Missing out on the most talented quarterback of all time sticks with a person. You don’t just forget that you almost drafted Patrick Mahomes—not after watching him win two MVP awards and three Super Bowls in seven years. That memory had apparently been festering in the minds of Broncos coach Sean Payton and Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot, two members of the Saints brain trust that nearly picked Mahomes in 2017. And it inspired the moves that turned both men into the 2024 NFL draft’s main characters when Atlanta selected Michael Penix Jr. with the eighth pick (less than two months after giving Kirk Cousins $100 million in guarantees) and Denver took Bo Nix at no. 12.
No matter where you get your draft analysis, both picks were seen as significant reaches. Penix and Nix ranked as the 34th and 38th prospects, respectively, on Arif Hasan’s consensus big board, which pulls in prospect rankings from across the internet. NFL Media’s Daniel Jeremiah, a former scout who has a lot of sources around the league, had Nix at 33 and Penix at 35 on his final board. Bill Belichick pretty much called Atlanta’s pick a reach, saying, “This seems a little high for him” and “You probably could have traded back to take Penix.”
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The Falcons had a different take on it, per Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer. After Penix ran a 4.5-second 40-yard dash at his pro day in March, assistant general manager Kyle Smith texted Fontenot, “This guy is gonna go quick.” The implication was that Atlanta would not be able to wait until the second round to get Penix. If the Falcons wanted their guy, they’d have to take him at no. 8. Breer’s read was that Fontenot, having been in the Saints war room when Kansas City traded up ahead of New Orleans to steal Mahomes, had learned his lesson seven years ago and would not repeat the mistake of waiting around for a quarterback.
With Payton, there’s no need to read between the lines. He came right out and said the Mahomes episode had a direct influence on his draft strategy. “It’s always like, Well, manage the draft. You could have backed up and got him. And I heard that with Patrick Mahomes when Kansas City took him, and I’m like, ‘They couldn’t have backed up and got him because we were taking him with the next pick.’” Payton said the Broncos considered trading down from no. 12 before Atlanta took Penix, a selection that set off a second run on quarterbacks after Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, and Drake Maye went in the first three picks. “We were discussing a slight wiggle,” Payton said. “And then you start looking at it and saying, ‘Is it worth the risk for a third-round pick?’” He ultimately decided that the extra draft capital Denver could have picked up in a trade down wasn’t enough to potentially miss out on Nix.
Depending on how you view it, what happened over the next 138 picks of the draft can either be used to justify Denver’s and Atlanta’s actions or prove they acted out of desperation. After the Broncos took Nix, no quarterback was taken until the fifth round, when the Saints selected South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler. So either Nix was the last QB prospect worthy of a day-one or day-two selection, or there were no other teams desperate for quarterbacks drafting behind the Broncos. This report from Adam Schefter suggests the truth may be somewhere in the middle:
Before the 2024 draft, we had never seen six quarterbacks taken in the top 12 picks. This also marked the first time since the merger that we saw this quarterback-obsessed league go three rounds—the second through the fourth—without picking one. It was a historically strange draft in that way, but the gap between the top quarterback prospects and the second tier has been shrinking steadily for more than a decade, while the gap between the second tier and the day-three also-rans hasn’t nudged in either direction. Nix and Penix were never going to be available in the second round because second-round quarterback prospects don’t really exist anymore. This draft offered the most glaring example of their disappearance—and showed how the fear of missing out on a young franchise quarterback has caused it.
Between 2005 and 2014, NFL teams took 42 quarterbacks in the first two rounds of the draft. They’ve drafted 41 in the decade since then, so the supply of top-64 prospects hasn’t changed much from one decade to the next. But the price teams are paying to take a QB has jumped. Over the past 10 drafts, 31 quarterbacks have been selected in the top half of the first round. Only 18 were taken in that range from 2005 to 2014. Meanwhile, we’ve seen only six quarterbacks taken in the second round over the past 10 years, which is down from 15 over the previous decade.
More QBs Are Getting Drafted at the Top of the First Round Since 2015
The declining interest in second-round quarterbacks becomes more stark when you ignore picks on the fringes of the round. We haven’t seen a quarterback taken from picks 34 to 63 since 2020, when the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts, and only four have been taken in that range in the past decade.
A lot of this can be explained by the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, which suppressed rookie wages and added a fifth-year team option for all first-round picks. That made first-round picks quite the asset for penny-pinching front offices, and teams eventually realized how valuable a quarterback on a rookie contract could be. Those fifth-year options also proved helpful in negotiations down the line. It’s not a coincidence that this shift in how quarterbacks are drafted started in the third offseason after the CBA went into effect—the first in which teams could renegotiate rookie contracts or pick up fifth-year options for players drafted in 2011.
Plus, with a number of day-two picks thriving on stacked rosters—including Russell Wilson with the Seahawks, Colin Kaepernick with the 49ers, Andy Dalton with the Bengals, and Derek Carr with the Raiders—it became easier to picture those more questionable prospects developing into long-term solutions. Those passers all went on to earn large contracts, and unlike the few second-round passers of recent years—such as Kyle Trask or Drew Lock—they became bona fide NFL starters. It was only a matter of time before comparable QBs were viewed more like first-round talents and teams had to pay first-round prices to land them. When demand exceeds supply, prices rise, leading to inflation.
