Who is the AFC East's best quarterback now that Tom Brady is gone?
Or, a deep dive into the potential Stockholm Syndrome Bills Mafia has laid upon me
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For nearly two decades, the question of who the top quarterback was in the AFC East has not been up for debate. The Patriots had Tom Brady. The rest of the East had:
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Chad Pennington
EJ Manuel
Geno Smith
Chad Henne
Mark by-god Sanchez
Ronnie Brown, sometimes
and many more imminently forgettable names. But the 2020 version division will, for the first time since Matt Cassel was relevant, open up a debate as to the East’s top passer. A handful of recent first round picks, a former NFL MVP, a one-time preseason darling, and the aforementioned Fitzpatrick and his magical beard will jockey to either retain the status quo or wrest a playoff spot from Bill Belichick’s icy grip. Here’s who we’re looking at, in no particular order.
The mercurial future of football in actual New York state: Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills
Where we left him: Allen improved significantly between his rookie and sophomore seasons, though that only took him from “putrid” to “slightly below average.” By dropping his interception rate from a troubling 3.8 percent (second-worst in the NFL in 2018) to 2.0 (17th), he avoided back-breaking errors and gave a stellar Bills defense the latitude needed to carry the club into the postseason for the second time in three years.
It wasn’t as though he was able to shake the flaws that marred his 2018 scouting report with red ink. His completion rate rose by six full percentage points, but still languished at 58.6 percent. While that’s a step in the right direction, it may be a bit of a mirage. His catchable pass rate only rose slightly (69.4 to 70.5 percent) and many of these new completions came through shorter throws. The average intended target distance of his passes fell from 11 yards to 9.3 in 2019, according to Pro Football Reference.
Though he shored up some of the short-range accuracy issues that plagued him, his deep ball completion rate dropped (27.1 percent to 25.8) last fall. Some of those struggles can be tied to a lack of standout targets in 2019, which explains why Buffalo shipped a package of draft picks to Minnesota for Stefon Diggs.
What’s changed for 2020: Diggs averaged 12 yards per target alongside Kirk Cousins last fall, a number that blows away the Bills’ top receiver in 2019, John Brown (9.3). Diggs should immediately upgrade a WR room filled with complementary targets like Brown and Cole Beasley. The growth of young players like Devin Singletary, Dawson Knox, and 2020 draftees Zach Moss and Gabriel Davis will help as well.
These are players who can create space downfield in the running game as well as improve what had been a fairly shallow catch radius. Even if those new and growing targets fail to upgrade Allen’s passing game he’ll still be able to move the chains with his legs. He rushed for more than 500 yards and nine touchdowns in his second season as a pro. That will likely continue in 2020 behind an improving offensive line likely to rate out in the 10-15 range this fall.
The table is set for Allen to shine, but major questions remain about his abilities as a pocket passer. If he can up his accuracy while remaining a viable threat on the ground, he can make the Bills a legit Super Bowl contender.
The upward-trending rebuild: Ryan Fitzpatrick/Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins
Where we left them: Miami’s quest to sink all the way to the bottom of the 2019 standings was slightly derailed by Fitzpatrick’s buoyancy. The journeyman passer was useful enough to push an undermanned Dolphins team to a 5-8 record in his 13 starts, ultimately costing them the top pick of the 2020 draft. The club may have found its franchise cornerstone despite his low-key competence anyway; Tagovailoa’s dislocated hip and Joe Burrow’s ascendant 2019 at LSU allowed Miami to draft one of the NCAA’s top passers fifth overall.
Fitzpatrick will be the starter to begin the season before eventually turning the reins over to his young ward. His presence and useful, if occasionally inconsistent, quarterbacking will ease the pressure from Tagovailoa’s capable left shoulder. He’s insurance not only against the steep learning curve the rookie will face from an NFL debut without a preseason, but against any complications that arise from the severe injury that ended his Alabama career (though reports suggest he’s healthy, his hip is still something head coach Brian Flores is keeping in mind).
If Tagovailoa can be the passer he’d been in 24 starts from 2018-19 -- a 70 percent completion rate, 11.2 yards per attempt, a 76:9 (!) TD:INT ratio, and the equivalent of a 140.6 NFL passer rating (!!) -- he’ll be the best quarterback to wear Dolphins teal since Dan Marino. Some recent preseason practice highlights suggest he’s still capable of slinging a gorgeous deep ball.
