The 2012 NFL Draft has, two years after the fact, begun to appear eerily reminiscent of the 1998 NFL Draft.
Both years saw the top two spots, before the draft itself ever even began, committed to a couple of top college QB's that no one was quite sure how to rate. In 1998, it was Peyton Manning vs. Ryan Leaf. It was Andrew Luck vs. Robert Griffin III in 2012.
Both drafts produced an elite quarterback. Both drafts produced a quarterback not worthy of a top-two pick.
Many thought after the '98 debacle that the landscape for pre-draft quarterback assessment would, with quarterbacks possessing Manning's skillset and mental makeup now the only ones worth thinking about seriously, and those with Ryan Leaf's attributes all but removable from the draft board altogether, alter significantly.
A decade and a half later, there are still quarterbacks drafted highly who fail in spectacular fashion, with RGIII chief amongst the most recent examples. But, as Albert Breer of NFL Network ponders, could the Washington Redskins and Robert Griffin III's failure be the rest of the league's gain? Could their inability to see the flaws in his game lead to a change in the way NFL teams evaluate the quarterback position in the draft?
Breer, in conversations with NFL decision makers this week, learned there are two areas that teams focus their energies on most.
The first is intangibles. An NFC GM recalled the issues being there back in Griffin's draft year -- "What kind of leader is he?" A fellow veteran exec used almost the same words in recalling the same issue: "What kind of leader is he gonna be?" Another question with the Heisman winner was one of entitlement, and that issue seems to have reared its head in Jay Gruden's description -- he said RGIII was "coddled" -- of how the quarterback has been handled over the years.
Intangibles are, of course, the hardest thing to quantify because they are, by nature, unquantifiable. But their importance cannot possibly be overstated.
Second, there's the whole spread vs. pro-style quarterback debate. And it starts with the difficulty of the evaluation, which was there with Griffin. As our exec put it, "With a quarterback or a guard or a tackle, in a pro-style offense, I can see a lot of what a guy has in half a game. In a spread, it might take three games to even get a clue."
Griffin, of course, is not the first highly touted quarterback prospect to ultimately fail, and he won't be the last. The story of his NFL career has also not yet been fully written, so there's every chance he could turn his professional life around and find more success in a second or third destination.
But in a league led very much by copy-cats, look for Griffin and the Redskins' failure to be used by other teams as a guiding light in future draft assessments.