The predraft scouting reports of quarterbacks taken in the second round in the past decade read a lot like the reports on Nix, Penix, and J.J. McCarthy, who went to Minnesota with the no. 10 pick. There are concerns about injuries, size, frame, arm strength, age, and the systems they played in. Even if you’re looking at the top of the draft board, the criticisms haven’t changed much over the years. Caleb Williams faced the same questions Mahomes did in 2017; teams are just more willing to overlook them now after seeing absurdly talented players with similar concerns—like Mahomes, Josh Allen, or Lamar Jackson—take over the league. As for more middling prospects, accuracy and a firm handshake still go a long way.
“I don’t know that a lot’s changed relative to prioritizing what’s most important for the quarterback position,” Payton said at the NFL combine when asked how quarterback evaluation has evolved in recent years. “Certainly, there has been change. Look, I think accuracy is important, and I think leadership comes in a lot of different ways. … There are a lot of things that make you understand [there are different] shapes and sizes and personality traits [that work], but there are some constants that go with successful players at that position.”
Payton said bad prospect evaluations are common (and to be expected) because teams cannot measure how a quarterback processes information. Payton said you don’t learn that about a prospect until after the draft, during the onboarding process. “For some, when you get them in rookie minicamp, you realize, Agh, I’ve been with a rookie before and just feel like this is not how I want it to go,” Payton said. “He’s having trouble spitting out the plays. Maybe it takes a while. Maybe it’s something that you realize is going to be a hindrance or set him back.
“We shouldn’t miss on accuracy because we get to see it,” Payton continued. “We shouldn’t miss on stature because we get to feel it, look at it, and measure it. We shouldn’t miss on athleticism. All of those traits should be easier to be correct on. … But it’s that [processing] element. And it’s really the difference of [snaps fingers]. For some, it’s two [snaps], and for others, it’s one, and you hope it’s one.”
Payton must be confident that Nix is a one-snap decision-maker because the QB’s measurable traits don’t stand out. At 6-foot-2, Nix just clears the prototypical size threshold for quarterback prospects. He’s got a good arm but not a great one. He’s a decent athlete but won’t be a difference-maker as a scrambler. He does all of his best work in the pocket. And there was plenty of inconsistency with his deep-ball accuracy on tape, no matter how Denver’s analytics team splits up the numbers. Nix’s strengths are pro readiness, decision-making, and processing in the pocket. These aren’t traits that typically get you drafted in the first round, and based on Payton’s own words, they can be the most difficult to project from one level to the next.
A Schefter report suggesting that Payton “feels as strongly about Bo Nix as he did Mahomes” as a prospect was roundly mocked, for obvious reasons. The risk Denver took by reaching for Nix isn’t comparable to the risk Payton would have taken by “reaching” for Mahomes seven years ago. There were no concerns about Mahomes’s talent coming out of Texas Tech. The worries were about how his game would translate from an Air Raid offense to the NFL. Even if Nix’s game fully translates, it may not justify the price Denver paid in the long run. Traditionally, that kind of profile used to be drafted in the second round.
The same goes for Penix. He’s an older prospect (turning 24 in May) who’s had four season-ending injuries, including two torn ACLs. He’s got first-round arm strength and athleticism on paper, but those traits don’t always show up in games. He scrambled only eight times last season, per Sports Info Solutions, and there aren’t a lot of strong middle-of-the-field throws on his tape. A lot of Penix’s downfield production came on go balls to the perimeter that were thrown to future NFL receivers. Those don’t always translate. So even ignoring the $180 million Cousins-shaped elephant in the room, taking a prospect like Penix in the top 10 would have been a questionable use of resources.
The fear of seeing Penix thrive in another city was enough for Fontenot to ignore the flaws that could have caused the QB to drop in previous drafts. “We knew in our heart if we had a lot of people in the building that loved him and expected him to be that player,” Fontenot told Breer after the first round. “And if he’s somewhere else, then that’s unforgivable.”
The human element can’t be ignored in all this. Coaches and executives get attached to prospects, as Atlanta and Denver got attached to Penix and Nix over workout sessions and random backpack searches, respectively. We also can’t overlook the “cover your ass” element at work here. As Fontenot said, missing out on a star quarterback is “unforgivable,” which, in general manager speak, translates to: “It could cost me my job.” But Fontenot and Payton, of all people, should know that’s not necessarily true. After all, these two were part of the team that missed out on the most talented quarterback ever in Mahomes … and it may have saved their jobs.
Before 2017, the Saints hadn’t made the playoffs in three seasons. Payton was getting questions about his job security. And after a failed experiment to reboot the struggling defense left the team strapped for cap space, the future looked bleak. New Orleans’s 2017 class, though, featured five guys who changed everything. With the pick they would have used on Mahomes, the Saints added star cornerback Marshon Lattimore. With their second first-round pick, they drafted right tackle Ryan Ramczyk. Then they picked safety Marcus Williams, running back Alvin Kamara, and defensive end Trey Hendrickson on the second day. There isn’t a draft haul that makes up for missing out on a player like Mahomes, but the Saints’ 2017 class is as close as you’ll find in the modern NFL. New Orleans’s process wasn’t bad. It just didn’t work out in the long run—mostly due to some rotten luck at the end of playoff games. There’s no guarantee Payton and Co. would have stayed around long enough to see Mahomes succeed Drew Brees as the starter—not if a trade up for Mahomes would have cost them a few of the picks they used on their future stars.
The Nix and Penix picks weren’t signs that Payton and Fontenot had learned from their shared experience. These weren’t comparable situations, with other teams looking to jump them, as the Chiefs did to steal Mahomes. And unlike Atlanta now or Kansas City back then, Denver didn’t already have an established starter in place. What these picks, and the 2024 draft as a whole, showed is that the fear of missing out on a potential franchise quarterback is stronger than ever. And the price of drafting a quarterback early to avoid that is only going up.
