by design – teams don’t earn top-five draft picks by having their acts together – and those who suffer early setbacks don’t often possess the alchemical combination of talent, gumption and good fortune to get a fourth chance to make the most of. Mayfield and Darnold did.
We can quibble about where Mayfield and Darnold rank among the NFL’s current starters. But they definitely rank. And both were better than Aaron Rodgers or Cousins, nine-figure albatrosses around their teams’ necks. There’s no need to even mention that Browns guy. Darnold and Mayfield have bright futures, starting in two (or three) weeks.
The stone the builders (and the one the hipsters) rejected
Ho hum. Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen are competing for the MVP award again.
Jackson has been better than Allen this year. But Jackson’s Ravens kept tripping over beatable opponents, while Allen’s biggest moments came in primetime showdowns. Also, Jackson won last year, and 2024 just feels like Allen’s turn. No matter: they will finish first and second in the balloting, and their teams will once again play deep into January.
Jackson, you certainly recall, is the Class of 2018 quarterback that problematic old-school Bill Polian-types wanted to move to wide receiver. Allen, meanwhile, was a chewtoy for the draftnik and analytics intelligentsia: another tall white kid with a ballistic arm and the accuracy of a toppled-over sundial. The 2018 draft offered a chance for everyone to fall victim to their preconceptions. It also gave us a pair of quarterbacks who are redefining the game.
Every team wants a Jackson or Allen now, in part because finding a rainbow unicorn like Patrick Mahomes just feels too unlikely. Jackson begot Jayden Daniels. Allen begot Drake Maye. Caleb Williams combines elements of both. There are plenty of negative examples to go along with the positive ones – Will Levis and Anthony Richardson are ersatz Allens; Justin Fields and Bryce Young are Jackson wannabes missing the secret ingredients – but it's undeniable that Allen and Jackson have changed our expectations. We demand quarterbacks who can run, whether they provide Jackson-like balletics or Allen-esque bulldozing. We expect more than a touch of unscripted downfield derring-do. Meticulous dismantlement of the defense from the pocket was all well and good for Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. Who has the attention span for that these days? More scrambles and bombs, please and thank you.
Jackson’s career appeared to be on the skids just two years ago: injuries ruined his 2021 and 2022 seasons, and his contract situation turned into an embarrassing boondoggle of miscommunication and misinformation. The story of the Class of 2018 was in danger of devolving into Josh Allen and the Cautionary Tales, just as the Class of 1999 dissolved into a disappointing Donovan McNabb biopic. Instead, we wait each year to see if Allen or Jackson can topple Mahomes/each other in the most anticipated matchups of the postseason, just as fans my age once waited to see Dan Marino take on Jim Kelly take on John Elway.
Think back to the moment when Jackson was on the (largely theoretical) trading block, Mayfield had just signed on as the new singer in Brady’s tribute band and the Panthers left Darnold out with the recyclables. It was inconceivable then that we would be talking about all three of them as bonafide franchise quarterbacks for playoff teams on New Year’s Day of 2025. Seen through a wider lens than the one we use for the week-to-week grind, the redemption of the Class of 2018 we are currently living through looks downright implausible.
The rhyming of history
Saquon Barkley demands a mention in any discussion of the 2018 draft. Barkley earned his place in history by rushing for over 2,000 yards, dragging the Eagles out of their mood swings and back into the Super Bowl picture. But it was still folly for the Giants to draft a running back second overall and try to figure out the rest later.
Barkley was respected, even revered, as he dealt for years with a hopeless situation in the Meadowlands. He never really needed redemption. It’s the Giants who have proven irredeemable.
Josh Rosen must also be mentioned. Like Darnold and Mayfield, he careened from bad situation to worse at the start of his career. But Rosen was the wrong man for the wrong moments, a pricklier-than-Mayfield personality always clashing with the most unrepentantly old-school defensive head coaches. Every draft class needs a Todd Blackledge.
It took seven years for the Quarterback Class of 2018 to fully come into its own. That should not be surprising. What’s surprising is that we expect results after one year and pronounce final judgments after two.
We should know better. Quarterback development is an equation with ten thousand variables, each of them a function of still other variables, many of them uncertain and unknowable. Of course it's chaotic. Yet we expect Bryce Young to immediately overcome all odds for an awful franchise. We project a rocket-ship trajectory based on C.J. Stroud’s early success, forgetting that the phrase “sophomore slump” derives from decades of unforeseen setbacks. We will do the same things to Jayden Daniels and Caleb Williams during the long offseason, casting them in the roles of Jackson and Mayfield, with Drake Maye as either Allen or Darnold, guessing as badly about their futures as we did about their predecessors. In five or ten years, we’ll have retold each other their stories so many times that the parts we scribbled out will be long forgotten. Such is the rough draft of history.
The 2024 season redeemed the Class of 2018 while introducing a class of its own. The 2030 season will greet us with surprises we cannot hope to anticipate now. But we’ll probably still be talking about Darnold and Mayfield, as well as Allen and Jackson.
That’s a good thing, because the Neverending Quarterback Narrative is far more compelling with a few characters who have been to hell and back.
Happy New Year from the Too Deep Zone. See you next Monday with a jam-packed Walkthrough playoff preview.
"Just as Mayfield established himself as a mid-tier starter, Jimmy Haslam decided that this Faust fellow drove a pretty fair bargain"
I hate to be that guy, but in this analogy, Jimmy Haslam is Faust, as he's accepting the bargain. Mephistopheles is the one offering the bargain.
If the other commenters see fit to stuff me in a locker and take my lunch money, I have no one but myself to blame.
"the accuracy of a toppled sundial" is a fantastic line.