Headline Play Guest: Quarterback Scramble

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Quarterback Scramble

by Dennis Ranahan

What do Jeff Christenson, Babe Laufenberg, Reggie Collier, Gary Kubiak, Tom Ramsey and Bruce Mathison have in common with John Elway, Todd Blackridge, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason, Ken O’Brien and Dan Marino?

They were the next six quarterbacks chosen in the 1983 National Football League Draft after Elway, Blackridge, Kelly, Eason, O’Brien and Marino were selected in the first round. No quarterback was chosen after the Miami Dolphins took Marino with the 27th pick until Christenson was selected by the Cincinnati Bengals in the fifth round with the 137th pick in the draft.

What can we learn from this information?

Well, why it is fashionable to point out that Joe Montana wasn’t selected until the third round, the San Francisco 49ers tabbed him with the 82nd pick in the 1979 draft, and Tom Brady lasted until the sixth round, chosen by the New England Patriots with the 199th pick in the 2000 draft, most often the scouts get it right.

Now, there are often some unsubstantiated claims about certain players that taint their viability on draft day. In 1983, there was a rumor that Marino had a drug problem, it is not verified that the Dolphins planted the story, but they certainly were the team that benefited from the false claim. Without that story circulating, we could have expected Marino would not have been the last of the six first round quarterbacks chosen that year.

This year, recent reports have Ohio State’s quarterback Justin Fields battling epilepsy. This is not a false rumor and has been confirmed by Fields who has battled it since a child and has managed it to where episodes are less frequent and it has never affected his play on the field. Still, the news may cool the 49ers prospects of drafting him with the third pick in the draft and shift their thinking to Alabama’s Mac Jones.

In 1998, troubling personal reports about the questionable conduct of Marshall Wide Receiver Randy Moss had him slip to a later than anticipated first round choice. Then, Dennis Green, the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, went with what he saw on film and discarded the negative media stories to select Moss with the 21st pick in the first round.

Three of the first 25 players chosen in the first round in 1998 earned a bust in Canton, those Hall of Fame entrants were Peyton Manning, Charles Woodson and Moss.

In other words, teams are cautioned against overreaching to late news reports that dampen the enthusiasm they once had for a gifted athlete.

It is expected five quarterbacks will be selected in the first round in this year’s draft. Trevor Lawrence will go first to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and it is expected the New York Jets will take Zach Wilson with the second pick.

The 49ers third pick in the draft is less certain, with any of the remaining “big three” a possible choice. That list includes Fields, Jones and North Dakota State’s Trey Lance.

So, will the scouting departments that spend a first round choice on a quarterback this year get it right?

In 1983, three Hall of Fame signal callers went in the first round, but they were not the first three picked. Elway was the first choice, but the other two Hall of Fame members, Jim Kelly and Dan Marino, were selected third and sixth among quarterbacks in that first round.

So, put these five in your order, Lawrence, Wilson, Jones, Fields and Lance, and see if you outdo those that are paid to get it right.

Steelers and Hoops

by Dennis Ranahan

While I’m giving myself a vacation from delivering NCAA Tournament picks, I can’t help but notice that Purdue lands in a very healthy motivational spot. Last year, they became only the second team in NCAA Basketball Tournament history to lose an opening game against a team seeded 16th. The key players in that upset loss are back this year.

Just from where I’m sitting, Purdue and Connecticut appear likely foes in the title game on April 8.

Now back to the National Football League, where this best reality show in the world has sent us into the 2024 campaign with a flurry of interesting developments. The bold moves promise to affect which team emerges from the season with the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

A year ago, I thought the Steelers had found their quarterback of the future. Rookie Kenny Pickett, the first quarterback chosen in the first round by Pittsburgh since they selected Ben Roethlisberger with the tenth overall selection in 2004, appeared on the precipice of being a solid franchise quarterback. Pickett flourished in the second half of his first season to keep Mike Tomlin’s career record of all winning seasons, now a record 17, intact. He seemed to have both the skillset and that intangible element that adds a winning attitude to the equation.

Today, one year later, Pickett is penciled in as the backup in Philadelphia. The Eagles acquired him from the Steelers while Tomlin added two new quarterbacks to work with in Pittsburgh. The Steelers acquired Russell Wilson from the Denver Broncos and Justin Fields from the Chicago Bears.

