National Football League

Breaking down the 2015 bad quarterback carousel

Published Mar. 25, 2015 12:45 p.m. ET

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By Sam Quinn

What? You want the combined winning percentage of last year’s bad quarterback carousel riders? I’m glad you asked! We’ll turn this into a guessing game. Was it above .500? Of course not! Maybe that was sort of optimistic, but 40 percent would be a fairer estimate, right? Try again! Ok, ok, but surely these guys won at least one third of their starts? Not a chance, that’s far too ambitious for the riders of the bad quarterback carousel.

The exact answer? 32.4 percent. You’d have to try really hard to find another subset of quarterbacks that won a smaller percentage of their games. Arizona’s backups did better. So did the undrafted pair of Shaun Hill and Austin Davis in St. Louis. Freaking Jeff George won 36 percent of his games.

That’s the beauty of the bad quarterback carousel. You come out of the offseason with so much hope. Maybe you’ve added a star receiver and a new head coach. Maybe you have the best defense in the league or an offensive line so dominant your quarterback should never get sacked. All you need is competence from your quarterback. And then, suddenly, it’s Week 2 and you realize Matt Cassel threw your season away somewhere between his third and fourth interception. Ladies and gentlemen, the bad quarterback carousel!

To recap, the concept is fairly simple. There is a weirdly incestuous relationship between bad teams and bad quarterbacks. Every year, the same few bad teams seem to rotate through the same few bad quarterbacks utterly convinced that this is the year he’ll figure it out. And then, once again, the team realizes it’s starting Matt Cassel at quarterback and the whole season disappears into a 5–11 nightmare. Yes, Matt Cassel is going to feature heavily in this year’s carousel.

Think of it like the game of musical chairs in the classic Simpsons episode, “You Only Move Twice.” There are far more chairs than students, only the students are too dumb to realize anything odd is going on so they just move from chair to chair with no end in sight. That, my friends, is the bad quarterback carousel.

JOSH MCCOWN

Tampa Bay Buccaneers to Cleveland Browns

I’d say “so much for the McCownassiance,” but hot damn, apparently there was a bidding war for McCown’s services. No, really, multiple teams actually wanted this guy. Was it like one of those dances that only happen in movies where the goal is to bring the ugliest date possible? Is McCown going to show up to training camp, see Jason Campbell and Matt Schaub there and realize what’s happening? Who plays the childhood best friend who consoles him and admits they’ve always thought he was pretty? It has to be Dennis Green, right? We’re getting off track.

BRIAN HOYER 

Cleveland Browns to Houston Texans

In football terms, I’d probably argue against pinning your hopes on Brian Hoyer and Ryan Mallet. But the prophecy is crystal clear: the team that gathers two of the Brady backups, gives each one half of the amulet and a vial of blood from the brothers Manning, and then has them chant the incantation “I didn’t alter the balls in any way,” 12 times under a red and blue moon will be given their very own Tom Brady. The logic is airtight. Smart thinking by Bill O’Brien, a former Belichick assistant, to pull something out of his former boss’s bag of dark arts tricks.

RYAN FITZPATRICK

Houston Texans to New York Jets

The substitute teacher strikes again! Logic tells us one thing about Ryan Fitzpatrick; history, another. Nobody wants Ryan Fitzpatrick to be their starting quarterback. Whether in St. Louis, Buffalo, Tennessee, or Houston, there was always supposed to be a rookie to develop, a veteran to chase a ring, even another carousel rider to make sure their team doesn’t have to start a Harvard graduate at quarterback. But sure enough, October rolls around and Fitzpatrick is somebody’s starting quarterback.

I know exactly where this is going. The Jets are going to draft Marcus Mariota. He’ll look incredible for three weeks. Then he’ll tear his ACL in Week 4 and I’ll be saying things like, “you know, Fitzpatrick did have a 95.3 quarterback rating last year with an aging Andre Johnson,” and, “his burly facial hair will surely protect him from the harsh Meadowland winters.”

