The NFL Draft is the ultimate equalizer. When Roger Goodell makes his way to the podium to announce the first-overall pick, the slate has effectively been wiped clean for every team; the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and the three-win Tennessee Titans now have the same record, and if you can nail those 72 hours, from Thursday through Saturday, you can change your organization’s fortune in just a few months.
Look what the Washington Commanders did in 2024; they selected quarterback Jayden Daniels No. 2 overall, promptly went 12-5, won twice in the playoffs and made it to the NFC Championship game for the first time since the 1991 season. That outfit last had a winning record in 2015 and last won a playoff game in 2005.
It certainly helped the 2024 Commanders — some might argue immeasurably — that Josh Harris was now the new owner, and he got it right with first-year general manager Adam Peters and new head coach Dan Quinn. But it always starts with the quarterback.
And that brings us to the 2025 preseason.
It’s been almost four months since Cameron Ward and Jaxson Dart were first-rounders, Tyler Shough was taken in Round 2 and Shedeur Sanders fell to the fifth round. All four rookies held their own in Week 1 of the preseason, and in several cases were really impressive. For me, it’s the unofficial start to the NFL season because there are few things I look forward to more than breaking down these performances on “With the First Pick,” the podcast I co-host with former Titans general manager Ran Carthon. He and I did that in the most recent episode.
While there are plenty of good — even great — things you can say about some of the big-time throws Sanders made as the Browns starter, or the chemistry Ward and Calvin Ridley already seem to have, or the touch Dart and Shough showed on their respective touchdown passes, the bigger question is this: How much can (and should) we read into these preseason efforts when assessing where these young quarterbacks are in their development and on the depth chart?
Plenty of fans in Cleveland thought Sanders should’ve been battling for the starting job before his preseason debut. And although Ward is the starter in Tennessee and Dart is the backup in New York, Shough is very much in the running for QB1 in New Orleans.
Before looking ahead, however, I want to look back at how some rookie passers played in their preseason debuts, to both inform and maybe even temper our expectations going forward.
From 2019-2025, 85 rookie quarterbacks attempted at least five throws in Week 1 of the preseason, according to TruMedia. Here are some of the names who cracked the top 10 in passer rating among those 85:
Kenny Pickett was even better in the 2023 preseason, heading into his second year in the league. He was so good, in fact, that (my former WTFP co-host) Rick Spielman and I spent a non-trivial part of this August 2023 podcast talking him up for the huge strides he appeared to have made. (In related news: That “Pickett has that look” two-week stretch feels like a million years ago.)
Ranking rookie QB performances from Week 1 of the preseason: Shedeur Sanders makes statement, Jaxson Dart wows
Tyler Sullivan
The larger point from those four names is that we probably shouldn’t put too much stock in these preseason showings. In part because it’s a miniscule sample size, in part because you’re often facing second- and third-team defenses who are running basic looks, and in part because the players get faster and the windows get smaller once the regular season gets underway.
Plus, there’s this:
- Jones is now on his third team after flashing briefly for the Giants in 2022 in head coach Brian Daboll’s first year with the team.
- DTR struggled in Cleveland, going 1-4 as a starter in the regular season, completing just 52% of his passes with one touchdown and 10 interceptions. He was traded to Philly in the offseason.
- Milton might have the biggest arm in the league (and it’s probably not close), but he served as Drake Maye’s backup in 2024. We saw him in Week 17 against the Bills and, to his credit, looked like a Hall of Famer. (Had we seen more of that at Michigan and Tennessee back in college, Milton would’ve been a top 10 pick.) He was traded to the Cowboys this offseason, and he’s currently battling for the backup job behind Dak Prescott.
- Pickett struggled in two seasons in Pittsburgh before the team shipped him to the Eagles before the 2024 season. Philly traded him to Cleveland this offseason as part of the DTR deal.
You could make a case that the Steelers didn’t do Pickett any favors by keeping Matt Canada as offensive coordinator, but the larger point remains: Pickett — along with Jones and DTR — certainly looked the part of starting NFL quarterback based on the preseason (it’s too early to pass judgment either way on Milton), but we saw very little evidence once they all got into the regular season.
So with this current rookie class of quarterbacks likely to play a lot over the next two weeks of the preseason, back to the original question: How much stock are we putting into these August games when trying to evaluate these guys?
Here’s what Carthon had to say on the podcast (and it might surprise you):
“It all matters. … It all matters because these are real live game reps where you can’t predict where guys are going to be. In practice, these guys have gone against their same team’s defense for a long time. They know who their teammates are, what their teammates can and can’t do. And now you’re in game situations where there’s a two-minute situation, a situation where the offense is backed up, a third-and-long situation, a third-and-short situation.
“So now you’re getting to play situational football. You get to put [these rookies] in high-pressure situations to see how they’re going to respond and react. And these rookie quarterbacks we’re talking about (Sanders, Ward, Dart), they’ve all answered the bell.
“Now you want to see them take the next step because a lot of it is mental. Can you take it from the classroom to the practice field and then to the game field? What do we want to see now? We want to see you move the ball. We want to see you score points. We want to see you have command [of the huddle and the offense]. We want to see you change plays at the line — get us out of bad plays. That will be the next step for these young guys.”
Carthon’s response wasn’t what I was expecting. It was different from what you might imagine a lot of grizzled, seen-it-all NFL folks might say: “It’s a glorified practice — don’t read too much into August football.”
But I reached out to a league evaluator who echoed Carthon’s thoughts. The play of Sanders, Ward, Dart — and even Shough — was, if nothing else, encouraging. There was no avert-your-eyes, crashing-and-burning moments in real time; instead, all three quarterbacks showed they could handle that moment, and were ready to take on more.
Again, I would refer you to that list above of “rookie quarterbacks who balled out in the preseason” to serve as a cautionary reminder, but on the spectrum of “Preseason is a waste of time when it comes to evaluating young quarterbacks” to “Let’s submit their names for immediate enshrinement in Canton,” the consensus seems to be closer to the Hall of Fame, even if just barely.
And that consensus includes Spielman, who was my co-host on the podcast for more than 220 shows before joining the Jets front office. I went back in the archives to get his perspective, and it’s in line with what we’ve already heard: The preseason is a crucial time for rookie quarterbacks to get acclimated to the speed of the NFL, and there is no replacement for live reps against fresh faces, which (as Carthon noted above), can’t be replicated in practice.
It also provides quarterbacks a chance to work on reading defenses they haven’t seen, both before and after the snap, even with the understanding that these will be basic defensive alignments and schemes. (Further proof that there’s plenty to learn no matter how vanilla the look might appear: Anthony Richardson got fooled by late safety rotation against the Ravens last week, missed a hot read and got blasted by David Ojabo for his troubles.) Spielman went on to point out that there’s no substitute for honing those skills in as-close-to-game-like environments.
And in true Spielman fashion, he warned not to overreact to the early results, good or bad, and instead the focus should be on how the quarterback is progressing from OTAs to training camp, and from training camp through the preseason. Ultimately, preseason isn’t a definitive indicator of success or failure; it’s just one more piece in the puzzle.
And that last point leads me to this: For the early success Jones, DTR and Pickett had, do you know who really struggled in their preseason debut? CJ Stroud. In 2023, against the Patriots, Stroud went 2 of 4 for 13 yards, threw an interception and was sacked once. He’s now one of the best quarterbacks who, despite a trying 2024 season, has led the Texans to back-to-back 10-win seasons and won playoff games in each of his first two years in the league.
So, yes, the preseason does matter. But it’s only the first couple pages of the first chapter of the book.
