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Notes -
Football talent isn't declining; internet talk is a bunch of guys in high school and college who haven't been around long enough to realize that the league goes through ups and downs and that some players are mercurial. To the extent that there is a decline, the short answer for the reason for it is that since 2018 teams have been swinging for the next Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, and draft capital ends up going to guys like Trey Lance and Anthony Richardson. To be fair, there isn't much of a choice, as few colleges run pro-style offenses anymore, so rookie QBs have to be taught basic skills like taking a snap from under center. Fun fact: Steve Young never took a snap out of shotgun once in his entire career. We're also coming out of an era where it was expected that the top ten QBs in the league would all throw for 4,000 yards. This was an anomaly brought on by rule changes and the aforementioned changes in college football. Now that defenses have adapted to it, you aren't going to see it as much.
Anyway, just for fun a took a look at the starters this year and compared them to starters from 2007. I picked the year arbitrarily, but it was long enough ago that nobody old enough to start would have been prohibited from playing football as a child due to fear of long-term cognitive impacts.
The Top Tier Mahomes and Brady are equivalent as they're both the undisputed alpha's of the league at this point in their careers. They may not have the most impressive stats, but they're up there, and they have multiple championships to back it up. Behind them you have Peyton Manning and Josh Allen, who everyone agrees are the most talented if not the most accomplished. This year the top tier also includes Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Brock Purdy and Jared Goff. In 2007 it also included Ben Roethlisberger, Phillip Rivers, and Drew Brees. There are more QBs today who can reasonably be described as "top tier" than there were in 2007.
The Second Tier Good QBs, but nobody would argue that any of these guys are better than any of the guys in the first list. For example, one might argue the relative merits of Burrow over Jackson, but nobody would take Trevor Lawrence over either of them. Also in this category are Sam Darnold and Jordan Love. The 2007 version includes Donovan McNabb, Eli Manning, David Garrard, Matt Hasselbeck, and Carson Palmer.
Cowboys QBs The parallels between Tony Romo and Dac Prescott are too big to ignore. Both are very good quarterbacks statistically. Both are underrated by Cowboys fans due to lack of team success, which is almost entirely due to Jerry Jones.
They Come with Baggage Players who showed promise in the past but whose talent is now beginning to be questioned. This is where Justin Herbert, Baker Mayfield, C.J. Stroud, and Jalen Hurts land. The 2007 equivalents were Jeff Garcia, Kyle Boller, Chad Pennington, and Marc Bulger. Advantage 2026 because that comparison seems cruel now that I look at it, but it could easily go that way for either of these guys.
The Young Guns They've showed promise but it's too early to tell how their careers will go. This year it's Drake Maye, Bo Nix, Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams, and Jaxson Dart. The 2007 equivalents were Alex Smith, Jay Cutler, Derek Anderson, and Matt Schaub. I'm going to tentatively give the advantage to this year, since none of the guys on the 2007 list ever actually made the playoffs at that point, and Smith is the only one whose career can't be called a disappointment.
The Young Busts Cam Ward is the only bad young player with a regular starting job. In 2007 we had Trent Edwards, J.P. Losman, Brodie Croyle, and Jason Campbell.
They Still Have It Matthew Stafford is this generation's Brett Favre. Both have played consistently well throughout their careers, and aren't slowing down despite being in their late 30s.
They Have It (Again) Kirk Cousins was a good but not great starter who got stuck in a crappy situation in Atlanta and is having a good season on the Raiders even though he has no business doing so. Kerry Collins was a good but not great starter who got stuck in a bad situation in Oakland and had a good season with the Titans even though he had no business doing so.
Whatever the Hell This Is Jameis Winston was a highly touted prospect who got dumped from his original team in favor of an aging veteran (Tom Brady) for throwing too many picks, became a backup, and was later forced to start due to injury. Daunte Culpepper was a highly touted prospect who got dumped from his original team and was replaced with an aging veteran (Brad Johnson) for throwing too many picks, became a backup, and was eventually forced to start due to injury. I give Jameis the edge since the Giants might win the division, even if it's by default.
Let's See What We Have Tyler Shough and Tavaris Jackson were both untouted second-rounders who were made starters at the beginning of the season after their teams decided that they wouldn't be resigning aging vets, Derek Carr and Brad Johnson respectively. Neither showed much promise, and I doubt Shough's fate will be any different than Spencer Rattler's.
