In recent history, we’ve seen more and more coaches refusing to start their rookie quarterbacks in week 1, and with the Bears drafting Justin Fields this year, that got me thinking; is it better to start your rookie quarterback in week 1, or is it smarter to wait until you know they are ready? So I went back to the year 2010 and looked at every first-round quarterback and looked at if they had started or not and if that helped them out in the long run.
There are many outliers in this group because there have been a lot of quarterbacks that would have to start in week 1 by default, either because we already know how good they were going to be or by the fact that the team just didn’t have any other quarterbacks to play.