Ranking EVERY first-round quarterback drafted in NFL since 1970

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Jul 2, 2025 - 10:30

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Ranking EVERY first-round quarterback drafted in NFL since 1970

As a tool for determining how the Tennessee Titans should go about handling rookie quarterback Cam Ward's future, The Tennessean devised a formula that ranked every quarterback picked in the first round dating to 1970.

Because it'd be a shame to let all of those rankings and debate fodder go to waste, we're going to share that formula and the player rankings we used to build the story here.

Here are The Tennessean's mathematical rankings for every quarterback picked in the first round of the NFL draft since the NFL-AFL merger:

The formula, and some ground rules

These are rankings based on how successful a quarterback was for the team he began his career with, not for his entire career. As such, there are going to be several journeymen who rank lower on the list than you'd expect, and some career one-teamers who get a bit of a boost just because they stuck around with one club. That's because we're not building a ranking of the best quarterbacks ever, but rather a ranking of how much individual teams benefited from making these first-round picks.

The one asterisk: Players like John Elway, Eli Manning and Philip Rivers who began their careers with teams other than the ones they were drafted by are treated as if they were drafted by the teams they actually played for. Draft-day trades count as in-draft investments.

With that in mind, here is our formula:

[(TD passes thrown for team that drafted you) + (games won for team that drafted you) + (25 x playoff wins for team that drafted you) + (75 x Super Bowl wins for team that drafted you) + (35 x MVPs won for team that drafted you) + (25 x All-Pro honors for team that drafted you) + (10 x Pro Bowls for team that drafted you)] x regular-season winning percentage for team that drafted you

For example, if you started 100 games, won 50 of them, threw 200 touchdowns, won five playoff games and one Super Bowl, won one MVP, and made two All-Pro teams and three Pro Bowls, your score would be 282.5.

Got it? Good. Here are our rankings, broken up into six tiers.

Tier 1: 300+ points ― Changed the franchise forever

Patrick Mahomes: 944.8
Aaron Rodgers: 881.3
Peyton Manning: 874.5
Ben Roethlisberger: 746.8
John Elway: 735.5
Terry Bradshaw: 717.2
Dan Marino: 638.2
Troy Aikman: 466.6
Eli Manning: 436.5
Jim Kelly: 418.5
Philip Rivers: 398.1
Josh Allen: 387.6
Donovan McNabb: 384.2
Joe Flacco: 372.8
Matt Ryan: 371.4
Lamar Jackson: 369.4
Phil Simms: 322.0

Hard to argue with this bunch: 10 Super Bowl winners, nine MVPs and almost 5,000 combined touchdowns. Mahomes' stellar winning percentage clinches him the top spot for now, but obviously his Kansas City career isn't finished yet, so Rodgers theoretically could take the top spot back at some point.

Tier 2: 80-299 points ― Pretty, pretty good

18. Steve McNair: 259.3
19. Andrew Luck: 224.3
20. Cam Newton: 220.9
21. Jim McMahon: 205.9
22. Joe Burrow: 177.9
23. Drew Bledsoe: 171.1
24. Matthew Stafford: 164.1
25. Tommy Kramer: 146.3
26. Jared Goff: 133.3
27. Bert Jones: 131.5
28. Daunte Culpepper: 120.2
29. Dan Pastorini: 115.9
30. Steve Bartkowski: 115.5
31. Jim Everett: 108.6
32. Michael Vick: 107.2
33. Mark Sanchez: 107.0
34. Carson Palmer: 104.3
35. Deshaun Watson: 98.8
36. Justin Herbert: 97.6
37. Carson Wentz: 94.2
38. Tony Eason: 93.1
39: Ken O'Brien: 91.5
40. Tua Tagovailoa: 90.7
41. Richard Todd: 90.3
42. Chad Pennington: 86.0

If we're being totally fair, we probably could separate this tier at the Stafford line. But as it stands, this group makes sense all together. It's a gaggle of players who are among their franchise's all-time greats, but very few who took their franchises to top-of-the-league heights for very long.

