Which Quarterback in the 2019 NFL Draft Class Is Statistically Superior?

2. Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State

Age: 21 | Games Played: 15 | AY/A: 10.3 | Passing Efficiency Rating: 174.1 | Total QBR: 86.3

Top Statistical Comp: Alex Smith

There are going to be overlaps between the conversation around Murray and what we have with Haskins. As we saw with Murray, that's not going to be fully damning because of how good Haskins was at Ohio State.

If we assume that both Haskins and Murray are first-round picks this upcoming year, we'd have 55 first-round picks from 2000 on. Out of those 55, Haskins would rank eighth in final-year AY/A at 10.3. Of the players ahead of Haskins on that list, Mayfield is the only one without a top-15 finish in Total NEP, but he seems well on his way to joining that list next year. In general, if you're this efficient, you're in line to succeed in the NFL.

Haskins finished this past season third in Total QBR, trailing only Murray and Tagovailoa. That's impressive in a vacuum. But again, Total QBR factors in what quarterbacks do with their legs, and Haskins does not get a bump in that department. His value was all from how good his right arm was.

What makes Haskins' efficiency even more impressive is that he did this at massive volume. His 533 passing attempts were the second most in the entire nation. The second most pass attempts for a player with an AY/A of at least 9.0 was Fresno State's Marcus McMaryion at 427. Finley was the only other player in our group of seven who attempted more than 450 passes. It's hard to be efficient when the opposing team knows you're going to throw, but Haskins still managed to shred.

It's difficult to poke holes in Haskins' statistical profile. He had 228 pass attempts against top-50 pass defenses compared to Murray's 150, so the road for Haskins seemed a bit more stringent. And, as you saw, the total numbers were tremendous. It all just comes down -- again -- to his lack of experience.

This is actually a bigger question for Haskins than it is for Murray for a couple of reasons. The first is that Haskins simply had fewer games of experience with 15 outings in which he attempted at least 10 passes, which would be the fewest for any first-round pick since 2000. That one's obvious.

The other question revolves around why those players didn't get volume earlier. For Murray, the answer is simple: he was playing behind Baker freaking Mayfield. You're not going to scoff at that too much.

For Haskins, it was J.T. Barrett. Barrett was a fine college player, and he better fit the rushing-quarterback mold that Urban Meyer seemed to favor. But he doesn't have a Heisman Trophy on his shelf like Mayfield.

Given the scheme fit and the fact that Barrett wasn't awful by any means, we likely shouldn't skewer Haskins for that portion of the equation. And from a volume perspective, Haskins actually had more pass attempts in his career (590) than Murray did (519) even though Haskins did it over a smaller sample. The same is true with other low-experience quarterbacks in Trubisky (572 attempts) and Sanchez (487). So if you're worried about a lack of tape on the guy, he flashed that right arm often enough in college to give you something to work with there.

With Haskins, we just have to decide how big of a concern the lack of experience is. Let's circle back to the list we had with Murray of players who were young, inexperienced, and relatively efficient. Where does Haskins' collegiate resume stack up relative to those other players?

Haskins wasn't quite as efficient as either Newton or Smith, though he did top Manziel and Darnold. Even with them, though, he had at least nine fewer games of experience and 259 fewer pass attempts. If you were ranking this group just based on their statistical profiles, Haskins would either be last or ahead of only Darnold.

This underscores a larger point about this year's draft class -- even though guys like Murray and Haskins look like they deserve to be first-round picks, they're nowhere near the levels of experience we had with last year's crop of rookies.

This chart below compares the two classes from an age and experience perspective. For the 2018 class, we'll include all five of the first-round picks. For this year, we'll include all seven of the players involved with this analytical deep dive.

Let's say that Darnold, Josh Rosen, and Lamar Jackson had skipped the draft last year, gone back to college, and started a full 13 games this year (assuming they would have gone to a bowl). They all would have been either the same age as or younger than everyone in this year's class, and they would have had more games played than everybody but Lock and Finley. If you needed a quarterback, you should have addressed it last year. The class was just better.

That lack of experience is the big downside when it comes to Haskins. He is an outlier here and not in the positive sense.

But that doesn't mean we should simply abandon ship on him. He's ranked second on this list for a reason. He's younger than both Sanchez and Trubisky were coming out, he has more pass attempts than those two and Murray, and his efficiency levels were really solid. It's certainly a gamble, but there is enough upside in Haskins for teams to take a swing at him in the first round.