It is not the first attempt by the Steelers to milk some of the talent the Bears expected when they made a quarterback their first round draft choice. Seven years ago, it was Mitch Trubisky who they selected eight picks in front of the Kansas City Chiefs choosing Patrick Mahomes in 2017. Trubisky failed in Chicago and was dismal in relief of an injured Pickett last season during his only year in Pittsburgh.

Fields was also a first round quarterback stab that missed in Chicago. While the Steelers had no success with Trubisky, they hope to revive the fortunes of the Bears 2021 first round pick.

Whenever the Steelers do something, it has to be first evaluated from the history of the Pittsburgh organization most often making the right decisions. If the tandem of Russell Wilson and Justin Fields evolves into a partnership that first has Wilson running the bulk of the action on the field, while sharing the quarterback duties with Fields, this could be a dynamic year for the quarterbacks in Pittsburgh. If their relationship develops, as Tomlin might hope, the duo will evolve into the younger Fields getting the majority of the Broncos offensive snaps in seasons to come.

On the negative side, this season could add further evidence that Wilson is done as a top flight quarterback. A third straight losing season would add credence to that assessment. If Wilson is washed up, Fields would probably be inserted as the starter in the second half of this season. If he fails in that role, the Steelers will still be needing to look elsewhere to fill their quarterback slot with franchise talent.

Tomlin’s first choice will be to have Wilson rekindle the kind of play that had him burst on the NFL scene as a Seattle Seahawks third round draft pick out of Wisconsin in 2012. His play during his initial preseason had Wilson beat out highly paid recently acquired quarterback Matt Flynn. In his first three NFL campaigns, Wilson led Seattle to a pair of Super Bowls and a Super Bowl victory.

His brilliance was absent when he was jettisoned to Denver two years ago. Even the addition of a seasoned head coach following the disastrous campaign directed by fired head coach Nathaniel Hackett, failed to revitalized Wilson’s game in Denver. Hackett’s replacement, Sean Payton, was considered a top quarterback coach but his relationship with Wilson didn’t reverse Wilson’s downward spiral.

The results for Russell in 2023 were no better than it had been during his first year-long egg in the Mile High City. This season, Payton stays in Denver, but the quarterback he was initially hired to rehabilitate, is in Pittsburgh. Based on results, Steelers fans will either embrace the Steelers success and hail Wilson or unleash their savage instincts during another dismal campaign for the newly acquired Steelers signal-caller..

As for my basketball observation, the only team, other than last year’s Purdue squad, to open the tournament as a top seed and not make the second round, was the Virginia Cavaliers in 2018. In what would have to be considered a year-long motivational spike carrying that stigma, the Cavaliers bounced from losing to a 16th seed to winning it all in 2019.

This year, Purdue has bounced from that stunning loss to a season that earned them a number one seed in this year’s tournament. They have dominated Grambling State and Utah State in the opening weekend with double-digit wins and point spread covers. Now they face a talented Gonzaga squad, who have a pair of victories while playing out of the fifth seed in the Midwest Region.

Appears to me that Purdue is in a really good spot to cover the 5½ point line Friday in Detroit.

NCAA Does it Right

by Dennis Ranahan

The NCAA has tipped off one of the greatest events in sports, the college Basketball Tournament.

While the National Football League is my business, I believe the coming weeks are the most exciting in sports. Sixty-four teams participating in four regions. When the NCAA crowns their basketball champion next month 63 of those teams will have lost a game … one will emerge champion.

The NCAA Tournament is so well designed that any of the teams that make the 64 team field can win the championship. In college football, there are more bowl games than fans to fill the stadiums. And, while more than 100 teams will play in college football bowl games, the ultimate champion will be decided by one of four teams that are slotted in the two games that will determine the National Champion.

In the NFL, the playoff field has now ballooned to 14 teams, seven from the American Football Conference teams and seven National Conference squads. Any of the 14 teams can win the title with a victory in the Super Bowl.

The college football setup has been improved in recent seasons where they stage a playoff between four teams for the title. Before that arrangement, all the teams that earned a postseason bid could play, half of them would win, but the National Champion was reduced to a mythical voting system that always focused on two or three teams.