Tier 3: 45-79 points ― Some guys

43. Ryan Tannehill: 78.8
44. Kyler Murray: 75.1
45. Alex Smith: 73.0
46. C.J. Stroud: 72.4
47. Baker Mayfield: 71.8
48. Trent Dilfer: 71.5
49. Jayden Daniels: 68.5
50. Marc Wilson: 67.0
51. Doug Williams: 64.5
52. Jameis Winston: 63.6
53. Rex Grossman: 62.5
54. Marcus Mariota: 61.8
55. Mitchell Trubisky: 59.7
56. Blake Bortles: 58.2
57. Jordan Love: 56.2
58. Kerry Collins: 54.5
59. Vince Young: 52.3
60. Chris Miller: 50.5
61. Archie Manning: 48.8
62. Trevor Lawrence: 46.2
63. Jim Harbaugh: 45.8
64. Mark Malone: 45.7

It's a little strange seeing Archie Manning so low on the list, but his winning percentage in New Orleans is famously pretty bad. Guys like Stroud, Daniels and even Lawrence could pop up higher eventually. But for the most part, this is the group of players who it's hard to label as "busts," but it's fair to label as "didn't live up to the first-round billing" types.

Tier 4: 10-44 points ― Borderline busts

65. Josh Freeman: 42.3
66. Daniel Jones: 41.4
67. Byron Leftwich: 40.9
68. Jay Cutler: 37.2
69. Vinny Testaverde: 33.7
70. Teddy Bridgewater: 33.4
71. Tim Couch: 32.1
72. Jim Plunkett: 32.1
73. Mac Jones: 31.7
74. Kyle Boller: 31.0
75. Mike Phipps: 30.1
76. Jason Campbell: 28.8
77. Tim Tebow: 28.6
78. Sam Bradford: 28.3
79. Robert Griffin III: 25.6
80. Joey Harrington: 25.5
81. Rick Mirer: 23.9
82. David Carr: 23.8
83. Bo Nix: 22.9
84. Todd Blackledge: 21.1
85. Christian Ponder: 20.2
86. Sam Darnold: 19.8
87. Patrick Ramsey: 18.3
88. Kenny Pickett: 15.8
89. Jeff George: 15.7
90. Steve Fuller: 14.7
91. Jake Locker: 14.1
92. Justin Fields: 13.2
93. J.P. Losman: 13.0
94. Zach Wilson: 12.7
95. Anthony Richardson: 10.1

Remember: We're only counting performance with the team that drafted you. That accounts for guys like Testaverde, Plunkett and Cutler falling this far. We're also approaching bust territory. Not much of any other way to describe Ponder, Carr, Locker and Wilson.

Tier 5: 3-9 points ― Yikes . . .

96. E.J. Manuel: 8.8
97. Matt Leinart: 8.6
98. Caleb Williams: 7.4
99. JaMarcus Russell: 7.0
100. Brandon Weeden: 7.0
101. Drake Maye: 7.0
102. Bryce Young: 6.9
103. Heath Shuler: 5.2
104. Blaine Gabbert: 5.0
105. Jerry Tagge: 4.5
106. Chuck Long: 4.4
107. Todd Marinovich: 4.1
108. Andre Ware: 4.0
109. Cade McNown: 3.8
110. Ryan Leaf: 3.8
111. Trey Lance: 3.5
112. Dwayne Haskins: 3.5
113. David Klingler: 3.3
114. Brady Quinn: 3.3
115. Josh Rosen: 3.2
116. Rich Campbell: 3.0

Rich Campbell, here at the bottom of the tier, is the first player who broke our formula. Since he never actually started a game, he doesn't have a winning percentage. We just gave him credit for his three career TDs and sent him on his way. Anyone else in this tier? You're either embarrassed to be here or hoping like heck you can claw yourself out.

Tier 6: 0-3 points ― The worst of the worst

117. Jack Thompson: 2.8
118. Steve Pisarkiewicz: 2.5
119. Johnny Manziel: 2.3
120. Jim Druckenmiller: 2.0
121. Dan McGwire: 1.6
122. Akili Smith: 1.4
123. Michael Penix Jr.: 1.3
124. Paxton Lynch: 1.3
125. Tommy Maddox: 0.0002
126. John Reaves: 0.0001
127. JJ McCarthy: 0.0001
128. Kelly Stouffer: 0.0001
129. Art Schlichter: 0.00005

At the bottom, we've got the five quarterbacks who haven't won a game. In McCarthy's case, that's because he hasn't played yet. But the others . . . not good. Schlichter, who went 0-6 as a starter and had only three touchdown passes, wears the unfortunate crown. For the rest of the players in this tier, the only thing they can take solace in is being a little bit ahead.

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Every first-round quarterback NFL draft pick since 1970, ranked