QB changes rule NFC's first 6 weeks

Did teams with new QBs take over the NFC?: Seaside Joe 2051

The Seattle Seahawks aren’t playing on Sunday, so thankfully every Seahawks writer including myself gets to take the day off. Why would I write on a Sunday in which the Seahawks aren’t even playing?! Therefore, there won’t be any newsletter today, you’re not even reading this sentence right now.

Finally after 2,050 days, a day off! There’s no Seaside Joe today! Except this one…

The Seahawks are 3-3 and not only did that drop them out of first place in the NFC West and out of the midseason playoff picture, Seattle’s looking up at a few more teams in the standings after Sunday. What I found interesting about today’s standings is that six of seven teams currently in the NFC playoff picture have added a quarterback more recently than the Seahawks turned the page from Russell Wilson to Geno Smith.

For whatever reason—partly coincidental, partly intentional—QB changes have ruled the NFC more than even the QBs themselves…

1. 5-0 Minnesota Vikings (Sam Darnold’s first start: Week 1 2024)

2. 4-2 Atlanta Falcons (Kirk Cousins’ first start: Week 1 2023)

3. 4-2 Washington Moons (Jayden Daniels’ first start: Week 1 2024)

4. 3-3 San Francisco 49ers (Brock Purdy’s first start: Week 14, 2022)

5. 4-1 Detroit Lions (Jared Goff’s first start: Week 1, 2021)

6. 4-2 Chicago Bears (Caleb Williams’ first start: Week 1, 2024)

7. 4-2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Baker Mayfield’s first start: Week 1 2023)

If we take a step further, the Green Bay Packers (Jordan Love’s first real start: Week 1 2023) are in eighth place.

Meanwhile, six of the eight NFC teams behind the Packers added their QB before at Geno’s start or earlier: The 1-4 Rams, 2-4 Cardinals, 2-3 Giants, 3-3 Seahawks, 3-2 Eagles, and 3-3 Cowboys would be those six teams.

The only exception is the 1-5 Panthers, however I’m talking about Bryce Young as if he’s Carolina’s starting quarterback. Either way, Andy Dalton would be the most recent change for the Panthers and clearly Carolina is far more competitive with Dalton than they were with Young.

The AFC is somewhat similar in that the 5-1 Texans drafted C.J. Stroud in 2023, the 4-2 Steelers made a change at quarterback (although they’re winning in spite of Justin Fields), and the 3-3 Colts are a dangerous team since Joe Flacco replaced an injured Anthony Richardson; Indianapolis could also be praised for drafting Richardson because we don’t know if that bold move could still pay off given that half of his plays are awesome, even if the other half are stupendously negative.

Is this commentary on Geno Smith?

Not really. The takeaway for me is that starting a few years ago, I started to believe/write that the NFC was up for grabs and the team that would get the advantage would be the team that found its own Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, or Justin Herbert. In 2022, the NFC quarterbacks were so bad relative to their AFC counterparts that I fully understood why the Panthers traded up for Young and respected the move.

Clearly Carolina chose the wrong quarterback, but the idea was right. The Seahawks stood back—as we should have expected—and let Young, Stroud, and Richardson go to other teams despite Denver’s gift to Seattle of the fifth overall pick and Chicago’s desire to trade down with the team that had the best offer.

I think Devon Witherspoon was definitely the right pick at 5, but I’ll always wonder: “What’s the thing that the Seahawks could have done differently to have known that Stroud would become a good quarterback?”

That’s, of course, the question all 32 GMs are asking themselves all the time.

Now look at the NFC since Seattle’s continued QB inactivity in the 2022 and 2023 drafts:

• 24-year-old Brock Purdy is probably the best quarterback in the NFC West and if that continues the Seahawks should be forming a counter-move

• The Bears drafted Caleb Williams, the Moons took Daniels, the Falcons signed Cousins + drafted Michael Penix, the Vikings signed Darnold + drafted J.J. McCarthy; all four teams are in the NFC playoff picture, three of them are leading their division, and the Bears are only not leading their division because of the Vikings

• QBs not currently in the NFC picture include: 26-year-old Jordan Love, 26-year-old Jalen Hurts, 27-year-old Kyler Murray

You know what teams look tired and old to me? The Rams with Matthew Stafford. The Saints with Derek Carr (who, by the way, looks tired and old compared to what I saw from Spencer Rattler, a fifth round rookie, on Sunday). The Cowboys with Dak Prescott.

I think that Seahawks fans can leave Seattle completely out of the equation when they answer the question, “Based on the RECENTLY UPDATED slate of quarterbacks in the conference, what does the NFC playoff picture look like for the next five years?”

Let me say some of the names again…Caleb, Jayden, Purdy, Mayfield, Cousins, Penix, J.J., Love, Hurts, Murray, Goff, Dak…

(For Goff, it sure appears to me that the Lions gave him the perfect situation, but most teams can’t expect to put a quarterback in the perfect situation.)

That’s 12 quarterbacks. Teams that don’t have quarterbacks to develop, teams like the Rams, Giants, maybe the Panthers, and maybe the Saints if Rattler doesn’t play well enough to keep the job even after Carr returns, well I would expect them to try and get quarterbacks to develop in 2025.

Is it risky for the Seahawks to continue to sit out of the quarterback race, as they have for almost their entire 49-season history except for the two times that they drafted a quarterback earlier than the third round?

So what should they do?

I LIKE the Seahawks focusing on making a GOOD TEAM before they tried to get a quarterback besides Geno. (No disrespect to Sam Howell, but I can’t go off of anything other than his one season as a starter in Washington.) It worked when they did it prior to drafting Russell Wilson, it should work again if Seattle is so lucky as to land 8-10 Pro Bowl quality starters on both sides of the ball. I’m not coming down on the Seahawks for their recent draft picks like Witherspoon, Charles Cross, Kenneth Walker, Boye Mafe, Derick Hall, Byron Murphy, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, etc.…I like and support all the picks! It feels to me like the Seahawks haven’t made mistakes, but that the other teams might have gotten an advantage recently anyway.

You can like what the Seahawks have done while acknowledging that damn…the Super Bowl could be very hard to achieve now that Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams, Brock Purdy, and who knows who else is taking snaps in a conference that was barren at the position only a few years ago.

Geno Smith made the Pro Bowl as an NFC QB in 2022 and 2023. So did Dak, Stafford, and Jalen Hurts.

I have a feeling we might see all new faces representing the NFC in the Pro Bowl in 2024.

Thanks for reading Seaside Joe today…Was there even a Seaside Joe today?