Rating the quarterbacks

For the ultimate "what a difference a year makes" example, NFL scouts need look no further than the graphic differences between the number of quarterback prospects in the 1999 draft and the paucity of same in the 2000 lottery.

Just a year after the first round was highlighted by a record-breaking passing fancy, teams fancy few of the passers in the 2000 talent pool.

"Yeah, it is fair to say this is a pretty thin year for quarterbacks," said Baltimore vice president of player personnel Ozzie Newsome, understating one of the most anemic classes of quarterbacks in recent years. "You've got (Chad) Pennington and then it's just a matter of personal preference as to who the next guy might be. But that's one reason why everyone went so hard for quarterbacks in last year's draft."

Most quarterback-needy teams took advantage of the 1999 burgeoning crop of passers to address the priority, and most did so cognizant of the dearth of viable prospects in 2000.

Last year at this time, scouts were splitting hairs among the likes of Tim Couch, Akili Smith and Donovan McNabb, and five of the first dozen players selected in the '99 draft were quarterbacks.

While that '99 quarterback class likely will never compare with the 1983 bounty -- a first round that featured six quarterbacks and included future Hall of Famers John Elway and Dan Marino -- last year's haul was like the halcyon days when viewed in light of what could transpire on April 15 and 16.

It's also obvious now that last year was an aberration.

"Everything came together (in 1999) but, for the most part, we're just not seeing the development of quarterbacks at the college level that we had, say, 10 years ago," San Francisco general manager Bill Walsh said. "We've got a kind of quarterback crisis and we're having now to do a lot more of the rudimentary work after the player reaches us at the NFL level."

Unless some desperate teams "reach" for quarterbacks a week from Saturday, there might not be as many passers taken on the first day of the 2000 draft as there were in the opening 90 minutes of last year's flesh market.

Of the first-round quarterbacks from 1999, only Daunte Culpepper of Minnesota failed to start at least one game. The other four -- Couch (Cleveland), McNabb (Philadelphia), Smith (Cincinnati) and Cade McNown (Chicago) -- combined for 31 starts.

That number would have been higher had Smith not sustained a foot injury that precluded him from keeping the No. 1 job for the final two months of the season. Another rookie, second-round pick Shaun King of Tampa Bay, led his team to the NFC Championship Game.

All six of those quarterbacks are projected as starters in 2000, the only caveat being the possibility Jeff George will re-sign with Minnesota and bump Culpepper to the No. 2 spot. Fast forward to this year's draft, however, when not even the top prospect at the game's most critical position figures to earn a starting job as a rookie.

"Any team that takes a quarterback this year hoping he'll be an immediate starter is making a big mistake," Kansas City offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye said. "Stranger things have happened, I guess, but I don't see any of these guys being ready to step right in and play. It's a big jump and not even all those guys from '99 were prepared to make it. It's just another level, you know? It's where you separate the throwers from the quarterbacks, if you know what I mean."

The prospect who has separated himself from the rest of the pack since the 1999 regular season concluded is Pennington, the former Marshall star who will be the only quarterback selected in the first round and, some scouts surveyed by SportsLine.com insisted, the only one taken in the first two rounds.

Pennington declined to throw at the February combine workouts in Indianapolis but has posted solid on-campus auditions the past month.

Three of the 13 scouts or personnel directors contacted by SportsLine.com for its draft series acknowledged that Pennington might be a better long-term prospect than Couch. Several others noted that, had Pennington been in the 1999 draft, he would have been no worse than the second passer selected.

Despite some rough edges technically, and the fact he lacks the big arm all scouts and coaches covet, Pennington is a well-rounded player with terrific intangibles.

The word most often used to describe Pennington is "poised," and that appears to be an apt label for a guy with football savvy, solid instincts and a background in a high-tech passing game.

Carolina personnel director Jack Bushofsky allowed it would be heresy to compare any prospect to Peyton Manning, but contended that Pennington was in the same class as the Indianapolis star in terms of work ethic, demeanor and intelligence.

"If you need a quarterback and you pass on the guy," Bushofsky said, "you're going to be kicking yourself in two or three years. I think in time he could be pretty special."

The conventional wisdom is that Pennington, who threw for 7,216 yards and 61 touchdowns with only 18 interceptions over the past two seasons, will be a top 10 selection. But even with that, it is difficult to project which team will take him.

Every club interested in Pennington seems willing to play things close to the vest, but the best bets are Denver and Pittsburgh. After he goes off the board, however, it could be a while before another passer hears his name called.

This draft class was hurt a bit by the decisions of Drew Brees of Purdue and Georgia's Quincy Carter to stay in school. Brees probably would have been more highly regarded than Pennington. And while the consensus was that Carter had a miserable '99 season for the Bulldogs, one in which he suffered from the team's lack of proven receivers, his raw athleticism alone might have made him a second-round pick.

Although the quarterback remains essential to success in the NFL, the recent trend has been toward minimizing the role of the quarterback. That rationale, combined with the realization that scouts must now seek out quarterback talent in alternate leagues like NFL Europe and Arena football, has reduced the number of passers selected in the draft.

The skepticism over prospects in the 2000 pool could further blunt those numbers.

Since the NFL adopted a seven-round draft in 1994, there have been only 63 quarterbacks taken, an average of 10.5 per year. The dropoff has been most obvious in the even-numbered years, with only nine quarterbacks drafted in 1994 and eight each in '96 and '98.

If West Virginia's Marc Bulger is not drafted, he is expected to enter the NFL as a free agent.(Allsport)

Even with five quarterbacks in the first round last year, there were only eight more in the subsequent six stanzas. Not since the seven-round draft debuted has there been more than 14 quarterbacks selected.

If the trend continues, a "down" year like this one might mean accomplished college starters like Marc Bulger (West Virginia), Doug Johnson (Florida) and Tom Brady (Michigan) won't even be drafted, and instead will enter the league as free agents.

Few of the prospects have distinguished themselves in postseason workouts and even the quarterbacks who have gained some ground in the past few weeks, like Todd Husak of Stanford and Louisiana Tech's Tim Rattay, still rate as no better than middle-round choices.

The quarterback crop does include one of the players who has slipped the most since the end of the season (Chris Redman of Louisville) and a prospect who is among the most debated players in the entire draft (Georgia Tech's Joe Hamilton).

But as one AFC East scout noted last week, when asked about Hamilton, it's never a good sign when teams are thinking about taking a 5-foot-10 quarterback as early as the third round.

"You like to think it goes in cycles," said the scout. "But we went from the top of the mountain last year to a foxhole this year at the quarterback position. Feast one year and famine the next? It's not supposed to work quite that way. But that's what we're looking at with the quarterbacks this year."

Coming Wednesday: The running back prospects.