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In the modern NFL, there is one absolute: If you have a good-to-great quarterback, you have a chance to compete through the regular season and into the playoffs. If you don't, it doesn't matter how great the rest of your roster is; you won't get very far.

In the NFL's old days, having a balanced offense meant that you balanced the run and the pass pretty much equally. Now, it means that you have the right kind of slot receiver to deal with the opponent's starting nickel cornerback, and that your route concepts work for base three- and four-receiver sets.

More than ever, the NFL is a quarterback league, and that's not going to change anytime soon. That's why, in Year 2 of the NFL1000 scouting project for Bleacher Report, we're going to have more specific and forensic analysis of quarterbacks through every week of the season, all the way to Super Bowl LII.

This year, we'll have weekly quarterback rankings from NFL1000 Lead Scout Doug Farrar and Quarterbacks Scout Mark Schofield. Doug will take all NFC quarterbacks, and Mark will take all AFC quarterbacks. They'll combine tape analysis and advanced metrics to give you a sense of which quarterbacks are trending up, which are trending down and which are better or worse than their reputations might imply.

To start this off, we have the rankings for all projected starting quarterbacks going into Week 1 of the 2017 NFL season. These rankings are based on past performance, offseason movement and player acquisition, and future projections. Starting next week, the focus will be far more on game-to-game performance.

Here are NFL1000's first weekly quarterback rankings.