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Titans hope Zach Mettenberger beats late-rounder odds

John Glennon
jglennon@tennessean.com
  • Quarterback Zach Mettenberger was a 6th-round pick%2C the 178th player drafted this year.
  • Of the 65 quarterbacks picked in the 6th or 7th round in the past 15 years%2C 14 have started a game.
  • Former quarterbacks Ron Jaworski and Joe Theismann are optimistic Mettenberger can beat the odds.
Quarterback Zach Mettenberger (7) throws a pass during Titans rookie mini camp on Friday May 16, 2014.

The Titans drafted Zach Mettenberger in the sixth round with the idea that he might one day be their starting quarterback.

But he'll have to battle against precedent to do so.

Aside from Tom Brady, few quarterbacks drafted in the sixth round or later have enjoyed much long-term success as an NFL starter over the past 15 years. More recently, very few quarterbacks drafted later than the third round have made much of an impact.

The Titans believe that Mettenberger isn't your average sixth-round quarterback, of course. They see him as a much higher-valued player who just happened to slip to pick No. 178 because of injury and red-flag concerns.

"Yeah, it's always a long shot for the sixth-rounders, the fifth-rounders and even the fourth-rounders to make it," said Ron Jaworksi, the ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback who ranked Mettenberger as the second-best QB in the draft.

"There's no question that history has not been favorable to those guys. But all that numbers stuff is irrelevant now. Now he has to go out there and play and perform. It doesn't matter whether you're No. 1 in the draft or No. 199, like Tom Brady was. You have to perform."

Mettenberger probably shouldn't look at the success rates of late-round NFL quarterbacks as he begins his career, because the numbers are ugly.

Over the past 15 years, 65 quarterbacks were drafted in the sixth or seventh round. Only 14 have started a game.

Brady, a sixth-rounder in 2000, is 148-43 as a starter. The only other member of that 14-quarterback group to post as many as 40 wins is Marc Bulger (41-54). In fact, the 13 quarterbacks besides Brady are a combined 141-246-1 over the15-year period.

Since 2006, no quarterback picked after the third round has won as many as five games. That group was lowlighted by 2009 sixth-rounder Curtis Painter, who went 0-8 during his 2011 stint with the Colts. The best of the bunch was 2007 fifth-rounder Troy Smith, who is 4-4.

Having success as a late-rounder is "not the norm," said former NFL quarterback Joe Theismann, a fourth-round pick who threw for more than 25,000 yards. "It is harder, no question."

But most would argue it's not really fair to lump Mettenberger in with some of the no-names — such as Alex Brink, Mike Teel or Tom Brandstater — that were drafted in later rounds recently.

Theismann believes the fact that Mettenberger is still recovering from last year's torn ACL and that there were some reports he had back issues, were the primary reasons he slipped as far as he did.

"If he was healthy, he would have gone earlier," Theismann said. "But they still liked him enough to draft him. If he wasn't liked at all, he would never have gotten drafted."

Jaworski believes Mettenberger's diluted urine sample at the NFL Combine — which the league counts as a failed drug test — was just as significant in the draft-day slide.

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"My instinct was that the way the NFL operates, it was going to hurt him, and it certainly did," Jaworski said. "I don't think there's any way he was there (in the sixth round) unless those red flags were there. I talked to a lot of teams leading up to the draft and a lot of them liked Zach. I think those red flags scared some people away."

Jaworski sees the LSU product as the rare late-round quarterback who can become an NFL starter.

"I'm really high on Zach," he said. "I went through film of about 14 quarterbacks pretty intently before the draft, and I had him at No. 2 because I thought he had a skill-set that translated very well to the NFL. There's a way I think that you play the game for consistency at the NFL level, and that's how Zach plays the game. …

"You have to play the game from the pocket, deliver from the pocket, read from the pocket, and get the ball in the hands of your playmakers. That's what Mettenberger did."

Titans rookie quarterback and former LSU star Zach Mettenberger

Theismann is optimistic about Mettenberger as well.

"I think it was a good pick by Tennessee — a big, strong quarterback who had NFL-type coaching last year, and now he has a chance to go out and learn," he said. "But now, the OTAs, the minicamps and training camp are really where he has to seize the opportunity and show his wares.

"This is the chance to go to the facility and work out. Take a receiver with you, study your plays, call your routes and do everything you need to do like it's a game situation. That's the way you practice."

It's a philosophy with which Mettenberger seems to agree, as he seeks to prove that he's not just another late-round quarterback.

"All I can do is control what I can control," he said. "I am going to show up, ready to work. I am going to come every day with a hard hat and lunch pail to get after it. Whatever happens, happens. I am just going to compete my tail off."

Reach John Glennon at 615-259-8262 and on Twitter @glennonsports.