CHRISTIAN PONDER

Minnesota Vikings to Oakland Raiders

Jeff Garcia alert! Jeff Garcia alert! Every year, some brazen rider thinks he’s too good for the carousel and, rather than taking a dignified backup job under a good coaching staff, decides to take a backup job for a team that’s not nearly as stable as it seems in the hopes of staging a late November coup when the original quarterback fails.

Last year, it was Jason Campbell, whose plan to steal Andy Dalton’s job would’ve succeeded if Marvin Lewis knew he was still coaching the Bengals. Sure, Derek Carr looks like he’s Oakland’s quarterback of the future. But Jack Del Rio didn’t pick Carr. He’s coming from a team that’s won 38 games in the last three years and he’s something of a quarterback adulterer (just ask David Garrard, who was both the quarterback mistress when Byron Leftwich was the expected starter and the cheated on quarterback wife when Luke McCown came out of nowhere to steal his job). There is absolutely a scenario where Carr’s 58.1 percent completion percentage doesn’t improve, the Raiders lose three division games in four weeks and Del Rio decides to go with the “steadying veteran hand.” This is the majesty of the bad quarterback carousel.

MATT CASSEL

Minnesota Vikings to Buffalo Bills

Hang on, hang on, cue the Super Smash Bros. hidden character music. We have a challenger for Cassel’s spot on the carousel!

TYROD TAYLOR

Baltimore Ravens to Buffalo Bills

In one corner, standing in at 6.6 yards per attempt, with zero college starts: MATTTTTTTTT CASSELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!! And in the other corner, with 35 career throws and the same number of career touchdown passes as 19th century English poet Aleister Crowley, he has been sacked on 12.5 percent of his drop backs: THE ONE, THE ONLY, TYRODDDDDDDD TAYYYYYYYLORRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do not discount Taylor. Rex Ryan has a weird obsession with gadget players not named Tim Tebow. Brad Smith played 300 snaps in 2010 for reasons that remain unclear. Antonio Cromartie got snaps at wide receiver. Rex is just in love with the idea of surprising defenses with untalented players.

If you’re going to have a bad quarterback either way, why not have a bad quarterback who can run rather than one who can’t? That at least keeps defenses honest and gives you something you can call dynamic. There’s also a bit of mystery around Cassel. Ryan knows that he sucks. We can reasonably assume the same about Taylor, but are we 100 percent sure? The bad quarterback you know is much, much worse than the bad quarterback you don’t.

SAM BRADFORD AND NICK FOLES

St. Louis Rams/Philadelphia Eagles swap

Neither is a carousel rider yet, but the committee has its eye on both. Ironically, neither was even considered until they were traded for each other. If Nick Foles is that good, would he have been traded for a guy who’s torn his ACL twice AND a second-round pick? Conversely, if St. Louis didn’t see Bradford as an improvement over the two-headed under-throwing goliath of Austin Davis and Shaun Hill, is he really good enough to avoid carousel placement? Early odds place Sam Bradford with a (-180) chance to get hurt in Philly, sign with Cleveland and hop on the 2016 carousel while Foles is currently (+145) to compete for Houston’s 2016 job with the committee giving him an above-average shot to stick around at least two years in St. Louis.

IN MEMORIAM

Carousel stalwart and Andy Dalton thwarter Jason Campbell has received virtually no interest on the free agent market. He’ll likely end up as a short-notice Washington starter around Week 9, but until that happens, Campbell is off of the carousel.

The crown jewel of the 2015 carousel recruiting class, Jake Locker, retired in an obvious effort to rob me of content.

Colt McCoy and Jimmy Clausen both started 2014 games, hit the market, and then willingly returned to their old situations as presumptive backups rather than taking a spin on the carousel. They didn’t even have the decency to sign with Arizona.

And then there’s Matt Schaub. Poor Matt Schaub. He hopped on last year’s carousel as one of the most accomplished riders in history (he made two Pro Bowls!) Now the Raiders don’t even want him. Schaub’s second career as an NFL hobo riding the rails from Oakland, to Jacksonville, to Cleveland, to Buffalo ended before it could ever begin.

Gentleman, you will be missed.

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