And you amazingly forgot about this year. Nick Foles gives a big wave. In terms of "sayings" about franchise QBs. - Having a franchise QB is MUCH MUCH better than not - A large majority of SB winners have franchise QBs - Almost all (all?) multiple time in an era SB winners have a franchise QB - Almost all SB winners ALSO have a strong team in every area around that franchise QB - Every once in a while a non franchise QB, specifically one that manages the game very well and keeps turnovers down, will win a SB Not sure if there are any absolutes to be drawn... but still, despite the exceptions, having a franchise QB is about as important a position as there is in all of team sports.
Wowzer. two quarterbacks out of all the superbowl winners. REaching, but okay "ALMOST all team needs a franchise qb to even win/reach a superbowl". Using those two qb as your excuse for texans failure to draft a franchise qb until near the end of Smith's tenure is laughable.
lol I put Foles in a diferent category; the same category is Flacco. Even though they are not great QBs they actually played great and are part of the reason their team won. But you're right, Nick Foles is not a franchise QB. There are about 20 franchise QBs in the league (Brady, Tannehill, Ben, Dalton, Mariota, Rivers, Carr, Smith, Dak, Wentz, Eli, Rodgers, Cousins, Stafford, Ryan, Cam, Winston, Brees, Wilson, Jimmy, and Jared). Case and Blake are questionable but they did lead their team to the playoffs. Out of the 20, only 6 (Brady, Ben, Eli, Wilson, Rodgers, and Brees) have won rings. Three (Cam, Ryan, Smith) have gotten close and 5 (Dak, Wentz, Mariota, Goff, and Winston) are still on rookie contracts. 6 out of 20 is not a very good percentage. 9 is a little bit better but not very good odds. It is about the same odds as having a top defense. The perfect formula is to have a top defense (specifically pass rush) AND a franchise QB. That's what I believe the Texans were building. Instead of selling the farm to take the chance on a QB that they don't believe in, they built a defense they believed in. They kept running into the greatest QB-Coach to ever play the game in the playoffs and lost like the rest of the AFC. Obviously it hasn't worked, but it isn't because they weren't trying.
There are a lot of teams with franchise QBs that haven't won it all. I have listed them many times for you but you choose to sit in your pile of lies.
I wouldn't put Foles and Flacco in the same category. Foles is an 88th draft pick backup QB that has had a few successful seasons as a starter and the one great playoff run, obviously. He's an outlier. He'll be back to the bench one Wentz is healthy. Flacco has been closer to a "true" franchise QB, especially if you are considering some of the below franchise QBs. Sure... I agree... best to have the franchise QB and great talent all around on the team. That typically works out, lol That said, whether there are 20 franchise QBs as you say, or 15, or 25... obviously there's only 1 superbowl winner. This is just simple math really. 15 franchise QBs... then they all have to stay franchise QBs, stay healthy, all have 15 year careers as franchise QBs and then it would have to just luck into each of them winning 1 SB ring over a 15 year period. Obviously, that will never happen. They'll play each other in the playoffs and knock each other out. The quality of the rest of the roster will vary enough to be meaningful. They're careers won't last 15 years. They may have horrible coaches. They may get injured. So... certainly, having a franchise QB isn't the be all, end all answer. But rather than say how many franchise QBs never won a SB ring, I think the more relevant question is the one already discussed... how many SB winners don't have a franchise QB. And we are talking about something like 3 out of 40 or however far back you want to go. So then it's a question of how to get that franchise QB. And what "order" to build the team, etc. Ultimately, if the plan is to just draft high quality talent and then make plays after the franchise QB if and when appropriate, as determined by state of team, state of draft assets, state of QBs in the draft, or free agency... well, you still ultimately have to make the franchise QB play. And its hard to say that Rick was great there.. until the end with Watson (hopefully). If that's the legacy Smith leaves us with, freaking awesome. It is certainly interesting and noteworthy to Smith's tenure and record, that his approach to finding QBs certainly seemed much more focused on finding those up and coming backups or FA or under the radar draft picks, and it wasn't until the very end that they made any attempt to just find a high profile one in the draft. Perhaps this is a bit of hubris. Bellicheck plucked his all time #1 QB in the 6th round. Why can't I? Or it really would have worked with Schaub, which was one of my early moves, but for the injuries. Let's try this again. Whatever the case, notwithstanding the fact that it obviously isn't as easy as saying "let's go get a franchise QB"... the position was clearly mismanaged for much of the Texans tenure as a franchise. But I give Smith and the organization credit for trying to go "all-in" on the position the last two years. Almost validating what some of us thought about the position for a while... which is just freaking keep plugging away at it. Don't be quite as dumb as the Browns about it, and by sure luck ... math ... probabilistically eventually you will get that right. Hopefully the rest of the roster doesn't fall apart on them (injuries, bad line, whatever) and they aren't stuck without enough assets around them. But even if that's the case... if Watson is the real deal, there's now a long runway ahead of them. Wouldn't it be great to be the Packers and be wondering "will Rodgers win another one ever?!?" instead of "when will the football team that represents this town just make a freaking conference finals matchup?!?!"
I would agree with you if the argument was top 5 QB and not franchise. Take Brady, Rodgers, and Brees out and there's not a lot of super-bowl winners left. The chances of winning a championship is greatly increased if you have one of these QBs. The Texans failure is actually not finding the QBs in the later rounds. They haven't passed on a bunch in the 1st round. As I listed already, I would rather have the non-QBs they picked than the very next QB picked. Could they have traded up? Sure. But who's to say they tried and couldn't find a willing partner...until they did. Another good example is the Jags. They followed the Texans example and it worked until, like the Texans, they ran into the playoffs. Find a top 10 QB; if you can't build a strong defense (starting with pass rush) and running game offensive line.
