The modern day quarterback is the most important position in sports—there is no denying it.
That said… Not all quarterbacks are created equally. Far from it… But because the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of the signal caller—there are quite a few individuals who get put up on a pedestal… and paid in a BIG WAY—not because of the difference they make on the field, but rather, because of the position they play.
Let’s take a look at the NFL landscape and identify the 10 MOST OVERRATED QBs in the league today!
Dak Prescott
Starting off with some low-hanging fruit… Dak Prescott!
When you are the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, particularly as long as Jerry Jones is still at the helm, the reality is that getting overhyped and overrated is essentially unavoidable.
Whoever plays that role is just so fixed under the national microscope that it is an inevitability.
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When it comes to Dak Prescott… it isn’t that he is appallingly bad… or even that he isn’t a ‘good’ quarterback… per say.
I mean, he has made two Pro Bowls—including one during his shocking, 2016 rookie season, when as a fourth-round pick, he was slotted in for an injured Tony Romo and ended up leading Dallas to a 13 and three record, their best mark in years!
And in the time since, he has continued to put up numbers, particularly during the 2019 season, which just so happened to be a contract year for Prescott—in which he threw for nearly 5000 yards and notched 30 touchdowns to just 11 interceptions.
But counting numbers don’t quite cut it when you get regularly talked about as one of the top QBs in the league—which Prescott often does. The expectation is that he is a guy capable of getting the Cowboys over the hump—and at least into a Super Bowl appearance, if not hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. But as anyone who actually watches him play on a regular basis would tell you—as far as being a franchise quarterback—Dak is no more than fool’s gold.
He’ll make some shiny plays… put up some numbers… but when it comes down to it—he’ll never be able to match the expectations that people, himself included, think he should.
Trevor Lawrence
Sticking with the young, overhyped quarterback theme…
Trevor Lawrence and Justin Herbert, while in a different class of QBs from Purdy at this point, are in the same boat of being extremely overrated.
Their match-up during last year’s AFC Wild Card round is a perfect example of this…
Lawrence struggled mightily during the first half of the game—falling behind 27 to 0.
And he can’t pass the blame off to the defense either—because the man threw three… yes… THREE first quarter interceptions.
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to hear about how much he “picked it up” in the second half or that the Jags ultimately won the game. Three first quarter interceptions in a postseason game is inexcusable for a guy that is regularly touted as being “next up.”
Kirk Cousins
I mean… At least Cousins has been able to get his teams to the playoffs on a semi-regular basis.
Sure, it all usually falls apart in an embarrassing fashion, similar to any time that he has to step on the field during primetime… But still! At least they make it!
While most of the air has been taken out of the “Kirk Cousins is overrated” balloon—by his relentless displays of mediocrity which have swayed many of his diehard supporters… There still remains a sentiment that Cousins, who like Carr has made four Pro Bowls, is a quarterback capable of winning a Super Bowl.
Now—people will throw qualifiers on it about the talent level needed on the rest of the team for Cousins to win one, but even that feels like a bridge too far to me. Minnesota has had an insane amount of talent over the past few years, but when push comes to shove, Cousins routinely seems to come up short.
There are only so many passes that you can give a guy before saying enough is enough and I’ll believe it when I see it!
Admittedly, the expectations for the next crop of overrated quarterbacks is slightly lower than that of Carr, Cousins, and Prescott…
Daniel Jones
Same story in New York… Everyone is high on Jones for protecting the football, but his six 2022 fumbles only seems super reasonable because he had been a double-digit fumbler TWICE in the previous three seasons, including an astronomical 19 during his rookie year.
This is not to take away from him for improving on a facet of the game that desperately needed work. He should be commended for that.
But let’s not get carried away and anoint him as a bonafide franchise quarterback… or even a legit starting option until we see that he is capable of actually elevating the level of his team, not just rising to it.
Geno Smith
Moving on… I hate to be a grinch about what, really, was two feel good stories in the 2022 season… But for my money—Brock Purdy and Geno Smith are just about as overrated as it gets.
Geno in particular…
I mean, Smith has been in the league since 2013… and prior to his time in Seattle his career record was 12 and 19.
The former West Virginia standout could never seem to protect the ball – nor could he seem to find the maturity to be a positive force in the locker room. A lot of that does seem to have changed of late, though… He did ball out last year, earning a shocking pro bowl selection on the strength of a nearly 70-percent completion percentage and 30 touchdowns to just 11 interceptionsN
But when it comes to Geno, he has to show me more than just one nine and eight season to forget all of the abysmal play that we’ve witnessed over the past decade.
Derek Carr
This is an eerily similar case to two other veteran quarterbacks—Kirk Cousins and Derek Carr—who like Prescott, have put up numbers and gotten paid, but never really seem to reach the expectations for themselves—and, as a result, have held back otherwise talented teams.
