The 2021 season debuted six brand new rookie quarterbacks on the scene. Each quarterback had varying degrees of success but overall it wasn’t a great year to be a rookie quarterback in the NFL.
Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Mac Jones, Justin Fields, and Davis Mills are all the confirmed starters for their respective teams as they head into their sophomore seasons in the NFL. In their own individual ways, each one of them has something to prove. But everyone always has something to prove in the NFL each year. Not many players have a level of pressure on them like a quarterback, though.
No position is under as much scrutiny as the quarterback position, and young quarterbacks are expected to now hit the ground running as opposed to years gone by when rookie signal callers would sit for a few years before stepping into the starting role. Teams want production from their investment early on. Waiting around isn’t how you build a championship-winning team.
We’ve seen with the likes of Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, and Josh Rosen – and potentially Daniel Jones – that if quarterbacks don’t show immediate and consistent improvement, teams will happily go in another direction. That’s not to say that this crop of quarterbacks are at risk of losing their jobs, but relative to their past performances and current situations, who has the most to prove in their second season?
Davis Mills
Mills was a surprise selection by the Texans in the third round. The Texans were prepared to run with Tyrod Taylor under center until an injury against the Browns in Week 2. Taylor returned later in the season but poor performances saw him dropped in favour of Mills. Now, heading into 2022, Mills is the assured starter in Houston.
His 2021 season showed a lot of promise – especially in the latter half of the year. Mills completed 68.4 percent of his passes for 1258 yards with a touchdown to interception ratio of 9:2 in the final five games of the season. He flashed arm talent, consistent accuracy, and the ability to stay composed in the pocket as he progressed through his reads. The Texans will hope that he improves in his second year.
But in terms of how much he has to prove, Mills is bottom of the list. He’s a third-round pick in what can only be described as a less-than-ideal situation. The Texans won only four games last season but fired head coach David Culley and replaced him with Lovie Smith. The roster is one of the worst in the league and the Texans haven’t set Mills up with a ton of weapons.
Expectations aren’t high for overall success in Houston. They’ll hope that Mills can grow into a viable long-term starter, but he doesn’t have much to prove beyond that. Incremental growth is the name of the game.
Mac Jones
There’s a bit of a gap between Jones and Mills if we’re being honest. Jones was the most successful of all the quarterbacks in the 2021 class. The Patriots won 10 games with him under center, and Jones finished second in Rookie of the Year voting. Jones completed 67.6 percent of his passes for 3801 yards, 22 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions and comfortably slid into the Patriots’ offense. No other quarterback landed in a better situation than the former Crimson Tide QB.
Jones isn’t a true playmaker like some of the other quarterbacks on this list. His arm talent is adequate but not exceptional. He doesn’t have the ability to make too many plays outside the pocket but he’s shown in just one year that there’s a lot to like – even if the Patriots offense isn’t filled with weapons and skews towards a run-heavy game.
His superior situation should technically mean that Jones has a lot to prove. The Patriots made the playoffs in his first year and will hope to make the playoffs again, but the AFC is loaded and the Bills are the superior team in the AFC East. It feels like Jones and the Patriots are slightly fading into the background. It’s hard to get a true reading, but Jones definitely won’t have as much to prove in his second season. In fact, he could even be in line for the dreaded sophomore slump.
Justin Fields
Oy vey. If anyone hasn’t put their quarterback in the position to succeed, it’s the Bears with Justin Fields. The 2021 season was a tough introduction to life in the NFL for Fields. He was pressured at a near league-high rate and struggled with accuracy, read progression, and ball security – fumbling the ball 12 times and throwing 10 interceptions in 12 games. The Bears won just two games with Fields under center, and there’s not much reason to believe they’ll win too many more in 2022.
The offense has not improved on paper. The Bears knew Allen Robinson would be leaving the team long before free agency came around, and while they have Darnell Mooney, upgrading Fields’ weapons was key. Instead of aggressively pursuing the top-of-the-class receivers, the Bears added Byron Pringle, N’Keal Harry, and Velus Jones Jr.
Fields has to take a meaningful leap in his development in year 2, but it’ll be hard considering the talent around him. The Bears have added to the offensive line, but again, it’s not game-changing moves. Riley Reiff is a competent swing tackle, but he’s 33 years old. Other than that, nothing really moves the needle.
Despite everything around him, Fields will, rightly or wrongly, be under fire if he struggles in 2022. But there’s also enough doubt around him for other quarterbacks to have more to prove in 2022.
Trey Lance
Now things are getting interesting. Lance only started two games in 2021, while the oft-injured Jimmy Garoppolo dealt with two separate injuries. His performances showed a lot of promise, but Lance was always viewed as the rawest quarterback prospect in the 2021 class. He would need time before being thrust into the starting role.
