We’ve been talking about the new ESPN rankings of NFL players by position and specifically how Seattle Seahawks players have fared. Today, we come to quarterbacks. On one level, this is pretty simple. I’ll end the immediate mystery right up front. Sam Darnold did not get any love. No top ten. No honorable mention. Not even the Miss Congeniality recognition of “others receiving votes” (ORV).
Was this fair? Yes and no. We can quibble about this, and trust me, we will. But there’s a much bigger takeaway from the QB rankings than the evaluation of one particular player.
Were I prone to paranoia or conspiracy, I’d be going absolutely wild over this right now. As a reasonable, even-tempered sports fan (oxymoron intended), I am just mildly apoplectic over what these rankings confirm.
So I caution you – if you are both a Seahawks fan and are also given to bouts of disrespect-fueled outrage, you might want to skip the next several paragraphs and just read the end of this, where we go back to discussing Sam Darnold.
The hidden Seattle Seahawks message in ESPN’s QB rankings
OK, you have been warned.
ESPN chose a top ten and then had two honorable mentions in their QB rankings. All twelve of those players started for winning teams in 2024. All but one of those twelve made the playoffs. (Joe Burrow’s Cincinnati Bengals were the exception.)
Amongst the six QBs in the ORV category, only one played on a team with a winning record in 2024, Denver’s Bo Nix.
Fourteen teams did not have QBs receive even a single vote amongst the league’s best. That proportion tracks with the results from other positional rankings. But consider this…
There were only three quarterbacks who posted winning records in 2024 yet failed to get even one vote among the league’s best. And those three QBs were…
Seattle’s 2024 starter, Geno Smith, Seattle’s projected 2025 starter, Sam Darnold, and Seattle’s greatest all-time quarterback, Russell Wilson.
Did I miss a memo or something? Is there some gentleman’s agreement amongst all NFL experts to ensure that no QB wearing a Seahawks’ jersey can ever be considered one of the league’s best? Forget “league’s best.” Simply above-average would get you on this list.
Aaron Rodgers has been a mediocre quarterback for the past three seasons. He got votes. Smith, Darnold, and Wilson all had better ratings and QBRs than Rodgers last year, and it wasn’t especially close. But none even managed a single vote.
Tua Tagovailoa and Dak Prescott are both very good quarterbacks, but both have missed double-digit games over the past three seasons, including a fair number of games in 2024. But both got votes from the ESPN panel. But Darnold and Wilson (who went to the playoffs last year) and Smith (who missed by a hair) … nothing.
The only common thread I can see is an affiliation with the Seattle Seahawks.
OK, enough with the paranoia. Should Sam Darnold have gotten at least one vote in the top ten? Well, no. He’s not a top ten quarterback. The belief that 2024 was an anomaly, made possible by a perfect storm of circumstance in Minnesota, will not go away until he proves himself in Seattle.
Still, if you are voting for Aaron Rodgers, or even Dak Prescott or Kyler Murray as a top ten quarterback heading into the 2025 season, you could easily make the case for Darnold snagging a vote or two as well. The man did make the Pro Bowl and finished in the top ten of MVP voting last year.
I think you might make an even better case for Geno getting a vote or two, considering how well he performed under difficult circumstances in Seattle last year.
As for Russ, well, he probably doesn’t merit votes at this point in his career. But I will say this about that. Russell Wilson is a ten-time Pro Bowler and Super Bowl champion. His career “approximate value” on Pro Football Reference stands at 188. Every eligible player with an AV that high is in the Hall of Fame.
The fact that a lot of analysts consider Wilson an iffy HOF candidate is just one more example of how Seahawks' QBs have been viewed in the league. The latest ESPN rankings merely perpetuate that bias.
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