SHOULD YOU MINE TO THE 6TH ROUND?

Yes, we know that Tom Brady was the 199th pick out of the University of Michigan. He's won six rings and gone to eight Super Bowls. Oh, and his wife's Gisele, he wears Ugg boots, and he's worth $180 million.

Having seen what happened with Brady, a lot of people assume that the best quarterbacks - or the one's most capable of playing within a system - are going to be from the Brady/Belichick school.

The fact about Tom Brady is that he was lucky to get the chance he did. He came off the bench when starter Drew Bledsoe was injured.  Bledsoe was taken as the No.1 overall pick in the 1993 draft, by the way, and played in the league for 14 years, going to four Pro Bowls in his time.

Of the starting quarterbacks of the 32 teams, seven quarterbacks who played for the teams were the first pick of the first round. Cam Newton (Carolina), Eli Manning (New York Giants), Alex Smith (Kansas City), Jameis Winston (Tampa Bay), Carson Palmer (Arizona), Matthew Stafford (Detroit), Jared Goff (Los Angeles Rams) and Andrew Luck (Indianapolis) would have started had he not injured his shoulder in 2016 and not recovered.

And in the 2017 season, former first-rounders Matt Ryan (Atlanta), Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay), Ben Roethlisberger (Pittsburgh), Philip Rivers (Los Angeles Chargers), Carson Wentz (Philadelphia), Jay Cutler (Miami), DeShaun Watson (Houston), Paxton Lynch (Denver), Mitch Tribusky (Chicago), and Joe Flacco (Baltimore) all saw significant playing time before being injured (or in Lynch's case, dropped).

In other words, if you pick a QB in the first round, you've got a 53% chance of success. That's not bad.

THEN AGAIN.... 

You could hit the jackpot after the first round.

The San Diego Chargers' 1st and 2nd picks in 2001 were running back LaDanian Tomlinson and quarterback Drew Brees. That worked out pretty well for the Chargers. Sure, Tomlinson's still furious about the fact that the Chargers wouldn't give their quarterback more money and so Brees walked to the Saints, but San Diego's replacement in Philip Rivers has passed for over 30,000 yards and 342 TDs in his career with the now-Los Angeles Chargers.

In 2012 the Seattle Seahawks picked Bruce Irvin, Bobby Wagner and a chap called Russell Wilson in the third round. That didn't work out badly either.


STRETCHING IT 

But if you are going to take quarterbacks in rounds 4-6, you are probably stretching it a little if you think that that person's going to be the next Tom Brady.

Dak Prescott (Dallas), Tyrod Taylor (Buffalo), Brett Hundley (Green Bay), TJ Yates (Houston), Bryce Petty (New York Jets), Landry Jones (Pittsburgh), Kirk Cousins (Washington) all came out of Rounds 4-6. Of these, Yates, Hundley and Jones did not start the season, and Jones only started because the Steelers wanted to rest Ben Roethlisberger for the play-offs. And Petty probably won't have a starting job next year.

Then again, Prescott, Taylor and Cousins have all been diamonds in the rough (although had NFL GMs actually looked at these three's college football credentials, they would have seen that all three QBs had thrown a total of 25,524 yards in their college careers (Taylor's was least on the list - but mainly because he ran for over 2,000 yards))), and are now getting PAID accordingly.