What’s changed for 2020: Both quarterbacks will have help from a young group of targets still recovering from the dampening effect of having Adam Gase as a head coach from 2016-18 (more about that later). DeVante Parker broke through in 2019, easily setting career highs in most receiving categories and catching as many touchdowns last fall (nine) as he had the previous four seasons combined. Mike Gesicki is a blossoming young safety net of a tight end. Matt Breida and Jordan Howard arrived as free agents to prop up a running game that was so bad a 37-year-old Fitzpatrick led the Dolphins in both total yards (243) and yards per attempt (4.5, with a minimum of six carries).
The franchise also used three of the top 111 picks in this year’s draft to add blockers up front, headlined by first-round selection Austin Jackson. Combined with free agent signees Ereck Flowers and Ted Karras, Miami could trot out a completely different front five than it did in 2019, when it ranked 29th in the NFL in sack rate allowed.
That’s not quite the overclocked group Tagovailoa got to work with against college defenses in the SEC -- he spent his two seasons as a starter in Tuscaloosa throwing to blue chip prospects like Jerry Jeudy, Henry Ruggs III, Irv Smith, DeVonta Smith, and Jaylen Waddle. Even so, it should help ease his transition for a Dolphins team still mapping out its course back to prosperity.
The potentially haunted franchise QB: Sam Darnold, New York Jets
Where we left him: The good news: Darnold went 7-6 as a starter for an otherwise pretty-bad Jets team in 2019. The bad news: you may only remember him for getting mono as a grown adult, or the night the Patriots defense ruined his psyche so thoroughly he announced to a national audience he was “seeing ghosts.”
The former first-round pick upped his efficiency and lowered his interception rate by curbing his impulse to force plays downfield. His average air yards per attempt fell from 8.7 to 7.9, but a lineup of easier throws helped push his completion percentage from 57.7 in 2018 to a more respectable 61.9 last season.
The need for more checkdowns could be attributed to deficiencies across the Jets’ offense. Darnold spent entirely too much time in the pocket (his 3.1 seconds to throw was third-highest in the league) and got sacked more often than he did as a rookie (seven percent). He was also saddled with a below-average receiving corps where no player ranked among the league’s top 58 receivers or tight ends when it came to average yards per target.
And while checkdowns should theoretically work in an offense starring Le’Veon Bell, the former Steeler played well below his career standard in 2019. He had career lows in yards per carry (3.2), totals yards per game (83.3), and failed to crack 90 yards rushing or receiving in any game in his New York debut. Whether that’s the beginning of a career downslope or just the dampening effect of playing for head coach Adam Gase will be put to the test this season.
What’s changed for 2020: While other young quarterbacks across the NFL have gotten recent wideout upgrades to coax development, the Jets have opted to build around Darnold from the inside out. The club lost top wideout Robby Anderson to free agency and released oft-injured Quincy Enunwa, replacing them with low-floor, high-ceiling veteran Breshad Perriman and 2020 second-round pick Denzel Mims. The assets the team didn’t use to improve one of the league’s least impressive receiving corps instead went toward its offensive line.
Mekhi Becton, a standout at both Louisville and the 2020 Scouting Combine thanks to his blend of immense size and agility, was the team’s first-round pick. New York also handed out more than $68 million of contract value to bring veterans like George Fant, Connor McGovern, and Greg Van Roten to town. Darnold will have a completely new starting five in front of him this fall. That will buy some extra time in the pocket for a developing QB who has yet to play a full 16-game season in his two years as a pro.
But then there’s Gase, who led the Dolphins to a surprise playoff berth in 2016 and has gone 20-28 in Miami and New York since. In that span, his offenses have ranked 31st, 30th, and 31st in the NFL in touchdowns scored. Former players like Parker, Ryan Tannehill, Kenyan Drake, Jarvis Landry, and several others have gone on to shine away from his influence, while others like Bell and Anderson suffered relative downturns in Gase’s Jets debut. There’s a chance he plays a bigger role in Darnold’s development in year three than anyone else -- and that it’s a bad thing.
The reclamation project (that will probably work, because it’s the Patriots: Cam Newton, New England Patriots
Where we left them: Bill Belichick waited for Newton’s asking price to drop, then swiped a 31-year-old former NFL MVP off the market on a one-year deal with a maximum value of $7.5 million. That’s roughly 30 percent of what the Colts spent to lure a 38-year-old Philip Rivers to his spiritual home in the middle of Indiana.