Starting with the former… Carr has been in the league nine years now… and, well, he doesn’t have much to show for it.
Yes, he’s earned three Pro Bowl selections, but with the way those are doled out these days that’s hardly an accomplishment worth noting for a player who is supposed to be able to elevate his team to Super Bowl contention.
Which… speaking of… he hasn’t even come close to doing.
Since entering the league in 2014, Carr has had just two winning seasons—and is a cumulative 16 games under .500 for his career. I don’t know about you, but that ratio is much more important to me than his touchdown to interception ratio that people love to highlight when pleading his case.
And while I’d like to be sympathetic to him for having to endure the organizational chaos associated with the Las Vegas Raiders—the team has done A LOT to try and put him in a position to succeed… including bringing in an All Pro wide receiver, who just so happened to be Carr’s college teammate, in Davante Adams.
Yet Carr’s play—and subsequently the team’s play—somehow got worse…
Now that he’s down in New Orleans, with a roster that has been deemed by many as “a quarterback away” – it’s time for Carr to put his money where his mouth is and get some tallies in the win column. He has to at least get the Saints to the postseason in that pitiful NFC South… otherwise the season is a huge failure—and Carr will have further cemented himself as being massively overrated.
Jared Goff
But many of the same principles apply when analyzing Jared Goff and Daniel Jones, two quarterback, who received almost insulting amounts of praise last year for playing what can only be described as ‘competent football.’
Both Goff and Jones did well to limit their mistakes, with Goff throwing just seven interceptions and Jones throwing five. But let’s be honest, both were asked to do significantly less than most of their positional peers, who had higher interception totals.
Furthering the case that they are overrated… Most of the status that these two quarterbacks achieved in 2022 was really only impressive when compared to their previous body of work…
People are hyping up Goff because he did well to bounce back from a pitiful year one in Detroit, during which he won just three games and threw a measly 19 interceptions… and now that he got the team above .500 and narrowly missed the playoffs – in part due to him actually putting up respectable numbers – we are supposed to get excited about him?
Brock Purdy
As far as Brock Purdy is concerned, well, he is a slightly different case… Because while the sample size of him being successful in the league is smaller, which would be a mark against him, he also doesn’t have the long, tarnished legacy that Geno has.
So, it is possible that he was just overlooked during the draft process…and… maybe… he is just a competent quarterback.
Though—I hesitate to go any further than that… and, rightfully so—he still very much needs to prove it.
Brock looked good in his eight career starts, but as we’ve seen over the years, it doesn’t take a whole lot for a guy to look good in Kyle Shanahan’s offense.
It is one of the most QB-friendly systems out there—and Purdy had an insane amount of talent around him on the offensive side of the ball, which made his transition into the starting role about as pressure-free as it gets at that level.
I’m not saying he can’t be a great quarterback in this league. That is still on the table… But let’s see what the young Niners quarterback looks like when he returns from that elbow injury—and hold off on anointing him as the second coming of Steve Young for at least another year or two.
Justin Herbert
Herbert’s trouble lies on the other side of the same coin… You simply can’t blow a lead like that in the playoffs. When you are up 27 points it is essentially game over. It is lowkey inconceivable to blow a lead of that magnitude.
Yes, that is a single game we are talking about – and I don’t want to distill the two, young quarterbacks’ entire careers… It’s more so that that game is emblematic of the inconsistency that has plagued Trevor and Justin ever since they entered the league.
Because while both of them are undeniably talented, they’re talked about like no-doubter franchise quarterbacks, despite the fact that neither has the body of work to back it up.
Josh Allen
Speaking of guys that aren’t able to consistently deliver at the level that people claim they do… This one may be controversial, but it is time we had the conversation about Josh Allen.
This isn’t to say that Josh isn’t one of the top QBs in the league… But let’s face it—he hasn’t quite matched the hype that was built up around him.
The media was SO QUICK to anoint him as the number one contender to Patrick Mahomes when it comes to QB supremacy… In fact, there were people left, right, and center attempting to say with a straight face that he, not Mahomes, was the best quarterback in the league.
It’s one thing to pick the Bills over the Chiefs… I still think it’s silly, but football is a team game—and heading into the 2022 season, there was an argument to be made that they had a more complete football team.
But to say that you’d rather Allen over Mahomes as a whole? C’mon let’s get serious. Ever since Mahomes stepped foot on an NFL field as a full-time starter in 2018—he’s been far and away the top signal caller in the league. And for that matter, I’d probably put Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts ahead of the Bills QB right now.
So, the idea that some were saying Josh Allen is QB1 in the NFL right now is, as Stephen A. Smith would say, blasphemy.
Which NFL quarterback do you think is the most overrated? Did we miss anyone?
