1st round bust to Super Bowl champ

We're turning this blog into "We Love David Carr" for the time being. Here is a list of the quarterbacks that were first-round picks, were considered busts by the teams that drafted them, then won Super Bowls as starting quarterbacks with other teams.

Len Dawson (first-round pick of Steelers, won title with Chiefs)

Jim Plunkett (first overall pick by Patriots, won two Super Bowls with Raiders

Doug Williams (first-round pick of Buccaneers, won Super Bowl with Redskins)

Steve Young (first-round pick of Buccaneers, won Super Bowl with 49ers)

Trent Dilfer (first-round pick with Buccaneers, won Super Bowl with Ravens)

Gee, maybe the Bucs should have held onto some of their first-round QBs? In addition to these three that won Super Bowls, Vinny Testeverde went on to have a solid career playing for competent teams.

Could David Carr become one of these QB busts who rewrites his legacy with a Super Bowl win? I don't know. Certainly there are many more busts that failed and never revived their careers with championships. But here's the thing: David Carr never sucked in Houston. As the Insomniac mentioned in a previous post, we kept waiting for Carr to have a breakout season, and it never came. But he also never bottomed out: he was a mediocre QB on a bad team. We could ascribe his mediocrity to being a young, inexperience quarterback who didn't get very good coaching, who played on an expansion team, and who rarely had a chance to succeed playing behind a poor offensive line (he was sacked at an historic rate). He's never been so awful as to make me think he can't be good. With a better team, with a better offensive line, with better offensive coaching, with more experience, Carr could become a good quarterback.

And the Vikings have no better option for 2007, anyway. Tarvaris Jackson may be a superstar QB someday, but I doubt that day will come in 2007. If they're going to get a competent veteran to play for a year or two, they could do worse than Carr, who has had some success and is still young enough to be considered a potential good QB.