Cover Photo: Elsa/Getty Images


Early on in the NFL season, it appeared it was the year of the rookie quarterback. After a few weeks of action, there were four different rookie starters across the NFL, Sam Darnold with the New York Jets, Josh Rosen with the Arizona Cardinals, Baker Mayfield with the Cleveland Browns and Josh Allen with the Buffalo Bills, though Allen is currently injured. 


Things looked good in their first few starts, with Darnold and the Jets blowing out the Lions on Monday Night Football Week 1 and Baker Mayfield leading a comeback victory over Darnold's Jets on Thursday Night Football in Week 3. Allen led the Bills to a blowout of the Minnesota Vikings in Week 3 as well. Finally, Rosen managed to get his first career win Week 5 against San Francisco. 


However, despite the positives, these core four quarterbacks are all clumped together in the league rankings and not in a particularly good spot either. 

If we use ESPN's QBR rating, which is out of 100, the bottom qualifying NFL starting quarterbacks looks like this:


29. Baker Mayfield - 38.9

30. Sam Darnold - 35.6

31. Josh Rosen - 35.6

32. Ryan Tannehill - 33.0 

33. Josh Allen - 29.3


The total list is out of 33 because Ryan Fitzpatrick still has enough attempts to qualify. 


The rookie's appearance here, while disappointing, makes sense. It's tough for rookies to adjust to the speed of the NFL. However, three of the four are still better than Ryan Tannehill.


Granted, Tannehill has been hurt for the past couple games, but it's not like he was playing well before that. In five games, he's thrown for 972 yards, 8 touchdowns, 5 interceptions and fumbled three times.  


Going forward, the rookies should improve and drag themselves out of the cellar. Not sure the same can be said for Tannehill.

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Ian McCafferty is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Ian McCafferty also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username itmccaff. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.