When the Tennessee Titans selected Jake Locker with the eighth pick and the Jacksonville Jaguars selected Blaine Gabbert with the tenth pick in 2011, the AFC South rivals bet on first-round quarterbacks within minutes of one another.
If all had gone according to plan, the two would have confronted each other twice a year for at least ten years. Almost nothing, however, went well for Locker or Gabbert. Three years later, Jacksonville abandoned up on Gabbert. After four years, Locker completely left the NFL. Furthermore, in a surprising turn of events that nobody could have foreseen after the 2011 NFL Draft, Locker and Gabbert never did wind up starting a game against one another.
Richardson’s Indianapolis Colts (6-8) will host Levis’ Titans (3-11) on Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium (noon, CBS). Levis and Richardson were perhaps the two worst quarterbacks in sport this season going into Week 16. Levis and Richardson rank in the bottom five in terms of passer rating and adjusted net yardage per attempt, have two of the league’s worst interception rates, and two of the three worst success percentages among eligible quarterbacks. Richardson’s completion rate is the lowest in the league. Deshaun Watson, who hasn’t played in two months, has the second-worst QBR in the league, followed by Levis.
When the Titans and Colts faced each other in Indianapolis last year, Levis was not yet the starting quarterback. Since then, Richardson has been injured throughout the two meetings in Nashville. And since Levis was benched during last weekend’s defeat, there are now rumors that he might be benched for this Sunday’s game.
The Locker-Gabbert dynamic is being set up for a recurrence just two years after Levis and Richardson were selected in the Class of 2023. Let’s examine the reasons behind these quarterbacks’ extreme struggles and determine who more urgently needs a turnaround performance.
The difficulties Levis faces are not particularly shocking. He has trouble escaping pressure. He can handle the ball carelessly. Levis’ effectiveness also suffers when the Titans are behind or when an unforeseen circumstance throws the team off-balance.
This season, he has thrown more touchdowns than picks, and his ability to take sacks and his difficulties on third down have done more than anything else to keep the Titans off schedule. While he is still among the NFL leaders in turnover-worthy throws, not all of his errors are his fault. Additionally, the timing of his errors consistently suggests that he is not prepared to make plays at crucial points in the game.
Richardson fails to convert dropbacks into completions, and there’s just no better way to put it. He is on track to have the third-worst completion % of any quarterback who has started ten or more games this century by the end of the season. His average pass goes 12.5 yards through the air, which is the same distance between the quarterback in second place and the quarterback in 34th place. This is significantly longer than the NFL’s second-longest average.