Those are great optics, even if we’re not sure how Newton will look the first time he dons New England’s red, white, and blue. The prickly Patriot coach heaped preseason praise on Newton, even making him his latest “no one works harder than X” honoree. That helped him earn the team’s starting job over 2019 fourth-round pick Jarrett Stidham and a spot among the team’s offensive captains.
This fall will mark the five-year anniversary of Newton’s MVP campaign, but the game-breaking gunslinger who emerged in 2015 has rarely been seen the past two seasons. Much of that is health related, as he played hurt through the back half of 2018 and missed all but two 2019 games due to injury. When 100 percent, he’s been eager to take risks downfield. While his recent output hasn’t matched the Jameis Winston-ian (but in a good way) air-yard average of 10.1 yards per throw of 2015 and 2016, he averaged 8.6 yards per attempt in limited time last year.
That would have ranked seventh among qualified passers and suggests a healthy shoulder could unlock his freewheeling downfield traits. How many other passers in NFL history could have made this bullet work from their back foot?
Belichick and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels have no problem with a quarterback willing to light it up deep. Tom Brady’s 60 deep balls ranked second in the East behind only Allen (62) last fall, despite a limited group of targets. The question is whether Newton still has the chops to make those passes work, or whether his breakout NFC title campaign will prove to be a career outlier.
The best data we have on his 2020 may be from his hot start to 2018, where he led Carolina to a 6-2 start before a shoulder injury sapped his ability to absorb contact after scrambling or connect on big throws downfield. He began that year with 236 passing yards per game, a 15:4 TD:INT ratio, and a little over 43 rushing yards each week. Those are all numbers the Patriots would love!
He finished the season by running less (24 yards per game) and throwing shorter, low-risk attempts poorly. His TD:INT rate dropped to 9:9 despite an average pass that traveled a career-low 6.8 yards through the air. Those are numbers that will herald the backup quarterback stage of Newton’s NFL journey.
What’s changed in 2020: Newton’s revival will come under the same circumstance that may have led to his successor’s departure for Tampa: an underpowered receiving corps in dire need of breakthrough performances. Julian Edelman is the headliner, but he’s 34 years old and now playing without Tom Brady for the first time in his career. Mohamed Sanu was released before the season, leaving the team dangerously low on experienced pass catchers.
N’Keal Harry was the Patriots’ first first-round wideout since Terry Glenn, but his 2019 was also derailed by injury. He’s a big explosive target who could either break through in his sophomore season or wind up the latest victim of Belichick’s biggest draft blindspot. Gunner Olszewski has earned rave reviews for his progress in training camp this offseason, but so did fellow former undrafted free agent Jakobi Meyers last summer. Meyers finished his debut season with only 26 catches on 41 targets. Damiere Byrd spent time with Newton in Carolina and will be the club’s designated deep threat, but only has 44 career receptions in four NFL seasons.
Oh, and Rob Gronkowski is now a Buccaneer after a one-year retirement. The club drafted Dalton Keene and Devin Asiasi in the third round this spring in hopes of replacing him. Together, they combined for 61 catches in 22 NCAA games last season.
This is all to say the passing game is very uncertain in New England, even if Newton thinks it’s a match made in heaven.
So who will be the AFC East’s top quarterback?
Tough question, for all the reasons above!
Let’s assume Josh Allen continues his growth from 2018 to 2019 thanks to the arrival of Diggs, a roster loaded with young playmakers, and a solid line. Let’s also assume Darnold makes some modest steps forward with better blocking but limited receiving help. That leaves one major X factor in the East, and that’s the status of Cam Newton.
Since we don’t know what he’s gonna bring to the table due to a combination of health, age, and the nuance of adjusting to New England’s offense (and limited wideout/tight end options), let’s slot in places for early-2018 Cam and late-2018 Cam.
Here’s how I see them:
Early-2018 Cam Newton
Josh Allen
Sam Darnold
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Late-2018 Cam Newton
Tua Tagovailoa
Jarrett Stidham, but who the hell knows
That’s a group with tremendous variance! If everyone lives up to their potential, the AFC East could be a smorgasbord of passing touchdowns and aerial dominance. It’s much more likely, however, a division with Stephon Gilmore, Byron Jones, Tre’Davious White, and a Jets defense that’s, uh, gonna try real hard to replace Jamal Adams’ backfield presence, will fail to keep pace in a conference where rivals include Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Deshaun Watson, and sure, why not, Joe Burrow.
That means, for the first time in a long, long time, the AFC East is capable of surprising us. Even if the Patriots take the division crown for the 12th straight year.