NFL 2018: Ranking the new QB situations for 2018 season
The 2018 off-season began even before the Super Bowl 52 was played. The Washington Redskins agreed to trade for quarterback Alex Smith from the Kansas City Chiefs in late January thus resetting the QB market even before the season ended. Two teams already had two new quarterbacks before the Eagles could beat out the defending champions in February.
The trade freed the embattled ex-Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins to sign with the Minnesota Vikings in Free agency. The Vikings, who made it to the NFC Championship game, had three starting-caliber quarterbacks and let them all hit the free agency and signed Cousins to a first-ever full guaranteed contract.
Weeks prior to the start of free agency it was obvious that the Cousins-Vikings marriage is inevitable, which prompted the MVP of Vikings season Case Keenum to struck a deal with Denver Broncos even before the Cousins deal was finalized. This Keenum deal started the domino effect with many teams that are in the QB market started making deals.
Cleveland Browns traded for Tyrod Taylor from the Buffalo Bills, one of many trades they made this offseason. Arizona Cardinals signed Sam Bradford, New York Jets Signed Teddy Bridgewater and then traded him to the New Orleans Saints after an amazing preseason. AJ McCarron signed with the Bills and got beat out by rookie Josh Allen to become the starter which prompted the Bills to trade him to Oakland.
Speaking of rookies, the 2018 draft had as many as Five QBs taken in round 1. By Week 4, four of the 5 are starting and the fifth QB is already seeing some game action in trick plays.
Including both the Veterans and Rookies, there are as many as Eight teams who had new Quarterbacks starting for them this year. Let's take a look at how these QBs fared so far with their new teams.
Let's start with a Bonus player, the man who took the league by surprise and then crash landed in week 4:
BONUS: Ryan Fitzpatrick (2-2)
Oh, where to start. When I first started to think about this article after week 2, I had him competing for the number 1 spot with the current number 1 and then week 4 happened and the head coach Dirk Koetter has announced that Jameis Winston will be starting after the week 5 bye.
Since, FitzMagic is just a placeholder for Winston, who was serving his 3-game suspension, I decided not to include him in the rankings but thought he deserved a shout-out for his performance through the first three weeks. He went 2-2 in his starts when no one expected him to be anything better than 1-3.
He faced three playoff teams from last year and went 2-1 in those games and came close to being 3-0 while trying to make an epic comeback against the Pittsburgh Steelers in week 3. He posted 400 yards in each of his first three games, an NFL record.
But week 4 proved why Fitzpatrick is who he is, a journeyman quarterback. The four-game stretch should help him get more money in the next offseason and will be a highly paid backup QB.