We Don't Know What We Have Bryce Young looked like a bust several years into his career and still might be. Rex Grossman took the Bears to a Super Bowl but was constantly injured. Neither of these guys is reliable going forward.
The Journeyman Backups There is little difference between Jacoby Brissett and Josh McCown.
The Aging Vets 2007 had a surplus of aging veterans who ended up starting and don't fit into any of my other categories. These included Trent Green, Jon Kitna, Damon Huard, Brian Griese, and Trent Dilfer.
He's Still in the League? Aaron Rodgers and Kurt Warner are both Hall-of-Famers who, after getting dumped by their teams, went to New York under terrible circumstances and got better after leaving the Big Apple. Advantage to Rodgers since Warner didn't do shit in Arizona until his fourth year there.
Only Starting Due to Injury The following don't count for this year: Cooper Rush and Jalon Daniels. In 2007, Cleo Lemon and Joey Harrington similarly didn't count.
Special Cases DeShaun Watson is in a class of his own, unprecedented in league history, made even more unprecedented by the unexpectedly good season he's had so far. Malik Willis was a 3rd round project who Miami signed as a starter after he had a few good weeks as a backup in Green Bay. Daniel Jones was a bust, then not, then went back to being a bust, then had a good start last year but the Colts missed the playoffs anyway. Geno Smith was a bust who had a mid-career renaissance before going back to being bad. Kyler Murray was a decent QB who didn't live up to the hype but his doing well in Minnesota. Nothing weird like this happened in 2007.
The Verdict QB play these days is better than it was 20 seasons ago, or at least isn't noticeably worse. There are 6 QBs in the top tier now compared with 5 in 2007. The second tier has 3 this year compared to 5 then, but this doesn't account for the comeback stories of Murray and Watson. All the other categories are either washes or give 2026 a slight advantage. Case Keenum starting for an injured Caleb Williams doesn't say anything, especially when he was promptly replaced by an undrafted free agent who played in Division 2 in college. The asterisk guys in particular are what gives it away. Of Bulger, Garcia, Boller, and Pennington, Garcia was the only guy who had any real hype, and he was never as good as Herbert was early in his career. Add in that Hurts won a Super Bowl and it's no contest. Boller was only ever good in the context of the low standards of Ravens starters, Bulger had one decent year and was then just sort of there, and Pennington got a little bit of hype for blowing out Peyton Manning in the playoffs but had accuracy and injury problems. If picking a team it would be hard for me to take any of the 2007 guys over any of the 2026 guys, though that may just be recency bias. Anyway, it's pretty clear to me that, at least based on this historic year, there's no reason to believe that QB play has declined substantially. I'm not seeing a few good QBs surrounded by a revolving door of dogs. If anything, teams in those days seemed to give aging veterans longer leashes.
You bring up the Colts signing Phillip Rivers off the couch last year, despite being 43 and out of the league for several years. Well, what were their other options? They lost their top 2 QBs to injury and were down to a rookie sixth-rounder who had played terribly in relief of Jones. The Colts were still very much in the playoff race at this point, but it was past the trade deadline. Rivers was old, but he was a borderline Hall-of-Famer and had played for the team before. And it didn't work; he lost all three games he started. Any available quarterback of normal age would have been one not good enough to play third string on another team. But there are occasionally old guys out there who will still play if they can start but aren't going through training camp and road games and what have you so they can sit on the bench all season. Rivers was one of those guys. Compare this to 2007, when the Panthers signed 43-year-old Vinny Testaverde off the couch after Jake Delhomme's injury, despite having David Carr and Matt Moore on the roster, both of whom were in their 20s and had prior NFL experience. It wasn't past the trade deadline, and Testaverde wasn't anywhere near the player Rivers was.
I asked one of my friends about why there arent very many good quarterbacks anymore a couple years ago. They said it was because defenses have gotten much more sophisticated.
