Guest column by Jeremy Rosen and Alexandre Olbrecht
The 2018 draft revealed significant changes in the way NFL teams view quarterbacks. For the first time in league history, four quarterbacks were drafted in the top 10. In addition, the Cleveland Browns' decision to select 6-foot-1 spread quarterback Baker Mayfield with the first pick surprised many analysts. For example, Scouts Inc., which we used to estimate the natural logarithm (ln) of draft position for our model, did not grade Mayfield as a top-10 pick. However, those in the statistics community were less surprised. For instance, we wrote in our FO guest column last year that experience running a traditional pro-style offense in college no longer predicts NFL success.