Which Quarterback in the 2019 NFL Draft Class Is Statistically Superior?

3. Drew Lock, Missouri

Age: 22 | Games Played: 47 | AY/A: 8.5 | Passing Efficiency Rating: 147.7 | Total QBR: 81.8

Top Statistical Comp: Brady Quinn

For Lock, the script is completely different than it was with Murray and Haskins. Here, experience is no concern at all, especially when you consider that he's not super old. It all comes down to his middling efficiency marks.

Let's start the dive on Lock with his strength, which -- outside of his boom stick of a right arm -- is that aforementioned experience. If he winds up being a first-round pick, he'll rank fifth among first-round picks in games played coming out of college. The guys ahead of him are Mayfield, Philip Rivers, Carson Palmer, and his top comp in Brady Quinn. Outside of Quinn, that's not a bad group to be in.

If we're looking at just the 2019 rookie class, Lock has at least 10 more games of experience than everybody except Finley. He's just five games ahead of Finley, but Finley's also two years older than Lock. This is all super desirable and is why Lock finds himself third on our list.

Then we get to the efficiency. Lock's not as bad as some of the other guys in this class in that department, but he doesn't necessarily measure up well to past successful first-round picks.

If Lock were to be a first-round pick, his 8.5 AY/A would rank 32nd out of 53 quarterbacks since 2000. He slides down to 34th if we assume both Murray and Haskins end up in the first round. Lock's AY/A is a full point lower than the 9.5 mark we saw for players on average who wind up in the top 10 in Total NEP regularly.

This is all to say that Lock's efficiency is a legitimate concern. Is that concern enough to shove him out of consideration in the first round?

Let's work this problem similar to what we did with Haskins and Murray and compare him to quarterbacks in a similar bucket. The point we'll try to address is whether it's better to be experienced but inefficient or inexperienced but efficient.

This brings us back to our sample of 48 first-round quarterbacks since 2000, excluding last year's crop due to small samples. We'll break them up into groups based on the two categories above and see which group has had the greater success in the NFL.

The first group will be the one where we find Lock: experienced but inefficient. So as to account for where Lock's at, we'll look at the seven quarterbacks who were first-round picks with an AY/A below 9.0 but at least 36 games of experience in college.

The second group will be the reverse of that. There are six quarterbacks who were first-round picks who had fewer than 30 games of experience but an AY/A of 9.0 or higher.

Here's how those two groups stack up in terms of where their NFL seasons ranked in Total NEP. It does seem to paint a pretty decent picture in favor of Lock.

The "experienced and inefficient" group does include some busts in Quinn, Jake Locker, and Kyle Boller. But it also contains Aaron Rodgers, Carson Palmer, Eli Manning, and Jay Cutler -- all of whom were long-time NFL starters, with Rodgers being one of the game's best.

It also helps boost Lock that two of the busts -- Locker and Boller -- had terrible efficiency stats with AY/As below 7.0 in their final seasons (Cutler was also 6.7). Lock wasn't nearly that bad; he just wasn't as good as some others.

This should tell us that while Lock's efficiency is a negative, it's not disqualifying when judging whether he should be a first-round pick when you pair it with his experience. This pretty much locks him into third place on our list.

There are some additional factors to consider with Lock that may help him look even a bit better. They're not going to put him on par with Murray and Haskins, but they can at least help make the gap a bit smaller.

First, Lock played the most brutal schedule of any of our quarterbacks in this study. He led the group in games versus top-50 pass defenses (based again on S&P+) with seven, and the average ranking of those defenses was 48.67, lowest in the class. Of his 437 pass attempts, 247 (56.52%) came against these stout units. When you're facing that tough of a road, it's only natural that your efficiency stats will fall behind a bit.

This is probably part of the reason that the gap between Lock and Grier isn't as large in Total QBR as it is in other stats. In addition to accounting for rushing, Total QBR adjusts for the strength of defenses that a quarterback played, and Lock faced a much tougher road there than Grier did (something we'll touch on while discussing Grier later).

Second, it's not as if we've never seen Lock be efficient. It just didn't happen during his senior year.

Instead, that came during Lock's junior year in 2017. There, he had an AY/A of 10.2 with a 165.7 passing efficiency rating, both of which are in the sweet spot for finding solid first-round picks.

We've seen this with other first-round picks in the past. Both Darnold and Jameis Winston had much better efficiency numbers in their second-to-last collegiate season than they did in their finale. Winston has been in the top 15 in Total NEP all four seasons in the NFL, and again, Darnold showed some promise last year. It's certainly not a death stamp for a prospect.

All of this is to say that if a team decides to take Lock in the first round, it's a pretty defensible selection. Quarterbacks of his archetype with heavy experience and middling efficiency have succeeded in the past, even if there are some duds in that mix, as well.

As with Murray and Haskins, there are some flaws to Lock's profile, and those must be weighed appropriately. Additionally, their individual marks are good enough to bolt them into spots ahead of Lock. But there are intriguing aspects of Lock's resume, and they seem to be enough to make him a fun player to track leading into the draft.