686. Why Is It So Hard to Find an NFL Quarterback?

Stephen Dubner (0:05)

If you have ever been responsible for hiring people, you may have developed a checklist of some kind, something to help you identify the perfect person for the job. So as you assess your candidates, you want to be sure that they are good at problem solving.

Stephen Smith (0:20)

They can see what's happening, they can understand what's going right, they can understand what's going wrong.

Stephen Dubner (0:24)

You will want to know if they are good communicators.

Scott Goldman (0:27)

XBlue, Z9, Sevens, blah, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera.

Stephen Dubner (0:31)

You may also want to know whether they can handle chaos.

Kurt Warner (0:34)

How much can you take in? How much can you see? How much can you handle? Can you respond when it's getting tougher?

Stephen Dubner (0:41)

In some jobs, some very specialized jobs, may even require certain key physical attributes.

Stephen Smith (0:49)

We look at height, we look at speed, we look at armor strength, we look at accuracy. You can't be a good quarterback and be bad at those things.

Stephen Dubner (1:02)

And in the National Football League, you can't win unless you have a good quarterback, or maybe a great one. It is the most important position in the NFL. And since the NFL is the world's biggest commercial sports operation, this means that hiring a new quarterback is a big dollar, high risk decision. So how does that decision get made?

Every year, there is a fresh crop of college quarterbacks who enter the NFL draft. College football would seem to be the ultimate audition for the pros. It generates mountains of evidence, statistical and otherwise. And then the NFL holds a combine where all 32 teams get to poke and prod the new talent. Part meat market, part beauty pageant, part job fair.

These teams are simply trying to predict which of the best college quarterbacks will succeed in the pros. How hard can that be?

Stephen Smith (1:57)

Quarterback evaluation is probably one of the most studied and still most uncertain problems in all of professional sport.

Stephen Dubner (2:02)

If you are a football fan, you already know this. You know that NFL draft history is littered with can't miss quarterbacks who miss big time. You also know that some of the very best quarterbacks were overlooked in the draft. Tom Brady was the 199th player taken in his draft season. And in 2022, the San Francisco 49ers chose Brock Purdy with the very last pick of the draft, earning him the nickname Mr. Irrelevant. Purdy was the 9th quarterback taken that season, but he has turned out to be easily the best quarterback from that class.

This quarterback prediction problem has been discussed for a while. A 2011 research paper found that college and combine statistics have little value in predicting whether a quarterback will be successful in the NFL.

Why is this such a hard problem? And what does it take to thrive as an NFL quarterback? To find out, we will hear from a Hall of Fame quarterback, a professional scout, a pioneering sports psychologist, and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who wants to fundamentally change how athletic potential is evaluated. Also, you'll hear me take a very specialized IQ test.

SPEAKER_5 (3:18)

Now you're going to see more designs.

That's brutal. To make the designs you see.

Stephen Dubner (3:24)

That's brutal.

SPEAKER_5 (3:25)

Each time you have finished.

Stephen Dubner (3:27)

Well, what happened there? Mama, brutal.

Today on Freakonomics Radio, how to pick or in my case, how not to pick a great NFL quarterback.

SPEAKER_6 (3:52)

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

Stephen Dubner (4:08)

The rookie quarterback that everyone has their eyes on this year is Fernando Mendoza. The Las Vegas Raiders took him with the first overall pick in the draft. Last year, Mendoza led Indiana University to an undefeated season in its first ever national championship. Will Mendoza thrive in the NFL?

No one knows for sure, but the expectations are huge. Mendoza got very high grades from most draft analysts. Although we should say these analysts are often dead wrong. They make sins of commission and sins of omission. Consider this former quarterback who wasn't even invited to the NFL combine.

Kurt Warner (4:46)

I was told that I had a grade that was good enough to go to the combine, but they passed me up to take a guy from a bigger school.

Stephen Dubner (4:53)

That is Kurt Warner. He grew up in Iowa and played his college football at Northern Iowa, which is not a football powerhouse.

What's he do now?

Kurt Warner (5:03)