There are many ways to evaluate your favorite team—won/loss record, basic stats, advanced metrics, evaluating the roster and so on. All of these can be effective, but there’s only one tactic that truly works.
How’s your quarterback? That’s the real question that will tell you where your team’s at. If you’ve got “the guy” and you’re winning, that’s basically the gold standard. If you don’t, though, that puts you in one of several different categories, the worst of which is quarterback purgatory.
Defining QB purgatory can be tricky, but most of the basics aren’t that hard to identify. The two most common ones are (a) you think you’ve got the guy, but he’s flawed and maybe even on a ridiculous contract or (b) you’ve got some facsimile of the guy who will keep you either bad or mediocre. Either way you’re trapped in an ugly netherworld of mediocrity, and these five teams have the worst version of it.
New York Giants, Daniel Jones
Jones is what happens when you try to save a few bucks and take a second-tier guy with seemingly great tools. The Giants got seduced by Jones’ combination of athleticism and his strong arm. What they overlooked in the process is that he makes incredibly poor decisions, and his choices at the NFL level are getting worse instead of better. The G-men will punt on the Daniel Jones experiment soon, but he’s been a very expensive gamble that cost the franchise both years and dollars, and Jones will probably end up costing Brian Daboll his job.
Carolina Panthers, Bryce Young
Most Carolina fans wouldn’t consider their situation quarterback purgatory, but there are mitigating factors here that put them squarely in that category. We’re talking about the worst owner in football, who keeps making bad decisions, then compound them by cutting bait at an even higher cost, then making worse ones.
We still don’t know whether Bryce Young could have been a competent NFL quarterback in a different situation, but one thing we know for sure is that we won’t find out in Carolina. Benching Young two games in destroyed his trade value, which means David Tepper will trade him for pennies on whatever his real dollar value might have been. The insult-to-injury part is that the Panthers are now being led by Andy Dalton, who will likely shine for a game or two before reverting to his special kind of awfulness.
Las Vegas Raiders, Gardner Minshew/Aidan O’Connell
Speaking of mediocrity, that describes Gardner Minshew to a T at this point in his career. Yes, he’s exciting, and he’s charismatic, too. He’ll take your team on a thrilling roller-coaster ride, but when the dust settles you’ll be somewhere around .500 and still looking for the guy. It’s a really bad sign that he’s already been replaced by Aidan O’Connell, who’s basically Minshew with a bigger arm, but minus the eccentricities, the completely crazy decisions or the charisma.
Tennessee Titans, Will Levis
It’s never a good sign when your quarterback is better known for promoting his own line of mayonnaise than his on-field performance. The draw with Levis is that his strong arm is oh-so-tempting, but his decision making is starting to get worse with experience, which is never a good sign. New coach Brian Callahan already looks ready to punt on Levis, which is a pretty good sign that he knows what he's doing.
Cleveland Browns: Deshaun Watson is now the ultimate NFL bad contract bust
Watson is now the official representative for the Bad Contract Brigade, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that he’lll never return to being the exciting double-threat QB we saw in Houston. On top of that, Watson didn’t exactly endear himself to teammates and fans when he spoke out about not wanting more running plays. Which is understandable given his shredded shoulder, but the timing probably couldn’t have been worse.