Though defenses have gotten more sophisticated, it's more a generational thing than a mark of sophistication. If you're not familiar, there are two basic kinds of pass defense: In man-to-man each defender is assigned a receiver to cover, while in zone the defenders are assigned zones of the field and will cover whichever defender enters that zone. Man requires players who are athletic enough to stay with the men they're assigned, and it fails when their unable to do that. Zone's weakness is that there aren't enough defenders available to cover every zone on the field, and a skilled quarterback will be able to read the defense ahead of the play and change the play at the line to direct receivers into holes in the coverage. Good receivers in turn will be able to adjust their routes based on what they see. When passing began to pick up in the 21st century, it was largely because guys like Brady, Brees, and Manning could pick apart zone defenses like nobody's business. So defenses adapted by playing more man. Now it was up to the receivers to beat the coverage, and guys like Darelle Revis made careers out of being unbeatable.
One feature of a typical man defense is a on-high safety look. Say the offense is lined up with one running back, one tight-end, and three wide receivers. A typical defense will respond with a nickel package, with four linemen, two linebackers, and five defensive backs. Four defensive linemen will rush the quarterback. Three of the defensive backs will cover the receivers, one (usually a strong safety) will cover the tight end, and one of the linebackers will cover the running back. The free safety will play a large deep zone. He will watch the quarterback to see where the ball is going and help that defender in coverage or to prevent a big play; he's the last line of defense. The other linebacker can be used for a variety of purposes. He may assist the linemen with the QB rush. One variation that the Patriots used a lot during this era is called "robber" coverage, where the second linebacker takes a zone below the free safety to guard against crossing routes. To beat man coverage, offenses relied on fast receivers like Tyreek Hill. Strategy shifted from finding holes in the coverage to managing matchups and figuring out where the extra help was coming from. The thing that really threw things into overdrive, though, was running quarterbacks.
Running QBs have existed to some degree for a while, but they were either guys like Steve Young who were good at scrambling, or novelties like Michael Vick. In the 2010s, coaches were increasingly willing to use running QBs like Cam Newton, Robert Griffin, and Colin Kaepernick, and towards the end of the decade, quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen took the running game to an entirely new level. But it wasn't these outliers that changed things. By 2020, guys like Manning and Brees, who were statues in the pocket, no longer existed. All quarterbacks had at least some scrambling ability, and were liable to take off if everything was covered. Remember the second linebacker? One of the things he could do was spy the quarterback as if he were a running back. But doing this takes him out of the coverage, and more is open downfield. In the early 2020s, defenses were routinely getting foiled by fast receivers, and if there weren't any fast receivers, there were receivers who could shake defenders underneath. And there wasn't any help from the linebacker, since the quarterback might run with the ball. How did defenses deal with this? They went back to zone.
More specifically, the dropped another safety to cover the deep part of the field. This turns a Cover 1, which I described earlier, into a Cover 2. Instead on one safety covering the entire deep field, there were two safeties. And since an offense in a 3 receiver set is usually only sending 2 deep, both of them are effectively double covered. Since the cornerbacks aren't chasing the receivers deep, the flat is covered in case the quarterback runs. Your extra linebacker can drop back into coverage, and you have three zones across the middle of the field. To make things even better, if the qb does go deep the ball is in the air long enough for the second safety to leave his zone and help out the other one. This isn't much different than the way things were when Brady and Manning were working their magic in the 2000s. But none of those guys are in the league anymore.
Since defenses switched to running mostly 2-high a few years ago, offenses have struggled to adapt. Speed isn't as much of an asset for a receiver if a safety is waiting for you downfield, which is why the Chiefs let Tyreek Hill walk; his skill set was no longer needed. Speaking of the Chiefs, the reason they've been continually successful despite the lack of receiver talent is because Mahomes is one of the few quarterbacks to adjust to the new defenses without batting an eye. It's why Travis Kelce was able to go from being a typical good passing tight end to one of the most prolific receivers in the league; both he and Kelce knew where the soft spot in the zone was. People often wondered why Kelce couldn't just be doubled or something. The reason is that any decent defensive back could neutralize him in single coverage, the problem being that that would only work by switching to man coverage, which would have let Mahomes run wild, hitting receivers deep and scrambling for yardage when they weren't open. The best bet was to hope that Kelce wouldn't find the sweet spot.
This obviously oversimplifies things, but it offers a general explanation of why passing is down from its highs in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It's still not off much from the late 2000s and early 2010s, which is still high by historical standards. These things come in cycles, and I wouldn't worry about it too much.
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