Another point of view of the much debated issue this off-season.
One of the most asked questions of this Dolphins off-season has been one of the most difficult to answer: When will Ryan Tannehill be the Dolphins’ starting quarterback?
It’s a reasonable question. When a team invests the eighth overall pick in a player, fans expect him to play.
And if Miami would have selected a wide receiver or a guard or a linebacker with their first round pick, you can almost be assured that he would be all but penciled in atop the depth chart.
Quarterback, though, is different.
http://thefinsiders.com/blog/2012/when-is-the-time-for-tannehillIf you want more recent examples, in the past five years 13 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round but just six of them have been their team’s Week 1 starter and of those six, three were number-one overall selections (JaMarcus Russell was also taken #1 overall, but Josh McCown was Oakland’s Week 1 starter in 2007 after Russell’s hold out carried into the regular season).
When you look at the guys who did start right away, one thing becomes clear: they were set up to play right away. What I mean is that they weren’t presented with a huge battle for the starting job. Here are the six guys who started right away and who the other QBs to appear in the preseason were during their rookie seasons:
2011: Cam Newton (Jimmy Clausen, Derek Anderson)
2010: Sam Bradford (Keith Null, AJ Feely, Thaddeus Lewis)
2009: Matthew Stafford (Drew Stanton, Daunte Cullpepper, Brooks Bollinger)
2009: Mark Sanchez (Erick Ainge, Kellen Clemens)
2008: Matt Ryan (Joey Harrington, DJ Shockley, Chris Redman)
2008: Joe Flacco (Kyle Boller, Troy Smith, Casey Bramlett)
Tannehill, who will be competing with the likes of veterans Matt Moore and David Garrard this preseason, doesn’t seem to fit this list. He’s a rookie who is coming in with a heck of a fight in front of him, part of the reason why many fans and media consider him a dark horse in this race.