For fans of a certain age, it becomes surreal to see sons of former legends currently playing. Brett Rypien is of course the son of former Redskins great Mark Rypien. Of course, when I say great it probably hyperbole. He led the Redskins to a Super Bowl, so I guess that makes him great. Is his son a chip off the old block or is he found lacking?
The first thing we must do is adjust our expectations. We are looking for a third string quarterback. Tom Brady is not walking through that door. So, we are looking at Rypien
as compared to Graham Mertz. The bad news is that Mertz never played a down in an actual game, so there is nothing to compare it to. However, we can compare Rypien with Davis Mills.
In order to do this, we are condensing their performance to a per game basis. I am not simply looking at games played because backups often come into games late, so those results would be skewed. We are attempting to get as close as we can to 30 attempts per game so we can standardize the performance. It’s not perfect, but we can certainly get a handle on what we are looking at.
There is a lot of secret sauce that goes into quarterback rating. These numbers look awfully similar for that much of a gap in rating. Mills takes better care of the football and is slightly more prolific in terms of touchdowns. However, these are two fairly similar quarterbacks. These numbers show that Mills should be the backup and Rypien’s presence is not really going to impact that.
However, the source of our comparison is Mertz. Will Rypien be as good if not better than Mertz? That is a loaded question. In terms of who we would want out there in a game in 2026, Rypien is probably the answer every day and twice on Sunday. In terms of who will have the better career it might very well be Mertz. He has the higher ceiling although he will be returning from his second torn ACL. Below are the numbers for Mertz in the preseason for 2025 and 2026.
These numbers are not radically different than what Mills and Rypien were putting up on a per game basis. Of course, we have the normal caveats of playing against vanilla defenses with second or third string talent out there on both sides of the ball. Suffice it to say, it looks like the Texans have replaced their third string quarterback with a comparable quarterback.
The final question is more of a philosophical one. What should teams do with that third quarterback slot? Do you want another steady hand that can backup the backup? Do you want a developmental guy that could convert raw skills into something more tangible down the road? Do you want an athletic quarterback that could come on the field on certain gadget plays or certain formation packages that could take advantage of a specific skillset? Every team handles it differently.
