The NFL Draft is one of the most exciting events for fans of football. It breaks the monotony of the offseason by showcasing all of the promising incoming talent and presents a rare, up-close opportunity for fans to gain insight into the minds of front offices the league over.

While prospects from every position draw plenty of hype and attention, none draw quite so much as rookie quarterbacks. Why is this?

Rookie quarterbacks embody hope for the fans of their teams. The odds are that if a team selects one of the coveted quarterbacks in the draft their last season (or even several seasons) has not gone well. The new quarterback is, hopefully, the herald of a brighter future for their team.

The sad truth is that in most cases that hope doesn’t pan out. Per Evan Silva, the “Hit Rate” for rookie quarterbacks selected in the first round of the draft is only 38.5 percent. That number drops even lower if you include rookies selected in the second round.

This year there are essentially now four starting rookie quarterbacks in the NFL. Considering Evan Silva’s hit rate we can only expect one of those quarterbacks to succeed at the NFL level, and maybe two if we are lucky. Today we’ll be taking a look at how some of those rookie quarterbacks are faring to start their careers and evaluating the directions they are trending towards.

We won’t be looking at Deshaun Watson, who is currently the QB1 in fantasy football. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that his 3.5 passing touchdown per game rate over the last four weeks is absurd, but it is safe to say that he is by far the most successful quarterback of the bunch to date.

Instead, we’ll be taking a look at the other three quarterbacks. Each brings their own unique and promising skills to the table, and each has their flaws. We will never know for sure if any of these quarterbacks are the future of the NFL, but it is exciting to watch fresh faces take the helm.

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Beast-Hard

C.J. Beathard took the field last Sunday to replace a struggling Brian Hoyer and showed a lot of promise. Taking the field in the middle of a game is nothing Beathard is unfamiliar with; at the University of Iowa, he battled with the then-starter for the starting role before eventually taking over the controls in 2015.

By the time the 49ers benched Hoyer they were down 0-14. It wasn’t looking pretty, but newly installed head coach Kyle Shanahan felt comfortable enough with Beathard to throw him into the flames. And he came out the other side, too.

The Niners still lost the game, but once Beathard took the field, they outscored their opposition 24-12. His 52 percent completion percentage wasn’t perfect, but that rate doesn’t reflect that his receivers dropped a few easy passes throughout the game. If you watched the game, you could see that his throws were accurate and well placed.

Take for example his long touchdown throw to Aldrick Robinson. Robinson beat his coverage and got loose with just a safety in the middle of the field between him and the end zone. Beathard identified the lapse in coverage and threw a beautiful pass (on the move, I might add) over Robinson’s outside shoulder so that the safety never had a chance to make a play on the throw. It looked like the throw of an experienced quarterback.

It remains to be seen if Beathard will develop into a fantasy relevant quarterback, but he showed promise in his debut. What is especially important for fantasy football purposes is how he affected those around him.

Carlos Hyde was still able to post a great week with 22 fantasy points. He capitalized on a drive where Beathard drove down to the Washington one-yard line and was targeted six times after Beathard took over.

Pierre Garcon had a relatively weak game, but not for lack of trying; Beathard targeted Garcon a team-high eight times. Garcon was close to making some of those catches, but what we did see on Sunday was that Beathard was comfortable targeting Garcon in tight windows.

The big winner with the Beathard takeover is George Kittle, the rookie tight end that just so happened to play with Beathard in college. Beathard targeted Kittle seven times in Week 6, including a whopping three red zone targets. Kittle was proving himself to be an up-and-coming tight end before Beathard won the job, and it looks like he’ll be able to keep it up with his former college teammate.

Overall, Beathard’s outlook looks to be on the sunny side. He almost managed to bring the team back from a two-score deficit after being thrust into a difficult situation. It was just a one-game sample against a team missing their premier cornerback, but it’s a good start to Beathard’s career.

The Truth-bisky, or a False Idol?

The Chicago Bears traded up to select Mitchel Trubisky with the second overall pick of the NFL Draft, and in the preseason it looked like they made the right call. Trubisky made some athletic passes that made highlight reels in August, but it was unclear if we would be able to witness him play in his rookie year after head coach John Fox declared Mike Glennon the starter.

