Top 5 QB rankings for 2023 NFL Draft
Seaside Bonus: They will call #2-#5 a surprise, but they can't say that I'm wrong (yet)
“I want to be able to say something against the status quo, without losing everything I have.” - Patrice O’Neal
If we were using the NFL Draft as an opportunity to say something against the status quo, examples from 2017 and later would include statements like these:
“Patrick Mahomes will become the best player in the NFL”; “Lamar Jackson will win MVP… and soon”; “Josh Rosen is one of the worst top-10 picks in history”; “Kyler Murray will be a better quarterback than a baseball player”; “Joe Burrow will become the world’s greatest football prospect after his fifth college season”; and “Kenny Pickett will be the only 2022 quarterback drafted in the top-70”.
Thanks to the internet and social media, it is much more apparent these days how much responsibility so many people believe that they have to DEFEND the status quo. Even though our movie heroes and television characters that we root for are almost always people who are fighting against popular beliefs or the dominant forces on the top of a hierarchy, for some reason when we get into real life the most powerful instinct is to fall in line.
Our mouths say: “Be yourself! Be honest! Speak your truth!”
Our actions say: If your truth is different than my truth, you must by crazy.
In the mainstream media, I get so tired and so bored with the same narratives and beliefs being pushed at certain times of the year. The same mock drafts. The same draft grades. The same preseason record predictions. The same MVP odds. The same takes on the same players, same teams, and same situations.
I’m not same.
And while I appreciate that sentiment that people share with me of “Hell yeah, you be you,” the reality is that not being the same does come with sacrifices and punishment. Back when I was addicted to Twitter, an all-day everyday user, it could feel impossible to be different because the backlash (or worse yet: no lash because you’re out of the algorithm) meant that you weren’t getting those same dopamine hits.
So why do I believe that NFL Twitter’s status quo is lacking? Because there is no texture to opinions. “Be careful not to be different, you may not get as much attention. Be too different, and your friends may question if they will be guilty by association.”
Now that I’m more than two years removed from Twitter, really only ‘sending tweet’ when I’m trying to promote this newsletter, I feel much more free to be me.
That does not mean that I will always be right. It means that there will be no gap between what I say and what I actually believe, because I have no fear of ostracization. I have no hidden agendas. I am not trying to scam you into clicking a headline or baiting you with really popular opinions of the things you already like.
My only agenda is that hopefully if I’m completely honest, eventually 10,000 Seahawks fans will find this newsletter to be more righteous and more willing to go against the status quo in the search for truth than the rest of your potential resources.
I guarantee you that my current top-five quarterback rankings for the 2023 NFL Draft will not be like any other person’s top-five. You will also have the promise that if you follow this newsletter throughout the year, you will get the same result that Seaside Joe subscribers got from me in the lead-up to the 2022 NFL Draft: completely honest takes on the progress and regression of those players on a weekly basis.
It would have been salacious and popular for me to tell you that Malik Willis or Desmond Ridder would be realistic picks for the Seahawks in the first round. It would not have been honest.
These are my initial top-five QB rankings for 2023 and this edition will be for premium Regular Joes subscribers. I will share highlights of all five and discuss my reasoning for projecting them as I have, knowing full well that this order will go against the status quo. Given how wrong football fans are about the top-five year after year, any good list should go against the status quo.