The NFL’s Rule of Three
Three is an important number. In the universe, an atom is composed of three parts: three states of matter and three dimensions of space. Throughout human history, the number three is also prevalent. There are three Great Pyramids at Giza; the French Revolution’s slogan has three ideals, the same as the United States’ Declaration of Independence.
This means that culturally, the number three is also commonly used. Three Musketeers, Christianity’s Holy Trinity, movie trilogies, Three Little Pigs, and an almost infinite number of examples.
Sports also use the number three a lot. If you score three goals in a game, you get a hat-trick. Win three championships in a soccer season, and you win a treble. Shoot from far enough, and you score three points in a basketball game. In the NFL, you wait three years to know if a player is good or not.
Is this a rule? No. When I was thinking about the “wait-three-years” item, I started thinking about the Rule of Two in Star Wars, and I thought it would make a good title. But there’s a reason why analysts say that you usually need three years to evaluate a player coming to the NFL, although this may be changing.
Why Three Years?
This is probably the easier question to answer here. The NFL is very hard, and it takes some time to adapt to the pro’s speed and physicality. Sometimes, a player needs a year or two to fully understand how the game is played in the league and the complexity of an NFL playbook.
Other times, he can have a good or great rookie season and suffer from a sophomore slump. In this case, a third year helps the coaching staff to know if the good first or the bad second season was the odd one. It can also happen that the player suffered from injuries in his first few years in the league and needed to stay healthy to show his potential.
This three-year window was more “respected” before, but changes throughout the years and new aspects of the game put way more emphasis on winning in the “now.” Don’t worry, we will get there.
The Good Exception
The best possible scenario is when you don’t need to wait three years to determine if a player will be great. Justin Jefferson, for example, needed only three games. Last year, C.J. Stroud took the league by storm in his first year. Randy Moss finished his rookie season as one of the best wide receivers in the league, and T.J. Watt was one of the most-feared edge rushers in the league when his first year ended.
The Bad Exception
If a team can see a budding superstar in his first season, sometimes they can find themselves on the other side of the spectrum. Some busts are so ugly that, in only a year, the team may part ways with them. Alex Leatherwood, a first-round pick by the Raiders in 2021, played so poorly that he was cut in 2022.
Every first-round QB of the 2011 Draft, not named Cam Newton, suffered from the same fate. No one was cut, but Jake Locker was out of the league by 2015 and Christian Ponder by 2014. Blaine Gabbert was the only one who managed to stick around as a backup, but the last time he attempted more than 200 passes in a year was in 2015.
The “Expected”
As I said earlier, it takes some time for a player to get used to the league. The examples above are exceptions for a reason. At the same time, it isn’t normal for a player to be super good as a rookie, but he usually isn’t super bad, either. The “normal” path is for him to show some things during his rookie year and keep building on that.
That’s what happened to Josh Allen in 2018, for example. Don’t get me wrong, he was as bad as he can get as a rookie. But you could also see flashes of what he could be – and ultimately became. Per Pro Football Reference, he had a 25.7% poor throw rate, which is bad. But he improved on that a lot, scaling it down to 16.0% by his third year.
Allen finished the 2018 season as a raw quarterback with unbelievable arm strength and running ability but awful ball placement and processing. By the end of 2020, he was one of the best young quarterbacks in the league and elected by the PFWA as the Most Improved Player.
Now one of the cornerstones of the 49ers’ offense ‒ and a very rich man ‒ Brandon Aiyuk also took some years to burst onto the scene fully. With a rookie year plagued by a couple of minor injuries, he ended up playing in only 12 games, racking up 748 yards and five touchdowns, with almost 300 more and three TDs as a runner. He has improved a lot as a receiver since then, surpassing Deebo Samuel as the primary receiver on the team.
I only used first-round picks as examples because they enter the league with way more expectations than later-round players. But you don’t have to look far to see a player showing great improvement in his third year. As a fifth-round pick, converted safety Cam Bynum took full advantage of that time to develop. Playing in only 211 snaps as a rookie, he showed some flashes before being the starter in 2022. Lewis Cine’s leg injury probably played a factor in Bynum playing the whole year, but that’s nobody’s fault.
Bynum had a shaky second season, but really improved in Brian Flores’ scheme and became one of the cornerstones of the defense. His contract extension also became a matter of when, not if.
One of the reasons why teams and analysts seem in a hurry to label a player is a very hard one. It correlates to society as a whole, with everyone wanting everything in the now as opposed to in the future, even if this would be the best option. Another part of this answer would be job security.
The average GM tenure is three years. The pressure to win now or to tear everything down and rebuild is immense in the NFL; that’s one of the reasons why what the Vikings are doing is even more different. The “QB on a rookie deal” only adds up to that, as evaluators have a short time to evaluate the player and put together a roster around him. General managers also rarely receive a second chance on another team, so one miss can be enough to end a career.
Situations like the Bills and Josh Allen could be the norm in the past, but now it’s the exception. Even in his draft class, we can see an example of that. I’m not going to say that Josh Rosen was or would be even a good QB, but it’s undeniable that he was dealt the worst possible hand.
There are countless arguments to be made on this topic. With the pro game becoming more similar to college, with the incorporation of spread formations and the run-pass option, players are expected to adapt quickly. With the QB market as crazy as it is ‒ signal-callers getting $55M per year ‒ a QB on a rookie deal is what owners and front offices seek the most.
A revolving door of GMs and HCs adds even more pressure on them to get it right. This means that they are more inclined to rush a player’s development, especially a quarterback, to keep their jobs.
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