Imagine if the NCAA Basketball Tournament opened with 64 teams but the league had already decided that Connecticut, Houston, Purdue or North Carolina were the only teams with an opportunity to win the championship.

That is how college football works their postseason, but not basketball and not the NFL. Every team participating in their postseasons has a chance to end their campaign in a hail of confetti and one shining moment.

While handicapping the NFL is the focus at Qoxhi, in 2019 we posted picks on both the NCAA Tournament and National Basketball Association playoffs. It was magic. We recommended wagers on both the first half and game in the NCAA Tournament and the first and second quarters in the NBA along with the game finals. We won nearly 70 percent of our selections in the NCAA Tournament and more than 70% on our NBA plays.

Still, I didn’t charge for the service but rather offered it to our full season NFL subscribers as an added bonus.

Then in succeeding years we never matched that first year of releases and last year had a losing record in both the NCAA and NBA. It was like a respected heart surgeon thinking he could also transplant a lung.

The worst of it given our troubles last season was that we lost NFL clients because of poor basketball results.

So, we are not offering basketball picks this year following our third losing NFL campaign since introducing the Account Manager in 2001. Instead, we are spending this time of the year focussing on the NFL to prepare best to assure the 2024 NFL season is back in the black. We are working more on how the acquisitions of two one-time starting quarterbacks, Russell Wilson and Justin Fields, will fare in Pittsburgh now that the Steelers have given up on the man that was their starting quarterback and one-time first round draft choice, Kenny Pickett. With the acquisition of Wilson and Fields, the Steelers have traded Pickett to the Philadelphia Eagles.

It doesn’t mean I won’t be handicapping the NCAA tournament this year, but I will be doing it like you, for the fun of it and wagering on some of the games. I have always known the distinction between gambling and investing. We deliver the NFL as an investment based both on our knowledge and proven history along with the all important Account Manager that generates wager amounts with investment acumen.

20/20 Vision

by Dennis Ranahan

One sure bet on the Super Bowl is that after it is over, “everyone” will see the final results as inevitable.

Before the game, there are two viable sides to choose from in Super Bowl LVIII. After the game, only the winning side will appear to be the viable choice. It doesn’t matter if the winning team is the underdog or favorite, the winning team will show up as if highlighted on a billboard in all caps.

Three years ago, the Kansas City Chiefs were meeting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV, and the Chiefs were favored and much like this year’s Super Bowl were picked by most of the media covering the game. The reasons were obvious, the Chiefs were the better team and while Tom Brady is great, he is at the end of his career and Patrick Mahomes will have him for lunch.

Then, after the Buccaneers blew the Chiefs out in that Super Bowl, 31-9, the postgame comments were emphatic that how could anyone not pick the Buccaneers. They had Brady at quarterback and were playing on their home field.

Super Bowl LV was staged in Tampa at Raymond James Stadium, home of the Buccaneers. But Mahomes and his Chiefs had already beaten Brady and the Bucs in Tampa earlier that season in a regular season contest played in November.

Brady, home team underdog, how could the Bucs not be the choice of everyone … was the conversation after that game. Before the contest was played, a huge majority of the wagers on the game were backing the Chiefs. After it was over, the only logical choice was Brady and the Buccaneers.

Facts, actual results, cloud the opinions of any leanings that do not align with the truth revealed by the known result.

In 1998, there were a significant number of people, both in the National Football League and fans of the game, that thought Ryan Leaf should be the first pick in the draft over the player the Indianapolis Colts ultimately chose, Peyton Manning.

In the 26 years since that draft, I have only found one person who admits to this day that before that draft he thought Leaf was the better choice. History shows, Leaf was a bust and Manning on the short list of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. He also was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Who the better first choice was in the 1998 NFL Draft is as clear as who won last year’s Super Bowl.

As a professional handicapper, I don’t get to erase my pick because the final result does not match my decision.

I did have Brady and the Bucs over Mahomes and the Chiefs three years ago, and the Chiefs over the 49ers four years ago. They both won, no need to revise my selections based on known results.

If we don’t win on Sunday, there will be plenty of criticism that my choice never had a chance. The only way to go was with the team that did actually win. But, before Sunday’s kickoff, I’m telling you there are two viable choices to emerge as the Super Bowl LVIII Champion. One of them is going to win, and we’re confident we have it.

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