Darnold on the block?

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by Maniac

Brees in his 3rd year starting went 11-4, threw 27 td's and 7 int's
Tannehill in his 3rd year starting threw for 4000 yards, 27 tds and 12 ints
Favre in his 3rd year starting threw for almost 4000 yards, 33tds and 14 ints

Brees and Favre both took their teams to the playoffs those years.

You are fudging here. The Brees and Favre years you reference were actually their 4th years in the league. You skip over their first years just because they didn't play much. If you skip games they didn't play, then Darnold is still in his second year - he's missed 8 games so far. So to be fair, here's a comparison of their second years:

Brees - threw for 2108 yards, 11 TDs against 15 INTs
Tannehill - threw for 3912 yards, 24 TDs against 17 INTs
Favre - threw for 3303 yards, 19 TDs against 24 INTs
Moon - threw for 2709 yards,, 15 TDs against 19 INTs

Incidentally, you omitted Warren Moon from your analysis. In his third year, he threw for 3489 yards, with 13 TDs and a league-leading 26 INTs. He was also 30 by then, so he was probably not someone who appeared to have a bright future at the time.

Ultimately, though, the point is that these players all underperformed at first, but later hit their stride - most of them with heir second team I'd also venture a guess based upon the W-L records of their teams during their first few years, that none of these guys had supporting players as dismally bad as Darnold does (Brees 2nd full year his team went 2-9 while he was QB, so maybe that year is close).