Ranking 5 NFL rookie first-round quarterbacks in preseason debuts
The highly touted group of rookie first-round quarterbacks made their NFL preseason debuts, so how do the five performances rank out?
Whenever there is a group of incoming NFL rookie quarterbacks that was brought up in the same conversation as the vaunted 1983 class with John Elway, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly and others, special attention is going to be paid to every moment along the way.
Subsequently, Trevor Lawrence (Jaguars), Zach Wilson (Jets), Trey Lance (49ers), Justin Fields (Bears) and Mac Jones (Patriots) are going to have a ton of eyes on them for every step they take in training camp and now the start of the preseason. So with all five quarterbacks making their 2021 NFL preseason debuts — the first time they’ve seen live game action as a pro — we have some thoughts.
To get those out, what better way to do so than to stack the performances of these first-round NFL rookie quarterbacks against one another and rank them from worst to best. None of them were objectively terrible and none were close to perfect. But this is how they stack up after Saturday’s showings.
5. Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars
Maybe it was because of the draft-season hype, maybe it was due to the buzz in training camp, but it was difficult to watch Trevor Lawrence take his first snaps with the Jacksonville Jaguars against Cleveland on Saturday and not be underwhelmed.
Lawrence finished the day 6-of-9 for 71 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. Admittedly, those numbers look fine on the surface. With that said, the film showed some more troubling aspects. The Clemson product and No. 1 overall pick was sacked twice and you can’t wholly say it was the fault of the offensive line. He held onto the ball too long on a number of occasions and did seem a bit rushed at times.
The worst instance of this came on his first dropback of the game when he held onto the football and took a big sack from Sheldon Day that forced the rookie signal-caller to put the football on the ground. Lawrence recovered his own miscue but it was still a bad look.
Things did seem to steady as the game went on for Lawrence, so you’d like to see what four full quarters would look like for him. However, a handful of obvious mistakes and no real splash play make his NFL prseason debut the worst among his peers, which is a bit of a shocker.