The number one question that I've received on Twitter, Facebook or in person from fans is :will or should the Detroit Lions extend Jared Goff?" The answer for me has always been the same and that's yes. After the Lions won their first divsion title in 30 years with him at the helm, the answer changed from a yes to a definitely yes.  

The reasons why you do it are pretty simple to me. But I really want to illustrate why this is something that the Lions just have to do. There really isn't another way around this. So I decided to tracked the last nine years of quarterbacks drafted in the draft. I went with nine because I didn't want to count 2023 since the jury is still out and guys picked in 2013 are still pretty young. 2012 felt a little too old. 

Here's all the things I was looking for when I was doing the research:

• How many quarterbacks were drafted?
• Who's still in the NFL?
• Who started at least 5 seasons if they were drafted ahead of 2020?
• Have they started their entire tenure if they were drafted after 2020?
• Did they play out their rookie deal with original team?
• Did they get a second contract. This is for players drafted from 2013 to 2020. Jury is somewhat out on 2021 and forward. 
• Are they still with their original team?
• Are they someone's starter now? Backups filling in do not count. I mean are they that teams number one quarterback when healthy? 

Alright, let's jump into it from the beginning. 

How many have been drafted and how many still play?

Honestly the number of quarterbacks drafted wasn't as high as I initially thought it would be before I went into this. I thought there would be more. There were 113 quarterbacks drafted from 2013 to 2022. That's still a lot, In just thought it would be higher. If anything, it kind of shows how few quarterbacks are actually making it to the NFL. Which makes sense.

Ok, so of that 113, how many are still in the NFL in 2023? The answer there is 59. That's not too bad. That's a little more than half the guys drafted. Ok, let's learn some more. 

Full time starter

We'll split this category into two sections. The first one will be about how many quarterbacks have started at least five seasons from 2013 to 2019. The answer there is 19. So 19 of the 81 quarterbacks taken in that time frame were a teams full time starter for at least five seasons. The numbers are really starting to shrink here. 

What about 2020 to 2022? Keep in mind that the point here is that we're looking for quarterbacks that have been a teams starter since day one of being there. We'll get to the guys that became starters later. So if you're thinking about Jordan Love or Jalen Hurts, we'll get there. 

As far as guys that starter from day one and are still doing it, the total is five. That's out of 32 quarterbacks drafted.

Played out rookie deal

Here we're looking at quarterbacks from 2013 to 2019. Who played out their rookie deal? We're looking at guys who played all four years of their rookie contract with the team that drafted them. 

Out of 81 quarterbacks taken, only 16 of them were kept around for the first four years of their NFL careers. That's not great and that number looks like it could be extending soon with 2020 draftees possibly on the move. 

Guys like Justin Fields, Zach Wilson and Mac Jones could all be on new teams as early as next year. Or  at some point they could fall into the category of players that won't wind up being a starter for at least five seasons. 

Fifth year option or new contract

This section will feature quarterbacks drafted from 2013 to 2020. That's 94 different guys. We want to find out how many of them either had their fifth year option picked up or were offered a new contract. The answer is 16. 

I am going to pick that 16 apart a little here. Four of those guys are backup quarterbacks or aren't in the league now. I'm looking in your direction Blake Bortles, Carson Wentz, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariotta. Guys like Daniel Jones and Derek Carr could be joining them on the bench relatively soon.

Still with original team

Trades happen. Sometimes a guy is moved for whatever reason and sometimes they wind up playing pretty well on their next team. Jared Goff is a good example of that. But the guys that are still with their original team are the guys that you know a team feels is going to be their guy for a very long time. 26 of the 113 guys drafted from 2013 to 2022 could be those guys. To be fair though, 20 of them were drafted from 2020 to 2022 though. 

So from 2013 to 2020, only six quarterbacks remained with the team that drafted them. 

Still starting right now

Ok, here's the fun part. 113 quarterbacks were drafted from 2013 to 2022. How many of them are starters in the NFL right now? The answer is 22. That is how hard it is to find a starting quarterback that is going to be around for a while and be good. 

Wait, there's more. Of those 22, 11 of them were drafted sometime between 2020 and 2022. Furthermore, only 11 of the 32 quarterbacks drafted in three drafts are starters today. That's just today. That 11 includes guys like Bailey Zappe, Justin Fields, Zach Wilson, Sam Howell and Daniel Jones. All guys that probably won't start much longer. 

The point of this whole exercise is to show you just how hard it is to find a quarterback and how much harder it is to find one that will stick. The Lions have their guy, they need to make sure they keep him. Is he the best guy? No he is not. Is he the best option now and in the near future? Absolutely. It's either Goff or take pull the lever of a slot machine that pays out less than the ones in Vegas and crush a team that's on the door step of big things for the first time ever. 

Jared Goff is going to get paid big, but that won’t hurt the Lions

It must be Jared Goff day or something. This is a companion piece to another Goff article written on Wednesday. Anyhow, let me just get this out of the way. I don't have any inside information on this, but I think we can all agree at this point that Jared Goff is going to get […]