That changed in Week 5 after several underwhelming performances from Glennon. Trubisky stepped in for Glennon in Week 5, just in time to face the vaunted Minnesota Vikings’ defense that week and the sturdy Baltimore Ravens’ defense on the road in Week 6. It was a particularly rough patch of the team’s schedule to start their rookie quarterback, but it does show just how disappointed the team was in Glennon’s performance.

So how did Trubisky do? Is he the truth, or one of the 61.5 percent of first-rounders that don’t pan out?

It’s tough to say, but not just because of the defenses he’s faced. What makes it tough to tell is that in two games he has averaged just over 20 passes per game while Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen have had a combined 75 rush attempts in that same time span.

For comparison, C.J. Beathard threw 36 passes in his first start after taking over in the middle of the game. Trubisky has thrown 41 times over the last two games so you can see what makes it tough to tell how he’s doing.

Essentially, the Bears are taking the pressure off of Trubisky and leaning on their strong run game to carry the team as he gets up to speed. To further take the pressure off, Trubisky has targeted Bears tight ends on 43.9 percent of his passes, an extreme rate compared to the league average of 21 percent.

Throws to tight ends have the highest success rate (compared to throws to wide receivers and running backs) and can help build a young quarterback’s confidence. That’s not a bad thing, but something to take note of for fantasy football.

One such target to the tight ends was the touchdown pass Trubisky threw to Dion Sims in their upset win over Baltimore this weekend. Sims realized early in his route that he was uncovered, something Trubisky also identified quickly. Acknowledging this, Trubisky threw an accurate pass while escaping pressure to Sims in the end zone for the score.

Plays like that were the cause for the excitement surrounding Trubisky in the preseason, and it’s inspiring to see him still making them in real NFL games. It’s hard to tell what his potential may be because of how strictly the Bears coaches are limiting his pass attempts, but that play-making ability is there.

For fantasy, we won’t get to see Trubisky’s ceiling until Week 8 at the earliest when the Bears match up against the Saints. Until then, just know that Jordan Howard is queued up for a massive workload and that Zach Miller and Dion Sims are the closest players to wide receivers on the team.

Dethroned Kizer

The most notable thing about DeShone Kizer’s Week 6 is that he didn’t play. After struggling for several weeks, the Browns made the tough decision to bench Kizer in favor of Kevin Hogan for Week 6.

It was hard to watch Kizer struggle to make the leap over the first five weeks. NFL’s Next Gen Stats illustrate many of Kizer’s issues. For starters, Kizer has the second longest “Time to Throw” among quarterbacks with 50 or more pass attempts in the league, meaning that he is holding onto the ball for quite a long time (and taking sacks while he’s at it).

The Next Gen Stats also point out that he has the second largest differential between the average air yards (the distance the ball travels to its target beyond the line of scrimmage) of his completed passes and those of all of his intended passes. This shows that he just isn’t connecting on deeper throws.

To top all of this off, his 50.9 percent completion percentage is the lowest in the league among quarterbacks with 50 or more attempts, his nine interceptions lead the league, and he is tied for the second-most lost fumbles. He’s had a rough start.

That’s a lot to process, but there’s still reason to hope. Frankly, Kizer hasn’t been working with much at the receiver position since Corey Coleman’s injury. Once the Browns get Coleman back (or start targeting David Njoku more often…), we may see Kizer take a step forward.

Per SharpFootballStats.com’s Strength of Schedule feature, the Browns have also faced the second-toughest schedule of pass defenses in the entire league. It’s tough that their division rivals all rank within the top seven toughest pass defenses in the league so far in 2017, but it does mean that we can reasonably hope that the Browns and Kizer aren’t quite so bad as they’ve looked.

The most prominent reason to hold onto hope with Kizer is his age: he’s just 21 years old. He’s still so young, and there’s plenty of time for him to turn it around. Hopefully, he was able to learn from his mistakes in his week off, as Hue Jackson announced Kizer would be retaking the starting job in Week 6.

Conclusion

That’s it for this week’s rookie report. I hope you had as much fun as I did diving into these quarterbacks. Go back and watch those touchdown passes from Beathard and Trubisky if you can, and you’ll see why rookies can be so exciting and hold so much hope for their franchises.

I’ll be back next week with more rookie goodness. Until then, good luck in your Week 7 matches.

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Aidan Mcgrath is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Aidan, check out his archive and follow him @ffaidanmcgrath.