With Garoppolo out the door and the 49ers committed to Lance, it’s now time for them to start to recoup their investment in the third overall pick. Here comes the pressure. It’s not just that the 49ers spent the third pick in the draft on Lance, it’s what they did to get there. The 49ers traded three first-round picks in consecutive years, plus a third-rounder in 2022 to move up 9 places from 12th to 3rd.
There’s more. With Garoppolo under center, the 49ers made it to the NFC Championship Game in 2021 and were one quarter away from making their second Super Bowl in four years. The 49ers still have a roster worthy of challenging for a Super Bowl as well. Lance has been handed the keys to a team built by one of the NFL’s true offensive gurus in Kyle Shanahan. And that team has playmakers all over the field; Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, and Elijah Mitchell will all need feeding in a balanced offense.
Lance has already had his critics during OTAs this offseason, and if he doesn’t hit the ground running in 2022, the critics will only get louder.
Trevor Lawrence
Now, I know what you’re thinking: surely the number one overall pick from 2021 has the most to prove after a tough rookie year?
Partly true. Lawrence was viewed as a generational talent and one of the best quarterbacks entering the draft since Andrew Luck or Peyton Manning. A serial winner, great competitor, and a bloody good quarterback to boot – Lawrence was everything you wanted in a franchise QB. And he still is. One bad year doesn’t change it.
Lawrence wound up on one of the worst rosters in the NFL in year one with Urban Meyer as his coach. Meyer’s tenure ended amid controversy outside football, but his reign as coach was filled with mediocrity and an autocratic coaching style that just doesn’t fly in the NFL. It wasn’t a good situation for Lawrence to flourish.
On the field, he threw a league-high 17 interceptions and just 12 touchdowns. Though he showed a real composure in the pocket as the season went on, Lawrence tried to extend plays and force throws that just weren’t there. You can forgive him for the braggadocio, but the result wasn’t pretty.
The Jaguars were aggressive in free agency, bolstering the offensive line with Brandon Scherff and adding Zay Jones, Christian Kirk, and Evan Engram to the receiving core. It’s good that Lawrence will have more weapons, and it’ll certainly help his development, but the Jags were too aggressive with the wrong receiver. Kirk isn’t a true number one, and Jones isn’t exactly a gambreaker as a complementary option. However, the contracts handed out tell a different story.
Lawrence will have to at least start to prove that, in year 2, he was worth the Jaguars spending the first overall pick on him in 2021. However, he still doesn’t have the most to prove.
Zach Wilson
Believe it or not, that honour goes to Zach Wilson. Selected one pick after Lawrence, Wilson has the weight and scrutiny of New York on his shoulders, but that’s not why he has the most to prove. His performance in 2021 was, subjectively at least, worse than Lawrence’s. He completed just 55 percent of his passes for 2334 yards for 9 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
Wilson’s bouts with inaccuracy were often brutal – he only had one game with a completion percentage better than 63 percent and had two games under 50 percent. His field vision, like his passing, was streaky and inconsistent, but like Lawrence, he got better as the season went on. He did, however, finish dead last in QB EPA per play, per RBSDM. That didn’t deter the Jets, though.
They saw the flashes and took into account that he was sacked 44 times and had a mediocre supporting cast. The Jets didn’t have a top 5 pick purely because of Wilson’s play. It didn’t help, but there were other reasons. So, they invested heavily in the offseason.
First came the offensive line. The Jets added Laken Tomlinson at guard to help protect the interior while adding Garrett Wilson, C.J. Uzomah, and Tyler Conklin to the receiving core. Wilson has All-Pro potential and was one of the best wide receivers in the draft, while Uzomah and Conklin are no slouches at tight end. Oh, and running back Breece Hall was added to the equation too, as he’ll hopefully help improve the Jets’ running game while adding a threat as a receiver out of the backfield.
It’s not just an investment in the team, it’s an investment in Wilson as a quarterback. The Jets believe he can be the face of the franchise. And because of that, the pressure is on. The Jets have spent a lot of money on putting a winning team around Wilson. Something they never did for Sam Darnold.
So, now, Wilson has to prove that the Jets made the right move decision in moving on from Sam Darnold, the former third overall pick from the 2018 NFL Draft. Ultimately, the Jets might have wound up moving on from Darnold regardless. Either way, moving on from one young quarterback to another means that they’ll often be compared unless Wilson breaks out year two. He has every chance of doing so, but he’ll be under immense scrutiny thanks to the Jets investment in him. No other second-year quarterback has as much to prove as him.
-Thomas Valentine
Twitter: @tvalentinesport
Photo: Jeff Hoffman. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.