The quarterback position in the game of football is by far the most vital to the success of the team than any other position is to their respective sports.
Generally, a football team has to have a good quarterback to be successful. Rarely do you see a team win the Super Bowl with a quarterback that is average at best, in almost every case the Super Bowl winning quarterback is near the top of the “best of” list when it comes to quarterbacks.
There is increasing pressure on quarterbacks to be at the top of their game to achieve the success on the field that everyone is looking for. There is no doubting the pressure, everyone can see it. Players feel it, fans sense it, and coaches try their best to minimize it.
Also, the pressure is on franchise itself to find the next great quarterback to lead their team to the Super Bowl. Such pressure leads teams to take drastic measures to hunt for that top quarterback; drastic measures like the Washington Redskins took this offseason when they traded their 2012, 2013 and 2014 first round picks to move into the second position to take Robert Griffin III.
That may be a little drastic. But then again, it may not be. Let’s take it from the Redskins’ point of view. Years and years of average quarterbacks that barely keep the team afloat and land them at the top of the draft order, maybe it was time to make a drastic move with the hopes that RG3 pans out.
If he does turn out to be a top tier NFL quarterback, the Redskins’ can look back on their move and know that they made the right decision. But if he doesn’t, this will simply be another example of how teams constantly have to make big moves to find the right guy.
But the pressure is certainly there. Every year teams either trade away valuable assets for a stand out rookie prospect fresh out of college or they decide to settle for that guy in the draft when the better quarterbacks have been taken, knowing that if they don’t at least try to make a move that they might be left behind.
Everyone’s eyes are on these rookie prospects. Months and months of coverage leading up to the draft with everybody in the nation expecting big things out of these guys — they have to feel the pressure.
This year for example, The Indianapolis Colts felt the need to make some changes, so they trade away the face of their franchise and the future hall of famer Peyton Manning because of the hot new prospect Andrew Luck coming out of college. There is no guarantee that Luck will even be half as good as Manning was (which, is really good) but the Colts felt that they needed to make a change to compete in the future.
The next best quarterback on the list was Robert Griffin III, which is where Washington enters into the picture by trading away three first round picks to snag the Heisman trophy winner.
But, it doesn’t stop there. Those two guys were clearly the best in the draft, but the next best Quarterback, Ryan Tannehill, isn’t projected to go as high as them.
Well, the Miami Dolphins are caught in an awkward position, similar to the Redskins, the Dolphins have been fighting off bad quarterbacks for years, so they decide to take Tannehill since they desperately need to, at the very least, try to get a new quarterback. The pressure is on this year, a handful of rookie quarterbacks that have a lot of eyes on them. Let’s see how they respond to the pressure of being in the most important position in all of sports.
Tyler Rollason is a Winder-Barrow High School graduate and mass communications major at the University of West Georgia. You can e-mail comments about this column to tyrollason@yahoo.com.
