As 2018 proved, quarterback evaluations are…

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The draft is coming. And teams that need quarterbacks may be tempted to ignore other talented players or other pressing needs in order to get a new face at the most imposition position on a football team.

Along the way, owners will be involved. They’ll act like they aren’t. But they will be. Whatever word salad or goofy cover they use (such as the homeless guy who supposedly told Browns owner Jimmy Haslam to pick Johnny Manziel in 2014), owners like to have a spoon in the stew — and then to blame someone else when the recipe goes to pot.

It’s therefore critical for all teams to have football operations that welcome and encourage dissenting views. That have a mechanism for nudging an owner away from preconceived notions or, if necessary, to subtly guide the owner in a different direction, at all times allowing the owner to believe it was the owner’s idea. Teams can’t become so paralyzed by fears of blame shifting and finger pointing that they constantly come back to whatever they think the owner wants, because the owner always finds a way to make those preferences clear.

Chris Simms and I kicked around this dynamic during Wednesday’s PFT Live. We also looked at the top 10 picks in 2018, which featured three quarterback who have failed to reach their potential.

It started with Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, the first pick. The Browns opted for Mayfield over Josh Allen, who went seventh overall to the Bills. After the Browns made Mayfield the top pick, former Browns V.P. of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith explained the decision.

“Baker Mayfield lost two receivers and he was the same quarterback,” Highsmith said after the draft. “Josh Allen . . . big arm . . . he could throw the ball from here to the moon. When they have to make excuses . . . why are they not completing passes? That’s a problem.”

The problem comes from not understanding why Allen didn’t have a higher completion percentage at Wyoming. His receivers weren’t good. None of them. When Mayfield lost two receivers, there were other great ones to step in. Allen had no great ones in the first place. And it showed in the failure of his receivers to get open and catch his passes.

“Then comes the part where you meet them off the field. You watch their workouts. You watch everything. And Baker blew me away. Highly, highly intelligent. Highly competitive. And he had a trait that some of the good ones have. I call it efficacy. That includes the power to effect other people. I thought that of all the quarterbacks I watched, he stood out far and above the other guys. When he walked into a room, you knew he was there.”

Four years later, the Browns wish he wasn’t. He had two good years and two bad ones. It wasn’t good enough to get the Browns to not pursue Deshaun Watson.

That said, Mayfield could still become a star. Maybe Mayfield struggled in Cleveland because of the Browns. Maybe in his next stop he’ll have the right mixture of players, coaches, front office, and ownership to get the most from his abilities.

The broader point is that a quarterback’s success really does hinge on what he has, or doesn’t have, around him. At every level of the sport. Calling a guy “a winner” only goes so far. It’s easy to be a winner when you went to Alabama. Patrick Mahomes, at Texas Tech, was a loser. So what?

At the NFL level, quarterbacks need to land with a team that knows how to properly coach them, how to get the most out of their skills and abilities, how to conceal their weaknesses (or how to eliminate those weaknesses), how to put good, complementary players around the quarterback, how to achieve year-to-year continuity in the playbook and the broader offensive approach, how to support him when things are going poorly, how to protect him when things are going well. Those and other factors significantly influence a quarterback’s success, or lack thereof, in his first NFL stop.

That’s one of the things I don’t like about the draft. Players should be able to pick their first NFL teams, the same way they pick their colleges. The best players should be more willing to refuse to play for a bad team. For quarterbacks, too much of their career hinges on factors over which they have zero control — and zero choice.

Whether it was Mayfield in Cleveland, Sam Darnold with the Jets, or Josh Rosen with the Cardinals, three top-10 quarterbacks in 2018 have ultimately failed to become who they were expected to be. Yes, plenty of it is on them. But plenty of it is also on their initial NFL teams.

Dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things. Like picking the wrong quarterback. Like not properly developing the quarterback they pick. Like changing coaching staffs so often that there’s never any sense of consistency in the organization. Like giving up on him too soon.

Remember that as the 2022 draft approaches, and as the owners of quarterback-needy teams undoubtedly continue to make it known to employees who presumably hope to remain employed that the preference is to get a quarterback — and to get the one quarterback to whom the owner has taken a liking.